Non-Sleeper cell -- for those who want to ramble at night, not bright and early

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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This is a great community.

My habit of staying up late has finally paid off.

I finished my novel.

I started working on it in 2014. That book saw me through a miscarriage, a cross - country move, a new job, an emergency gall bladder surgery, seizures, and the birth of a child. It was a major factor in helping me process my own trauma.

Presumably I can work on something else now. But going without this book to work on, I dunno, it’s like missing an appendage. I’ve been tracking - it took me 2,229 hours to draft, rewrite and edit.

It’s a futuristic romantic thriller. I came up with this blurb.

The plan failed. Elen ran — straight into the clutches of Anafel Leh. Despite his penchant for debauchery, Fel is quick, smart, and lethal. Who knew being a revolutionary spy would be this dangerous?

Fel has been an outcast since the day of his violent conception. He’s certain that Elen is the key to rescuing his idiot brother. What he didn’t plan on is how hard it would be to keep her alive. Or how hard it would be to resist her brand of crazy.

As they drive deeper into revolutionary territory, passions run high. Secrets will out. People will fight and die and screw. Elen is determined to help Fel overcome his greatest fear. But will they both be called on to make the ultimate sacrifice?

If you need me, I’ll be wandering aimlessly, bereft of purpose.

642

I confess to resizing photos by creating an email (in Mac Mail), attaching the photo, choosing size in the email program, and mailing them to myself.

I’m sure there are other, and quite possibly better, ways to do this. However, I tripped over that one first. Generally, when it comes to computers, I figure out, somehow, how to do the things I really want to be able to do on that device. The device, these days, is undoubtedly capable of doing thousands or maybe millions of other things, and very likely capable of doing the few things I do on it in multiple other ways. If I happen to trip over them, I may learn them; but otherwise I generally don’t bother.

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Nah, you’ll be busy cashing royalty checks. Congratulations, quite a feat!

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Sounds related to my technique: keep trying to do it in as many permutations as I can come up until it works. A year ago I was limping along finally pulling off 3 step tasks, now I am sometimes successful with 4 step ones. On to the future!

Plus now I can always ask Dopers for help and moral support. The nice thing is no one here ever rolls their rolls at what I can’t do.

My next goal? Stumbling on how to post links and photos. Got some ahhhhh…adorable cat masters of my universe pictures to share. All in due time, all in due time. Never give up! is my motto.

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Links are easy. Or at least I, personally, stumbled on them easily.

Open the site you want to link, and select all of the text in the browser bar at the top of its window that starts http or https. There are probably multiple ways to do this; I triple click on it (Mac system, may or may not work in Windows, I have no idea.)

Then copy the selected text, using whatever method you use for copying things.

Then go to the post that you’re trying to make, and paste the text into the window, making sure there’s at least a space on each side of it. If you put the text on its own line in Discourse, it may (or may not) show a picture and the first few lines on the site; if you’ve got other text on the line, it won’t do this, but the link should show up OK.

Pictures get a little more complicated because you need to host them somewhere. Imgur may let you host them without creating an account, but if you do it that way don’t lose the link to the page or I don’t think you’ll ever find the picture again. (Also no-account pictures are automatically public, so don’t have anything in those you want to keep control over.) I think most people get an account to avoid those problems, but I haven’t so far.

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I have an Imgur account for this very purpose (on this site and others). It’s free, and it’s pretty simple to upload pictures, and get the shareable links for them.

I used to use Photobucket for this, but they are now terrible – their site is clogged with spammy ads, and they really hit you over the head with the push to sign up for a paid account – it’s now the only way to let you embed your Photobucket pictures elsewhere (or to cut down on the ads). I kicked them to the curb a few years ago. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I think most of the pictures hosted on Photobucket have now also disappeared from their threads, because (unless I’ve got them mixed up with somebody else, someone please tell me if so) when they started requiring paid accounts to let people post pictures on sites other than theirs they pulled also all the pictures hosted under the previous agreements unless the posters paid up; and their charges were too high for most people to be willing to pay.

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I don’t love Imgur but it’s the only thing I’ve found that works consistently.

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I’ve got both an Imgur and a Flickr account. Both are free, and fairly easy to use, though Flickr may be a little more complicated than Imgur.

I’m another who got fed up with Photobucket. “Hit you over the head to sign up for a paid account” doesn’t begin to describe their approach.

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Thanks for all the tips, every one. I’ll try to find the moxie to try some photo posting and linking. I know all of you will be gentle with my first attempts, look how kind you’ve been so far.

651

You all have been good about sharing the foundations of your insomnia, and I’m really needing to vent a bit, so here’s mine.

As I’ve mentioned here before I think, I am a teacher in a boarding school. We sent every kid home in March expecting, like many schools, to be able to reopen in a few weeks.

