Those businesses into which I'm sticking my nose...

I am at Pinewoods!

It feels nice to write that for this, the first time in 2025. I am at Pinewoods and I am sitting somewhere quiet and alone and I am about to take my covid test.

(Where that place is? Somewhere with enough wifi to make my computer go. What are you, a cop? If you wanna find all the places at camp that have wifi, you are welcome to, but I'm not gonna make it easy for you because I am a Jerk, tm.)

Anyways, it's just me, my covid test, and a chance to write my words and this is a pattern I got into in 2022 and have never really wanted to leave: the quiet joy of enforced time _by myself_ where I can write my words in the middle of the day instead of trying to do so very _very_ late at night.

I am at Pinewoods for the first time of the year, and I am quite happy, even though it's a different set of people than I mostly know and even though the weather is very damp and kinda grey. But the place is still good. I have chased some dragonflies to try and paparazzi them, I have had good mealtime conversations with people I know and like.

And I have done work, because this is a work weekend! And because I am very good at what I do¹, I got assigned dishes, as in, "wash all of them". Or nearly all of them, we are skipping the camper dishes which don't want to have to be spread out to dry in the same way everything else does because jegus what a pain.

So I did two shifts today with Brenda, who is going to be the Dishwasher for the summer, and it's her Very First Year doing so! She's been a camper dish-helper before (I remember working with her and being pleased) and so it's gonna be a good move up. I think she has a great attitude for it, and got the hang of a lot of things very quickly.

I interspersed actual work things with various ideas and advice as I thought of them, some of which were like "this is technically potwasher advice". And I ran...golly I can't even begin to approximate how many loads through the (only sorta working) Hobart. The Hobart wasn't sanitizing, so part of her clean-side duties² was to run everything from clean-side over to the potwashing sinks, all three of which had been turned into sanitation sinks, and to constantly drop stuff into the solution, and then run it all around the kitchen and stack it...virtually _everywhere_.

It was a lot of fun and we got _so much_ done. Maybe six total hours work? And I got to listen to my music in the first half and her music in the second and that all felt great too.

Of course, having done such an impressive job today, there's hardly any dishes left for tomorrow, so I'll probably be back to normal work weekend tasks, opening cabins and the like. Which is honestly fine, I quite like doing so! Lots of dusting, and wiping things down, and SWEEPING, and if you're lucky, getting to do a windows run.

I'm not sure what the plan for the rest of the night is. I am feeling a little people'd out, which means I don't necessarily want to be SUPER SOCIAL for the entire evening. Maybe I will read a book in a corner, maybe I will draw more pictures (yesterday I drew a dog, link is to Bluesky)

Maybe I will go for a nice stroll between now and dinnertime (which is over an hour, jegus, so late!) because if there's anywhere in the world I enjoy just prowling around by myself, it's camp. Bring my camera, look for bugs, visit Kitty Alone, see the new bathrooms, check in on El Nino, there's lots and lots of good things to do at camp!

Another day and a half of this, and I'm very happy for it. I hope wherever you are, you are also happy!

~Sor

MOOP!

1: I am using this (very common Kat-phrase) as a double meaning right now. Because first I am literally quite good at washing dishes, and second, I am good at working my way into the hearts of The People In Charge in order to get to do the things *I* most want to do. I mean, it helps that the things I want to do are often things that other people don't, but dang, I get away with a lot of special privileges just by being very open about my wants, and wanting weird stuff.

2: Of course I was working dirty side, I nearly always work dirty side, my absolute single favourite job in all of camp is dirty-side at the window as a camper helper. See footnote 1.

Progress is being made.

I want to be very clear (and whiny) that I'm still burnt out. That hasn't gone away. Roundabouts July 15, is when I stop having Immediate Plans, and go back to comforting vagueness. I am probably going to book the entire week after Pinewoods on my calendar as "do not schedule, do not interact, this is entirely mine and I will maybe do things on an hours notice or less, but definitely not otherwise).

But progress is being made. Having Tuesday come over this past weekend and body double me while I worked on my room was a truly wonderful help. My room still has an infinite of little projects and organizations and puttings-aways, but it is SO MUCH BETTER and because it is not a series of fucking huge piles of undifferentiated stuff shutting my brain down the moment I look at it, I have actually been able to do maintenance level cleaning on a regular basis. Like, just take five minutes to put away several things where they belong instead of dropping them back into The Pile. It feels very good.

