Sock It to Me

Teaching: Another up and down week. I'm kinda getting used to this rhythm: Mondays and Tuesdays are so bad I often find myself looking for, or at least fantasizing about, other jobs. Then Wednesdays are a little better, and Thursdays and Fridays I kinda coast into the weekend feeling generally okay. This Thursday we had a staff get-together thing after school ended...food, drink, chatting, sing-alongs led by a beloved and recently-retired theater teacher. Going into it, I wasn't feeling it at all (in part because I failed badly in my two attempts to bake something to bring), but once I got there I started feeling better, and left feeling something like affection for the little crew of colleagues who were there. Most people I talked to are feeling similarly ground down and dispirited (though I can't think of a time when any of my colleagues felt differently), and if nothing else it was kinda refreshing to know I'm not alone in what I'm feeling. 

Yesterday I also did the fourth session in my creative writing workshop series, and it went well! 

Learning: Our regular Chinese teacher had to travel back to China for some reason, so this week we met the substitute who will be our teacher for the next three-four weeks: Simon, a kinda dorky guy in his mid-twenties with a *very* different vibe than out normal teacher. The class starts at 19:00, and as soon as the clock struck that time, he announced to the mostly silent room "Time's up!" and jumped into the PPT (he also ended the class at 20:30 on the dot, which I appreciated, given that the regular teacher often goes ten or fifteen minutes over time). So far, our regular teacher has been reassuring us that at our level, we don't really need to bother with reading characters--learning pinyin is enough. But Simon scoffed at this idea, and his PPT was full of characters he expected/insisted that we know how to read. So far, no one has really spoken up or asked a question during any of our lessons, but this time one girl interrupted Simon at one point to say she was absent last week and felt like she'd missed a month of lessons--she had no idea what he was talking about. Things loosened up a little after that, and Simon eventually really started feeling himself, making jokes and sort of vibing with this one student sitting at the front of the room. For whatever reason he mostly avoided interacting with my side of the classroom, though. Anyway, all this is say that it's been a while since I've been a "student," and it's really interesting to observe a teacher from this perspective, and also to observe my own reactions to the teacher's energy, style, quirks, and the dynamics in the room. 

The somatic movement workshop this week was pretty good, and I also booked a one-on-one session with the facilitator to talk about some strategies I can use when I feel really overwhelmed or overstimulated in the classroom (and on the walk home, when I've got all sorts of nasty thoughts and feelings roiling inside me). It was a kinda intense and emotional session.

Listening: Finished season one of It Makes a Sound. Loved it, and loved sharing it with T. and seeing her get into it. Some other stuff too, but nothing much stood out. 

Reading: Still working on The Dream Hotel. Smart and bleak.

Watching: We've finally gotten to the last season of Big Bang Theory. I'm ready for it to be done. Everyone is just so mean to each other all the time. Also watched this movie Weapons, which was pretty entertaining. Tried watching the new Frankenstein but was not feeling it at alll. The first scene looked and felt like a video game, and we didn't have the patience for all the visual bloat in the fifteen minutes or so that followed before we turned it off. 

Writing: Kind of a quiet week on the RP front, which allowed me to write a couple short things for that unconventional formats challenge. I would've liked to write more, and to try some of the unconventional media prompts, but I feel satisfied with what I did. Also wrote a little triple drabble thing for the weekly drabble challenge community I joined a few weeks ago. Should probably start working on my Yuletide fic (I have the rough outline in my head, more or less, but now I need to start doing something with it). Also looking forward to participating in Fandomtrees for the first time. 2025 will go down as the year I really got into writing fanfiction, I guess, and these little events feel like nice ways to cap off the year.

Also tinkered a bit on some poems in preparation for the big spoken word festival next week. 

In the news/on my mind: Whatever the fuck is going on with/about to happen to Venezuela just feels so dizzyingly stupid and wrong, and again it feels like there's just nothing to do be done about it...