110125 “How do I feel? What did I do? How was the weather?” Scheduled: Nov 1, 2025 at 21:00 to 21:15, CDT Tired. Been tired all day, almost debilitatinlgy so. Started reading *The Gift* though, it is an awakener. I think there’s a gift economy in my own psyche, and that’s the thing that gets DISEQUILIBRATED when I buy shit to make myself feel better. Or any number of other things; it’s not just about buying things of course but that was the singsong angel that’s been playing hide and seek with me that came out of the first chapter so far. It’s getting cold. I put gloves on to ride the Lime scooter this time — smart! — but for *some* reason it cost almost twice as much as it did the first time I rode one, a week or so ago. Assholes. 110225 night isn’t a time, it’s a place 110325 “How do I feel? What did I do? How was the weather?” Scheduled: Nov 3, 2025 at 20:45 to 21:00, CST I feel good because I did more than the minimum amount of work. It was sunny, with a strong steady breeze out of the west billowing my jacket and sending maple, locust, and oak leaves tumbling along beside me, bouncing off my back, overtaking me as I walked to Sherman Perk, where I ordered a medium dark roast from Craig, who was in a fairly chipper mood today but obviously has molten layers of brooding complexity beneath the surface. He’s a dangerous man, is Craig, notwithstanding the somewhat effete affectations. If he gets any more exhausted, he could snap. The coffee was $1.95 and I didn’t leave a tip. Later I wished I had. You can’t get coffee that cheap anywhere these days. 110425 “How do I feel? What did I do? How was the weather?” Scheduled: Nov 4, 2025 at 20:45 to 21:00, CST Mixed. Decent work day I guess though a little derailed; not so much not working as illogical priorities. But maybe not. Who knows. Today’s impending death by progress reports is tomorrow’s lack of mosquito-bite questions from Honors Am Lit kids being all like WHAT DO I DO, WHERE’S THE ASNWERS, WE DIDN”T GO OVER THIS or whatever. I snapped at Cel in the van on the way back from the orthodontist. She was hungry and extremely irritable but I snapped back at her when she asked me to stop making (barely perceptible) noises with my empty diet root beer can. The only reason she could hear it is that she was so agitated she wasn’t even playing music on AUX. That’s when you know it’s bad. She’s suffering. Anxiety, basically, though she calls it “weird dreams.” I ... don’t know for sure how to help but I think one good idea would be to set up an appointment with a therapist (jesus, if I even can these days) and then tell her it’s there but she can totally cancel it if not interested. See what happens. It’s still not cold but not warm. Not particularly enchanted, as falls go or have gone before. I’m sure that’s my fault. 110525 LD said in SAIL mtg: “I’m a graduate of Alverno” and self-assessment was their whole deal. So you took a math test, and then they asked you, “How do you think you did” on each problem, and you were like “I did great on number 1 and 2 and 3” and they were like “Oh, that’s interesting because you got 1, 2, and 3 wrong” and then “Why do you think you got it right?” and then they would be like, “OK, here, see, this is the equation you needed but you used this one instead,” and they would, as she put it, “stay there,” like, *that was the work, that was the lesson* and I get the idea of that? You can probably see evidence of my leaning towards that as a concept in some of my classes, but I guess my question is *Can I do that for real for a couple hundred kids online?* Can we? Can anyone? Could NR for example? Am I interested and energized and motivated and available enough to find out for real? Is it all or nothing? Could it be done by minuscule iterations? Do I want to give up because it sounds really hard? Or because my energy is taken up by other things? What things? Why? Is there anything I can change about that? Should I get a new job? Is that even realistic? Should I get a new car? Or not have a car? Why do I engage with Creative Writing more than with any other class? Does my engagement translate to any real benefit for my students? Where and to what extent does my appearance of continuing to be employable and valuable at this job overlap with any real benefit to my students? Does anyone really, truly, honestly expect any real pedagogical or educational value from a high school? From this high school? Are we all just playing along because we think we have to, to survive in this particular culture, economy, or political system? What do YOU do when you CAN’T focus on what you’re “supposed” to be focusing on? When doing the bare minimum seems almost worse, somehow, than having a spectacular failure — but it’s not, quite, because you can’t afford to have that