I've also returned to the Inbox0 project after basically 11 months of not touching it. I'm not yet at my lowest-ever¹, but I have archived or deleted about 2000 emails in the last two days, and most of those were unread. GOOD PROGRESS.

I didn't really do any work progress, which was partly because I had a series of Good Individual Conversations instead. One of my favourite students came for 2.5 hours in the morning (it's a testing day, so weird schedule) and I helped drag him through most of the last six weeks, getting his grade this quarter to jump from about a 20% to an 84%. It's amazing how much quizzes are weighted if you _haven't done any of them_. I also had decent planning conversation with Clayton, and saw a couple other students for brief periods. Tomorrow, I teach one class, and have to proctor the test for ninety minutes, but it should be otherwise pretty mellow.

I should probably medialog sometime soon, especially because I have actually been reading --I've actually read a fair amount, although most of that was my recent murderbot reread. It's still good! It still hits hard! I was pretty vehement that I didn't want to see the tv show (I don't want to rewire my brain in how it visualizes or thinks about different characters, this happened with That Fucking TERF's books when I watched the movies and I didn't like it) but I've seen some pretty excited reviews, so hmmmmmmmmmaybe.

Also I earned a die yesterday, and I'm on track to earn one today. I'm happy to have this ADHD-brain-game maybe working for me again? Especially because it looks the like previous reset was _November_ meaning it took nearly six months to get 31 full-score days on my daily chart. Auuuguh. Yipes.

(gee Kat, what possible reason could your brain have for going all sideways and fukt-up since November of 2024?)

So yeah, it'd be cool if I can get through this batch, uh, a little faster. I liked the version of the game where I was going through about four rounds a year, it feels reasonable to say "I will get full points on a third of the days". Heck, it's still possible for this year if ~I only believe~.

(we build habits as best we can to support ourselves when the things fall apart)

Anyways, nice to have projects in my life that are seeing progress, even if it's just small and silly number-goes-down. I hope your life is also seeing progress.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: Technically my lowest ever was the long span of time through 2019 and 2020 where I actually maintained inbox zero pretty consistently. This is possible to do! It's just hard to get back to.

Tuesday visited this weekend!

I've been deeply burnt out (have I mentioned that here? Have I mentioned that thirty times here? I'm really not sure!) and so I was upfront when we started talking about a potential hang this weekend, and straight-up said "the most useful thing for me would be if you came over and hung out in my room while I got things done (nagging optional)". And so late late Friday night (when I was dead-to-the-world asleep, because I forgot my ADHD meds on Friday and crashed _hard_, like, nine PM out cold on the couch) Tuesday showed up and kissed my head and we went upstairs where I made the bed vaguely livable.

Saturday was really quite productive, and I'm pleased with what I got done! Sunday was much lessso productive, but it was a nice chance to hang out with Tues and kinda do nothing. Here's some highlights, in no particular order:

*Saturmorn I made eggs. They turned out pretty well! We ate them with toast and it was a very satisfying breakfast.

*Satureve, Ezri decreed it their annual birthday-sushi night, and so Tues and I walked to Davis to pick up a pah-tee-plah-tah¹ with approximately eight hundred sushi on it. It was too much for the four of us to eat in one go, so I had a bit of leftover sushi this evening which was pretty great. All of it was great!

*I did three entire loads of laundry, which is, uh. Yeah. It's apparently been a hot second since I last did laundry. I had been observing that I was starting to run out of underwear, which like, because it's me means I only had like six clean pairs left or something. But they weren't the _optimal_ pairs anymore, that's the problem!

(the related problem is that I don't know where I will get more underwear when I need, because last I checked, Target is still being bootlicking fuckasses, and I have no interest in giving them my business until they make it right. So I will have to like, find a new company that sells fairly basic cotton boxer briefs in good colours, and I hate this.)

*I had done a rough clean of my desk on Tuesday night when Austin visited, but today I gave it another shakedown, and made some better progress. I found so many gift cards! Things still feel dire, but less so, and I found a box to put all the ADHD games and scrap paper, which seems good.

*Tuesday helped me hang up all the hanging laundry, and that was really _really_ nice of her. It's one of the parts I hate by far the most, and am worst at. So I really did finish all the laundry.

*I wrote heaps, including figuring out my spreadsheets for dance (where I got all the data I was posting about) and writing a bit of "?!" for having a thousand days of words.

*We started to do some LEGO, and then stopped, so I have some partially finished models that I will hopefully work on over the next few days. They're bugs!

