DRAWESOME

Okay, I need to figure out a better time in my day to post, because what's been happening the last few nights is that I get home, there's some sort of Thing (Monday night was HOA meeting, Tuesday night was game store and then getting Miss R set up for her minecraft playdate), and then I'm Le Tired and then just sink into Fic Zone instead of doing anything mildly productive or helpful. I think part of it, too, is that I usually manage the muster some energy to steward Miss R through her Chinese homework around 8-9pm, and then after that I'm like... Done.

I think one of the benefits of posting is really collecting my thoughts, reflecting on my day, and then figuring out what I should do next, which is great for preventing me from sinking into the Fic Zone. I'm really tired of drawing a blank when someone asks "how was your day?" or "how's it going", because usually it just feels like "things happened, but I no longer remember what they were." Which kinda sucks. I swear I'm, like, mentally cognizant during the day! Yesterday I did a lot of great Quest prep and trip prep work, taught class, voiced opinions about girls+stress in the faculty meeting, and did a rough plan of the semester for 9th grade! But by the time it's 9pm, everything is a haze. Blech.

So it seems like I need to figure out how to either not fall into the haze, or how to effectively rise from the haze. It might be that I need to post in the morning, when my brain is most actively planning. Or I need to post before I start the drive home, when I'm wrapping up my work and thinking about home tasks. Or I need to post the moment I get home, so that I decompress by reflecting and planning instead of by reading fics of Tim Drake being sad. The last few days it'd be like, 11pm and I'm like "oh, I should post" and then I'm like "too tired", so that clearly doesn't work.

Anyway, I'll try a couple of different times and see what happens. Now that I'm writing this, I'm recognizing that part of what adds to my exhaustion at the end of the day is having to be "on" again after I get home, to help get Miss R through her homework. Which... I hope is just a temporary, next year or two sort of situation. Usually after she gets home, both of us need some down time to not think about Chinese homework, and then it's like, a whole Thing to get both of our energies back up. I feel like, ideally, Chinese homework will eventually require less cognitive effort (become more rote, her getting better at the basics of character recognition and writing) that it won't be as much effort. Also, starting next school year, she no longer has aftercare, so I think our afterschool rhythm might change.

I just scribbled a rough chart of my energy levels between 4pm and midnight, and ... yeah, I think after I get home, I crash from the drive, and then I muster the energy for homework stewardship (or HOA meetings, or whatever else) out of a sense of obligation, so then after that obligation is done, I crash even harder. Poor spouse has been trying to engage me in more exciting post-Miss R-bedtime activities like reading a book together, and I want to, I just don't have the energy for it.

I think in the long run, this will be less of an issue once next school year hits and my drive home either shortens, or transforms into a train ride. (plus all of the reasons stated above). In the short run, I think I can mitigate some of the first crash that happens when I get home by having some task there that is at a higher energy level than "lying down and reading fic" -- knitting, or writing a post, or putting on a show and drawing for an episode. And maybe if I have something queued up for post-homework, it would also make it easier to get to a productive state.

Anyways, I've spent about an hour of work time just writing this post (oops), but I think it's worth it. Now onto school things, like figuring out what I want to do for this upcoming unit, getting my prep work done for the rest of the week (esp tomorrow's classes!), and maybe writing some Trip-related emails (lbr that's going to happen Friday morning)