anymore, because you’re a grownup and people are counting on you? What do YOU do when you’re a tight string aching to be plucked a bowl aching to be empty, unowned a drum waiting to become a thundercloud a bull waiting to shit 110625 “How do I feel? What did I do? How was the weather?” Scheduled: Nov 5, 2025 at 21:00 to 21:15, CST I feel like shit. Progress reports sucked and I’m STILL not caught up on “grading.” Whatever. I’ll be tired and do a lame ass AVID sesh tomorrow morning anyway, and life will go on, and my van will still be a piece of shit because I got screwed but it’s mostly my fault. Fuck cars, fuck me. I’m worried about everyone. There’s a rigid, ridged, dark, vibrating energy all around my ears. 2025-11-07 - “How do I feel? What did I do? How was the weather?” I feel good? I think? A little bit? Which is weird because it hasn’t happened very often lately. Fleeting embers of good in the serrated wind of oncoming aridity. Tonight contained one of them. First, it sucked, because after getting all geeked up about Gil’s episode (E301: The Self-Worth Ceiling: How Low Self-Esteem Fuels Self-Sabotage) where she talks about how the reason you self-sabotage has more to do with retreating to the safety of what you’re used to, rather than just being — her favorite phrase — “a weak-willed loser,” I promptly self-sabotaged by fucking around with Taskpaper settings ALL GODDAMN day instead of doing ANY WORK. And yesterday was a good work day. See? It’s like I think if I stay doing good work day after day, they’re (I’m) gonna expect me to keep doing it, and that’s scary. Because if I keep doing it, not every day is going to be full of amazing genius. So I’ll be trapped and bored AND they’ll find out I suck. So I’d better retreat into a ADHD fog, you know, turn up the “I’m restless” dial, the “I’m an artist” dial, the “the world sucks” dial, the “I’m really fucking tired and sad” dial (which is true, but that doesn’t mean I always need to crank up that dial). Then I can have a perverse sense of superiority as my excuse for being inconsistent and suddenly just *not being there* for work. I’m lucky Jason likes me. Was this an opponent-process event? Maybe. But then the day got better because I carried the message of that podcast episode with me to the drum circle at Julie’s dance studio — second one at that location, first one for me there — and Judy and Brian (but I cared more that it was Judy) seemed a little surprised and genuinely happy to see me. And Rosie brought two granddaughters. And she pointed at me when Brian wanted somebody to start something, and she said “I’ve missed you! *You* start something!” And I was hesitant because that meant being visible and imperfect, but I thought of Gil’s reedy little voice saying “You want to disappear not because it’s good for you, but because it’s familiar, and your brain equates familiarity with safety,” and so I just started something, and the rest of the night was — not perfect — but pretty fun. The flu shot is kicking in, so I’m achy and logy, but I think it’s better because I played through it. Basically everything’s better when you play through it. Yesterday was the supermoon. Tonight is just kinda cold, still not terrible yet. Just a normal day of peace and quiet and loud engines and parts of cars on the medians and unfathomable pain and suffering all over the world and people repeating “we have a fascist government now” but celebrating Mamdani’s mayorship win in NYC. Here in MKE it’s just one day after another and before you know it — November 9, 2025 “How do I feel? What did I do? How was the weather?” sad anxious tired charged bewildered empty full went all the way to waukegan to pick up libby who is still having a hard time but it’s nice that she seemed to perk up a bit here. i love hearing the banter of the sisters. that’s my favorite song. it snowed, just barely. cel didnt wear a jacket to the haunted house cast party and she ran across the parking lot with her shoes in her hand, getting in the van quickly, breathing all crazy omg omg my feet are so cold!! it’s not algorithm vs logarithm; 2+2=4 is an algorithm too. layers of algorithms. intelligence is a holistic affair. “i” “am” “just” what this part of the whole thing “sees” -- what if we can interchange, intermingle? we can. misery is claustrophobia. you’re thinking too small, too tight. fixated on what “your” little tangle of consciousness is busy “doing” -- remember: work is picking something up and putting it down somewhere else because you have to (and remember who you learned that from) are you still breathing? good. let’s keep doing that my thumb’s not jealous of my eye 2025-11-09 “How do I feel? What did I do? How was the weather?” I feel guilty and antsy because I’m going to miss my CW sesh tomorrow because of bad planning around taking Lib back to Madison. It almost makes it worse that there’s relief mixed in with the frustration. Then I gotta drag ass back here and do parent teacher confs. Not many thank god. But it was good to sit around the table and talk and play a round of Salem with Lib and Cel and ok sure even Aidan. She still looks tired as hell and I know there’s still so much up in the air, anxiety, dread, all that, and she’s still going through it, but it was nice to just sit and be there and hear her laugh and trade Cornell Circle stories with Cel. It got fucking cold today. 