*Today involved a long walk and some errands. I picked up a copy of Overgrowth from PSB, and we got Panera Bread (because aforementioned gift cards). It was fun!

*I showed Tuesday a little bit of Rogue Legacy, because my brain has been _very_ video game lately. This is a problem with being burnt out, I think, that I want to wrap myself in high dopamine low-effort things.

*And lots of snuggling and holding hands and basking in each other and stuff like that. This is my favourite part of kem visiting!

~Sor

MOOP!

1: If you're not reading this like a clone high reference, you're not doing it right!

Okay, went a bit sideways from room cleaning into data collation for my GenderFree SCD class. I now know that the class has made a profit of: $137 after 16 classes. That is *not counting* the fact that I've still committed to putting myself 1k into the hole for this project, so like, the fact that we have actually made money is _great_ and means we're still well above the threshold for "should I consider shutting this down".

tbf, we don't pay me when I MC, and like, that's fine, that's part of what this project is, but it does mean I can't consider ourselves fully self-sufficient until we can't afford to regularly pay MCs. But I think as things currently stand, I still feel a lot more strongly about "I want people to come dance regardless of paying (AND STUDENTS SHOULD NOT GIVE ME MONEY)" than reaching a form of self-sufficiency that doesn't rely on a lot of unpaid labour from *me specifically*, because like, I am _so happy_ to deliver this labour.

I am actually being paid for my role in this class, and the way I am being paid is in "holy shit, I like my hobby and feel positive about it again". This is especially evident in the fact that this month I'm back teaching at Cambridge Class for the first time in over two years, and man, the vibes are not the same. I like teaching at Cambridge, I can have real good feelings and moments there. But I've been saying for a while "I love my hobby but it doesn't love me back".

Some of it is covid bullshit. It was _exhausting_ trying to be the only person to remind an entire group of adults that actually this dangerous communicable disease exists and we should try to protect each other from it. With my class, I could actually set a rule! And then I could set an example and say "look, masks are always recommended" and honestly, mostly people wear masks most of the time even when the wastewater levels are low enough that they're not required. Fuuuuck yes!

And so much of it is gender bullshit. Both Monday's I've taught, one person has specifically come up to me to complain about the use of "bird terms". Like. I can't deal with this. I can't deal with the clear vitriol at me using the gender-neutral terminology that seemingly every other dance form has been comfortable in for years. I really am tired of dealing with all the casual transphobia that comes alongside callers who are trying to call neutrally but not actually thinking about it¹. And I just fucking can't handle being a polite little "good trans" when someone loudly asks if I'm dancing on the wrong side of the dance and then gets mad at _me_ for being confused by what they were asking.

It's not just that my hobby doesn't love me back. It's that parts of my hobby, some people in my hobby, are _loudly_ making it clear that I don't belong inside it. And I didn't realize how much I missed just easy enjoyable Scottish dancing until I started my own class, where that...doesn't happen. Coming back to Cambridge Class occasionally this spring has made me realize just how close I was to leaving the dance form entirely^1.5. I can sustain being only kinda welcome in the main spaces when I know I also have my safer space to retreat to.

And my safer space is WORKING. I have 13² people who have attended at least 4/16 classes so far. I have 37 more people who have attended any classes at all. I'm averaging about 9 people a week, which is a full set plus a caller. I've had two weeks with only six of us present (both of which genuinely kicked ass) but never fewer, which means I've never had to horribly cancel, embarrassed as hell towards the four people there or whatever. I'm horrible at advertising and reminding people to come, but it's still happening anyways and that's really cool.

I start every Thursday morning internally screaming, because oh god, in addition to everything else I have to set a damn program and prepare some extra dances for if we have a weird number of dancers and aaah. And then I come home every Thursday floating, because people came and danced and tried things and learned things and seemed to have fun. And sometimes they even come back for more. It's the best thing I've done this year, and that's not even close. I mean, okay, fine, MGH emails me when they use my blood to save someone's life and that is also extremely satisfying³, but seriously. Creating a community feels very very good and makes me very happy to have done.

So yay, glad to have run some data and seen that it looks like I'll be able to keep going. Maybe for a while even!

~Sor
MOOP!

(odd Thursdays, either 7pm-9 or 7:30pm-9:30, 504 Medford St in Somerville (the NESFA clubhouse). Come join anytime!)

1: I got a comment after the welcome dance by someone thanking me for being one of two callers they've ever heard call both with gender-neutral terms *and* pronouns. If you say "first robin cast to her left, while her partner casts to his right" you are not actually accomplishing what you set out to do, and may actually be making things worse.