Here it is December and we are still closed. Many of our students have left the program and the rest are engaged in distance learning. However, this model is not working. It’s simply not fucking working!!! These kids were in a boarding school because their regular school environment was not working, and many of them had dysfunctional or simply non-existent home lives. So of course, we sent them right back into those environments.

Since… well, since we closed in March I’ve been inundated with calls and emails and texts from students wanting to know when we’re reopening. Some are homeless, sleeping in tents. Some are doing the sofa circuit, sleeping with friends. Some are in foster care. Some are back with abusive families. Some are living with a dozen people in cramped apartments or travel trailers, with no privacy or even their own bed.

One night a young woman called me at midnight from a park bench. She had been kicked out her home – she had been living with her grandparents as her parents did not want her around – and she had nowhere to go. I was the only adult she had in her phone that she could trust. I spent an hour talking her down and trying to get her to find the nearest shelter. The next day I contacted the authorities, and she was found living in a tent.

She’s now completely disappeared.

Her story is not unique.

We have lost many students to this pandemic. The ones that remain are increasingly desperate and frantic. They call me out of the blue, all hours of the day and night, wanting to know when we’ll return to F2F teaching and allow them to move back to campus. I have to tell them I do not know, but then encourage them to stay in contact and do what they can with the program because that’s my job.

And my supervisors want to know why students aren’t engaged with distance learning. I’ve been tempted to email them a picture of Maslow’s hierarchy.

Tonight a former student who I remain in contact with was in a car accident. She was joyriding with a couple of loser friends, doing stupid teenager shit, when they went off the road. Her injuries are serious but at this point do not sound life-threatening. She meant a great deal to me and it hurts that not only was she doing stupid teenager shit, but that she was doing stupid teenager shit to escape her deeply unhappy home life. Actually, it more than hurts. I’m pissed off and worried and right now I wish more than anything that I could be there to talk to her because I know she’s scared and hurting and has nobody besides her boyfriend (he contacted me to tell me what happened) who likely even cares.

This week I had two former students tell me that I wasn’t a good fit for that school and their environment because I cared too much and actually respected my students, something that they felt was vanishingly rare on campus. I’m starting to think they’re right. I didn’t sign up for this… this emotional heartache. I did not have any sort of traditional school life as a teenager so I have nothing to compare it too, but I do have high school-aged children and I doubt their teachers stay up all night worrying about the students who come through their doors each day – or maybe they do and I just don’t see it. But I doubt it.

Maybe it’s the pandemic exacerbating already extant issues, but I’m sick and fucking tired of feeling So. Fucking. Helpless with these students. I wish I didn’t care. I wish I could tell these kids (most of them are actually adults, legally) to suck it up. I wish I could treat this as a fucking job, do what needs to be done 9-5 M-F and spend the rest of my time not worrying. But I’ve had students tell me that my classroom was their safe space. Now, 8 months later, the safe space is the little text window on their phone, asking me when they can come back to school.

I will wake up tomorrow to more desperate texts asking about resumption of classes. And here I am, a 39 year old man with a loving wife and two moody but overall pretty damn good teenagers of my own, crying like a toddler because some 18year old girl who has never had a happy family interaction in her entire life was nearly killed in a car wreck because she was doing stupid shit to try to escape her misery. I wish I didn’t care. I wish I could take this news with same amount of salt that I would if I had heard some random neighbor 4 streets away had been in a similar car wreck. I wish I could just… detach. Instead I feel like my own kid has just been sent to the hospital.

I honestly don’t know how other teachers do it. And as God as my witness I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to fucking do this anymore. Because it will just get worse. But I can’t stop.

(You remember that scene in Rain Man where Tom Cruise walks out into the desert, paces back and forth a few times, and then screams at the top of his lungs “SON OF A BITCH!!!? I nearly did that in my front lawn about an hour ago – 1130 at night, nice quiet suburban neighborhood surrounded by houses with pretty Christmas lights and inflatable Santas… and one teacher with fractured sanity. So really, I just needed to vent here a bit. Thanks).

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Damn, dude. I had no idea. That’s … a lot to process.

Like, a shitload.

We’re just a couple of insomniacs over here, @Lancia but I bet you’d get an avalanche of supportive replies if you put that into its own thread. Hell, copy-pasta your post into a “New Topic” and go to bed. Wake up to suggestions and offers and stuff.

But from this quiet little corner of the Dope: DAMN, dude. That’s a heavy load. I’m not sure you even realize how much you’ve taken on, but it is a lot.

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60 years ago I was one of those kinds (although not in a residential school setting, a traditional Midwestern public school). Had it not been for 3 or 4 teachers like you, I would not have survived to be so moved by your post. I chose those words carefully: would not have survived. The police failed me, the courts failed me, social services failed me, those teachers did not.