2025-11-10 i feel v. fortunate to have this house. i hope it lasts. i get anxious that something will happen to it, or i will lose it, or i won’t be able to keep up with the maintenance. 2025-11-11 “How do I feel? What did I do? How was the weather?” Fragmented. Askance. Sideloaded. Doing a nervous jittery dance. It’s still mid-cold, nondescript weather but I bet it’s anything but nondescript if I were to go outside. I bet it’s downright descript. But I’ve been inside being “busy” lately — I can’t claim to be grinding, working all the time, but I’m as mentally fragged as if I were. DGMW, I’m not doing nothing. Just I’m swiss-cheesing it over here. It’s not enough to say “I can’t focus” — somehow that’s worse than a lie. It’s not even untrue, but saying it self-fulfills it. We have to get past it. I absolutely CAN focus, but I can’t always SEE what it is I’m focusing ON. Biski goes to the vet tomorrow! My [Ultimate Personality Test Report](https://programs.clearerthinking.org/personality_report.html?A_5=82&C_5=25&E_5=52&En_1=52&En_2=78&En_3=37&En_4=76&En_5=65&En_6=63&En_7=63&En_8=12&En_9=49&N_5=77&O_5=82&anti_cluster_i=8&anti_enn_type=8&anti_image_i=16&cluster_encoded=Passionate_Dreamer&cluster_index=10&enn_type=2&gender=0&image_index=20&jung=INFP&jung_E=49&jung_J=36&jung_S=9&jung_T=17&s_A=45&s_B=70&s_C=81&s_E=69&s_F=22&s_G=53&s_H=81&s_I=68&s_J=73&s_K=83&s_L=32&s_M=7&s_N=87&s_O=21&s_P=15&s_Q=85&s_R=8&s_S=69&s_T=5&s_U=63&s_V=13&s_W=66&s_X=56&s_Y=30&s_Z=57&start_report=1) said I should consider giving without expecting a reward. They probably meant giving (time, energy, care) to PEOPLE but I think it applies to writing too. That’s the main reason I STOP writing, is because I’m afraid I’m not going to get the reward I expect. That’s a created kind of pain that I then avoid. So then I castigate myself: DON’T AVOID THE PAIN WHAT ARE YOU SOME KIND OF PUSSY? But the funny thing is, I wouldn’t have to self-lacerate if I just didn’t CREATE that pain in the first damn place. There’s enough natural pain to go around as it is — which, oddly enough, is a lot less impossible to handle. 2025-11-14 i did some grading finally. sat thru a mtg and kept my self-defensive resentment/withdrawal/superiority mostly in check because i recognized and acknowledged it happening. EM said (essentially) “we know eAchieve is not getting shut down … that’s all we know” so some us are getting fired, right? district is belt-tightening. surely ELA will be ok because amy’s retiring, right? they just won’t replace her. right?? cel is anxious paranoid congested and can’t sleep. upset and frustrated about changes in lib and their relationship. amb is frustrated by the nonbinary complicating fluidity of their version of being trans. i’m sullen and frustrated and ate 2 metric tonnes of ice cream. how you know somethings up. missed the northern lights the other day. brief reprieve from the cold. 2025-11-15 the opposite of loneliness is a little bit of a mess 2025-11-18 tired of my job tired of my dining room table. i want that old chunky painted one from value village. as for job, i honestly dont know what i want. rather than fix the BIG thing, i have an all but irresistable urge to buy the table — because i can do it in one go, it’s concrete and achievable, and fits my “personal style” — it would take my mind off the job thing for a while. i feel guilty or ashamed about complaining about my nice good fancy job, for always feeling one or two wasted days away from bombing. it’s easier to feel defiant about preferring a ugly old table to the svelte sophisticated one that i have now, which i bought because tom knew someone who was selling it, and i guess at the time it seemed like a step up. only prob with the value village table: it reminds me of the one i had on fratney before _she_ moved in — back when i still liked my life — before i was sick with exhaustion every afternoon — and usually buying nostalgia ends up not working so well? but this is different! you always think so hey it also has to do with retreating into whats familiar —> familiarity = safety perhaps the “nice” table represents an intimidating expectation haha lol no thats not it 2025-11-19 My feet are cold. I’m