Again again

2026-07-13

Catching up

Everything is strange this summer and I feel unstuck. The last term was so hard that I basically didn't get a chance to open my head enough to do personally writing since my last post.

I didn't even get to talk about the strike! Yes, dear reader, our college ended up on strike for nearly a month and spring term was almost cancelled. After that, the spring term was hard and somewhat miserable, because the students were stressed and burned out and, well, I'm going to be honest with you they very much took advantage of my kindness this term.

It was incredibly frustrating to me to have students always put my classes off until the last second because I was the most forgiving for grading.

It's one of the reasons why I'm moving towards a token-based system for late assignments: turning in things late is a resource you get to expend not a given, y'know?

The summer so far

It's been a hard time. I feel like I was starting to get a rhythm and then after [redacted]'s suicide I just got thrown off so badly, which feels very selfish. How am I supposed to tell my partner "oh, btw, your soulmate's tragic death and the grief and the contagion therein are throwing off my groove", even if that's an unfair assessment of my own feelings and how they would sound, which is probably something closer to "her suicide and all the guilt I feel from not being able to stop it have been hounding me and making me feel unstuck".

That effect, combined with the way that I have difficulty with being left to my own schedule and devices after having been on the rigid academic year, have been making me feel completely lost lately. I feel like I'm just living from day to day without continuity of goals/self/wants.