ask yourself is that going to bring you peace, though? (week notes 002)

I’m continuing to try out doing Week Notes instead of monthly wrap ups. So far, so good! As a callback to my livejournal days, I’m trying out using a random quote from something I’m enjoying this week as my title (most likely, and true to my livejournal heart, cryptic song lyrics).

Doing

• My district is finally paying me to organize Safe Space trainings. This week, I got together with two other teachers to collaborate on plans, then delivered the training to a group of folks who we also prepared to do the training themselves. An immensely rewarding experience that felt like the culmination of four years of anger and despair and turned those feelings into something positive and productive.
• Trying to get organized and get on a better schedule. I woke up on Friday at 2:14pm (!!!) and felt awful about it. I spent a lot of time that day organizing my calendar (digital on Todoist, and I keep a physical planner) and setting some goals for myself so I don’t spend the whole summer sleeping like a teenager.¹
• I also want to cut down on my screen time for big social media apps (like Instagram and Facebook) — the ones that have no value other than to waste my time. I put a big ol’ screen time widget on the homescreen of my phone as a way to try to curtail the scrolling; I’m hoping that, when I unlock my phone, I’ll see that I’ve already spent a substantial amount of time on these apps and choose something else instead. I love to be online, but I’d rather spend that time on indie web spaces like bearblog, Mastodon (I need to find folks to follow! Please send me recs and/or your account, fellow bearbloggers — my email is in the footer), and 32bitcafe.
• This is a very long-term goal, but I want to migrate my curriculum map from Notion to Obsidian. I’m increasingly trying to move to open source programs (to, hopefully, stave off enshittification). The Obsidian Projects plugin is helping to make this a reality, but I’m still looking for a good way to create a rollup of my tags that includes the full standard text and a heatmap of how frequently the tag is used. I played a bit with Hugo and Grav for this but found I was going web first in my approach when really I just wanted a content management system (which Obsidian is, in a way, albeit a private one).²
• I moved my server into a rack setup and relocated it to my basement. I’ll probably put together a full post cataloguing that.

Reading

• How to Talk So Teens Will Listen & Listen So Teens Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. I’ve read many recommendations for this book and thought it might help me in the classroom. I started and finished the book in two days — it’s a quick but valuable read. Right now, all the ideas are theoretical, as I won’t get to try them out until September, but I love the approach. The authors put into explicit steps the feeling that I’ve always had: interactions with anyone, but especially children, need to be based on mutual respect, and adults cannot expect children to control their emotions if they are not willing to do the same. I’d love to make this a book study among co-workers.
• Computer People by Lou Plummer. A thoughtful piece about the evolution and entry of tech into our lives, particularly in education. Unfortunately I don’t share Lou’s rosy outlook: I still have lots of coworkers who don’t regard themselves as “computer people” and resist any new technology (and call me for help when something is unplugged).

Watching

• Gilmore Girls, continued from last week (season four)
• Easy A (2010). I never saw this when it came out but always read positive talk about it. It was awful; few laughs and all the character’s motivations and actions were puzzling. It seemed to exist only to sell the viewer on Emma Stone and to have her parade around in lingerie.

Playing

• Stardew Valley, update 1.6. I’m playing a co-op save with Joe and my friend Nick. I love Stardew and am enjoying discovering some of the new changes and additions, but I’m struggling with the chaos of a shared farm — Joe in particular has some very different organizational priorities than me.

Listening

• Youth Novels, Lykke Li. I listened to this album for the first time in 2012 (“Melodies & Desires” and “Little Bit” being the two I listened to with any regularity); it came up in a library shuffle and I realized I was listening to it in 160kbps. I replaced it with a higher quality rip and enjoyed hearing instruments and layers I didn’t know existed before. I’ve also a new appreciation for “Breaking It Up,” “Hanging High,” and “I’m Good, I’m Gone.”
• I’d like to be listening to All Hell, Los Campesinos!, the latest release by my favorite band, but I preordered it on vinyl and it still hasn’t come in… I don’t know how much longer I’ll hold out.³
• “Red Leather” by Future & Metro Boomin. I still don’t listen to much rap outside of Mac (a bit of Vince Staples, some Stormzy, some Princess Nokia), but I’d like to branch out. I heard this in the background of (probably) an Instagram Reel and dig it (I hate that this is how folks, myself included, are discovering music these days).