worried about Lib cuz it’s been pretty quiet over in mad town so far this week. I’m worried about the van cuz Import Minded said the steering was fine, which it should be because Reis had put in a new rack & pinion last year, but Richlonn’s had said it was a bad rack, an internal gear or some damn thing that was contributing to the power steering fluid breakdown. So yeah I’m “saving” $2000 but what if the Import guys are wrong and I’m just gonna end up with fucked up power steering fluid and an unrepaired rack anyway? Whatever. Whatever. It was cold but not too cold. My feet are cold. I’m almost ready for bed even though it’s only like 8:30. Ruth wants to know how long we can stay in SD over Thanksgiving. I don’t know. I’m worried about Lib. She seems to want to stay here. With the cats. I guess that’s fine? I never know if it’s gonna be fine or not, but there’s always the looming fear that it’s not. I live with that. I try to sleep with that. I wake up in the middle of the night having to piss and then I think about that again. Or my body thinks about it. The pinwheel in my gut spins up again, and I try to remember how to breathe normally. Cars suck. They suck up too much of your income. It’s so fucking stupid. All these stupid fucking cars belching all over the place, stinking up the place, killing people either slowly or all at once. Just so we can go places we either want to go or don’t want to go at all. Whatever. Whatever. Whatever. Like why do YOU have to go over HERE and I have to go over THERE and vice versa? All the fucking time, every fucking day? It’s a fucking circus. A fucking clown show, constantly. Zoom out and look at the interweaving patterns and think, what the fuck is wrong with these people? Why are they so brainless and frantic? At least I’ve been getting my work done lately. I have a new system. It’s helping at the moment. I don’t try to do everything all at once every day. I just DON’T DO certain things on certain days, and that makes a big difference in how to make things not seem impossible and time not seem so instantaneously vanished. I’m worried about Lib. The car. Mom being alone on Thanksgiving. Cel’s paranoia, how she gets mad when she talks about it. I’m going to make her an appointment with a therapist, and say here, you can go to it or not, if not, let me know and I’ll cancel it. But I bet she’ll at least give it a try if I do that. Simple, right? Just a thing to do. That’s all every day is: things to do. Then try to warm up your feet and get some sleep. For a few fractured hours at a time. If you’re lucky, you get some good dreams tucked into the intervals. Like last night — love, flirting, sexuality as if I were a young man again. Nice. What’ll it be tonight? Men, ships, the sea. Petting a giraffe. Who the fuck knows. Not me. I’m glad. If I knew what I was going to dream about, there’d truly be nothing left. Nothing but days and things to do. I hope I’m not wasting my money on the car. Not because I particularly give a shit about my money, but just because I’m gonna need some of it for whatever symptom of dilapidation and inevitable decay comes up next. Whatever. Whatever, whatever, whatever. 2025-11-20 how do you feel; what did you do; what was the weather shitty; most but not all of my work, walked, got rushed by an angry little pit bull and then felt mildly embarassed by how vociferously I yelled at it to try to get it to go away before its owner appeared around the side of the house and called it back, watched dumb tv and ate microwave popcorn, worried about whether i’m getting scammed by import minded (probably); mildly cold and damp. Sometimes I wonder what truly even is the fucking point. Of course these are times when I am feeling the most disaffected and lonely. I know I’m lonely so why don’t I do anything about it? 2025-11-21 morning your todo list is too sticky if (you spilled honey on it or) you put things on it and they stick there instead of being done also it’s time to relearn breathing again 2025-11-21 Gil just said something about “you can have a bad day without spiraling into thinking you have a bad life” and I was like, huh. 2025-11-22 I know what my purpose is now. It only took me *checks wrist* 55 years. 2025-11-23 # the 10 virtues needed for living a poetic lifestyle you don’t acquire them, you get rid of them. you start with all 10, and once you get to zero, congratulations: nothing happens [p ;./ m \] 2025-11-24 take first breath the rest will follow ( but whats stopping me?? ) 2025-11-27 how do ya feel? apprehensive; groggy; sense of foreboding; reluctant; slightly hopeless; traces of doomed. what did you do? last night, pigged the fuck out and ate whatever “because it’s thanksgiving and we drove instead of sleeping and we’re in SD” and look, here’s the thing: everybody’s dying and I don’t know what to do about it. Everybody. 