Not being f2f makes it manically worse. At least 7 hours a day I could escape hell and be safe and fed and had a teacher who reflected that he or she knew I existed and cared about the hell. That was enough to hang on with. All I can suggest to do is what you have been doing, be at the other end of a text or phone call, let them know that you know they exist and you care that they are in hell. Next to none of that hell can you fix but your recognizing their existence, them being real to you and you caring can make far more difference than you may ever realize. I would give almost anything to be able to go back and tell those teachers that they saved my life and what they made possible for me to do with that life.

How you can do that wrenching, soul-sucking work and sleep I don’t know, but I’d be happy to meet you here regularly and listen to you as much as you need and as graphically as you need.

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Do it, if it makes you feel better. I’ve done it.

Back in May, I guess it was, when everything outside the home that could be even remotely fun or interesting was closed; when “non-essential retail,” was closed (what? new underwear is not essential?); when travel outside the province was closed, except under crippling return rules; I had had it. I had obeyed all the rules and regulations and restrictions, and now they were putting on more? Screw that.

One night, I guess I had a few too many. And it was late, as befits this “Non-Sleeper Cell” thread. And I stood on my front porch, and yelled, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more.” I paused, and then I did it again.

Unlike the movie, nobody joined in.

I’m still mad as hell. But I guess I have to deal for some time longer. Never mind, I can still yell from my front porch, if that becomes necessary.

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Since I did do the quick change for Boo’s avatar, the avatar is sitting on my desktop, looking off the screen, since the avatar is on the top right corner. I suppose I should just delete it, but it’s a friendly change to the previews of the PDF files.

Speaking of Preview, that’s what I used to flip the image. It comes with MacOS so it’s the image editor I use at home. We also have Photoshop on my husband’s computer and maybe some other heavy-duty image editing software, but Preview does most of what I need.

@Lancia, yes this pandemic majorly sucks for those who are already suffering. Not everyone does well with distance learning. Really doesn’t work for people who don’t have internet at home, or even a separated space for working at home. And those who do not even have a safe space at home? It’s devastating. The system isn’t helping.

There are teachers who can easily separate their home lives from their work lives. Unfortunately many of these are the ones who are not the ones I would want as a teacher. The teachers who invited me into their homes (end of year potlucks) are the ones who did not, and could not, just turn off the job when they walk through the doors.

Vent away. If it can help you keep your foundation stable, vent even more.

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This. This is what worries me–that some students will fall beneath the cracks, because their teachers are not allowed to care about them, due to Covid restrictions.

I remember the care my high school teachers showed. Some more than others. But I do recall my history teacher had a few words of advice over something that meant a great deal to me at the time, but now, is silly in retrospect. But he took the time to listen, and offer a few words of advice, and (impossible now), offered me a cigarette. Which I gladly took.

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I would have have joined in if I heard it. Maybe we need Zoom porches across the street from each other.

I’ll hang in there if you will. I’ll hate it, but I’ll hang in. Easy for me to say, I was able to buy a 10 pack of Hanes underwear from the Big Red Circle store today. And a cheap pair of cosy slipper socks since I no longer seem to have much need for shoes. They are thick enough I can go out on the porch as needed for shaking my fist at the moon. I’ll face west by northwest when I do so maybe you won’t be alone out on your porch.

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I’m very much enjoying the thought of this. Basking in it I am.

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Boo, you don’t know my voice. I’ve addressed audiences of 400 to 500 at least, without a PA.

I guess we’ll just have to hang in. My sister, who knows my vocal capabilities, has said, “Knock yourself out, Spoons. Just don’t do anything stupid.”

And I’d like nice warm socks too.

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@Lancia that is heavy stuff. I don’t know if it helps, but I reached an impasse myself a couple years ago when it came to my own job (nonprofit that serves survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence.) I was taking up the mantle constantly. At work, at home, on the internet. My low point was when I spent 19 straight hours arguing with someone here on the Dope. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I just advocated. I couldn’t separate myself from other people. I was exhausted.

I reached a point where I knew I either had to leave my job or get help. I talked to a coworker who I consider one of the best advocates who ever existed, and he told me, “It’s okay to lay the burden down. You will not be able to help anyone if you try to help everyone.” I had to re-assess and change my relationship to my job. Advocacy could no longer be something I did 24/7.

It’s very clear you are at the point of burnout. Something has to change.

Whether it’s leaving the field altogether or setting some boundaries between yourself and your students is up to you. But you can’t keep going on like this. Right now you are a teacher 24/7 and that is impossible to sustain.

All the best to you as you sort this out.