2025-11-28 Ruth & dad & i were talking about how in education and related fields, the words for things keep changing but a lot of the underlying concepts tend to pretty much stay the same. New jargon, new buzzwords. I’ve tended to think of that phenomenon rather cynically, like, oh, here we go trying to hype ourselves up like we’re so innovative, everybody jump on the bandwagon, say the magic words to prove that you’re in the in group, hide the fact that we’ve done all this before, etc etc. But a more charitable interpretation is that the changing words are a reflection of our willingness (and drive) to keep trying. Sure, it’s the same old intractable problems. The appearance of new clusters of vocabulary shows not our factitiousness but our perseverance. That we eventually figure out ours are the same preoccupations as those of our forbears doesn’t make us evil, it makes us human. Fresh words for fresh eyes. We teach what we were taught, as dad said Jack Hensley used to say. Yes, but not verbatim. There’s always mutations in any system of heredity that lasts. Sometimes shifting your Scrabble tiles around leads to a triple word score. And speaking of Jack Hensley (who dad used to work with in the theatre dept), he was working as a medic in Japan towards the end of WW2 after the Japanese surrendered. He was the one who administered a rare, still-being-developed shot of penicillin to Tojo, who got sick while imprisoned waiting to be hanged. Presumably they didn’t want him to die before they got a chance to publicly execute him, so they gave him this precious experimental drug instead of saving it for Americans. And my dad’s old co-worker Hensley was the one who gave it to him. ## how do i feel, what did i do, what was the weather A little bit better. You don’t have to buy any fancy new programs, no subscriptions, no upgrades. All you need are the basic programs you already have: - love, company, companionship, conversation, connection - help out when you can - do your work - don’t buy stuff - count your calories - continue sobriety You can make any workflow with just those. Breathe, open up. Especially the first one, love etc, opens things up, gives you enough air to be able to experiment and play a little. Not panic so much. I’m not sure exactly when I became such an anxious person. Probably around COVID, around kids’ mental health scary stuff, combined with increasing responsibilities like mortgage and aging parents. And “the world” in general. In any case, it’s weird — drifting off to sleep and then my breathing does that resonant blip, that county fair haunted house buzz scare, that leap, that halt, that pounce and freeze, that derailment — well, we’ll work on that. What else we got to do at night that’s more important, anyway, right? It snowed. I hope we’re able to get home safely the morning after tomorrow. I hope the van’s OK and the roads are OK, etc etc etc. Will be nice to curl up with Biskit again. Hope Lib dog’s good. And Meg dog, whatever her deal is at the moment. I hope everyone’s good. Remember that? In the room with the giraffe wallpaper, going to bed, not religious so not a prayer but nevertheless: “I hope everyone everywhere (including all my stuffed animals) is ok and safe and healthy and happy and good.” What’s wrong with that? November 30, 2025 “exactly when I became such an anxious person” -- don’t forget ashamed too, for being in debt until i’m literally dead. negative net worth. no options, no choice, no real freedom. at the whim. csn you imagine paying a mortgage and student loan when i’m my dad’s age, literally hobbling around like a gnome? what the actual fuck. meanwhile heart lurches when freshly wondering if kid’s gonna be alive at any given next time i see her like literally what am i supposed to do? besides not buy anything and look pathetic at christmas besides get ready to be a burden i don’t feel like the house is really even “mine” — what happens when it needs a major repair. i can’t fucking pay for that. end of the line, baby. pretty soon there is no more “someday”. no more “eventually”. what’s the point of dreaming. i can’t sleep more than 3 hrs at a time anyway # purpose? it could be the smallest things (reaction, thought, deed, word) easy parts, hard parts — the same, really meanwhile, we NEED stories, books, movies, whatever, to present us with universal puzzles for individual decoding. each “text” a card in the infinite tarot meanwhile, i DON’T WANT TO LOSE THE HOUSE. i can’t buy shit, because i can’t afford to lose the house. having the house really helps. this room up here is basically the perfect room. do you know how long it’s been since i’ve had the perfect room? and miraculously, here we are. again.