1.5: Yes, I am arrogant enough to point out that any member of RSCDS reading that should've gotten a chill down their spine. Not to be egotistical on main, but I am a huge boon to this branch. I am a good teacher, I am a regular member serving various committees and co-chairing various events, and I am a joyous and enthusiastic participant who loves dancing with newer dancers and enthusiastically trying to drag other people in. The hobby dies if you lose the people who make things happen and who bring in others. Just. Fucking. Saying.

2: And 7 of those have attended at least half the classes so far. No one has attended all 16, myself included (I'm at 15, which should really be "14.5" but I don't differentiate how long people were at class, Alex is also 15, Keira's 14.)

3: THIS IS A REAL THING AND IT IS THE ABSOLUTE BEST EMAIL YOU CAN EVER GET. I'm just fucking around going about my day and glance at my phone and it's a subject line "you just saved lives!" and because it's literally from the blood donor center, I know they actually mean it. So fucking cool. Cannot overstate how great that feels to get.

I am le tired.

But I think I am happier when I actually write my words, all artisinal like, and I also think I simply have not been doing that lately --I've been getting wordcount, but it's been a lot of collections of notes from meetings, or emails home to parents, or significant bits of chatlog, or comments to other people. I'm not really...writing, mostly.

I think I think "Blues Clues" is twee, but also jegus fuck, what else am I supposed to call the repeated mounting evidence that I'm only just surviving right now, and nothing close to thriving. I am so tired, and so burnt out, all the time. It sucks, and yes there's a light at the end of the tunnel when which I get to recover, but it's called summer vacation, and I have a huge amount of stuff to get done Before Then.

(And as summer approaches I need to be Making Summer Plans, like visiting my mom in June (and maybe going on an adventure to NY with Tues's family?) and visiting MD again in late July/early August, and that thing I'm doing in mid-August, and also HELLO I HAVE WRITTEN MY PINEWOODS PROGRAMS BUT I AM NOWHERE NEAR READY TO TEACH MY CLASSES YET.)

So here's some assorted updates on assorted aspects of my life:

*Dance is obviously busy as hell. (I say obvious, but like, I'm not posting here so who is supposed to know anything?). I am teaching at Cambridge Class this month, which is...fine. It's nice to have a big crowd, and I'm very good at what I do, but it's disheartening that last week basically the first thing that happened was someone crankily requesting that I not use "bird words". I told them "nope, I'm gonna try and call mostly positional, but if I need role terms, that's what we use" and then found something else to do with my energy, but it still set the month to be emotionally costly.

I called the Highland Ball welcome dance this past Friday, and that went surprisingly well --I say surprising because it was a hell of a program, written by not-me, and I was very anxious it would be Too Complicated. Certainly it was a lot of words. But the words disguised dances that all flowed very very well, and I think I felt good about things ultimately. I got some compliments, and that was good, I think.

And I'm still running my class. Oh, I need to write a program for our party in June, crap. And I need to email exec to ask for a music subsidy. And at some point I need to write a report for the AGM. Huzzah.

*Work is also busy as hell, as we approach the MCAS tests and the end of the year. I am very very burnt out, which is making me a less good teacher. This turns out not to matter very much, because all the children are also very burnt out, which is making them less good students. We are all trying to be patient with each other and it's mostly working.

I got my assignment for next year today. Similar to what I've been doing, all Geometry again, but now I will be co-teaching the inclusion 10th grade geo, for students who require higher-than-usual numbers of supports. I am actually looking forward to this, which might be a horrible mistake. We'll see. At least all Geometry again means I shouldn't have any (many) repeat students.

*Separate from work is union stuff, and jegus, that has been _busy_ as hell. I shouldn't say a lot more in a public post, because I continue to pretend that it's a secret which district I work in, but yeah, I'm on the bargaining team, and that's been 3-5 hours of work every week since December. We're part of a whole little coalition with a bunch of the other local districts, which is keen, but our particular city is ~not interested in funding education~ which is significantly less keen. Ping me if you wanna hear more specific cussing.

*I have lost absolutely all motivation for general life maintenance, which is bad and just going to continue to be bad. My room is a fucking catastrophe and I don't know how to make it not be, because any time I go to be in it, the general malaise and burn-out from the rest of my life slam against the freeze-in-place overwhelm of looking around at my disaster area, and nothing gets done.

I have finally started reading dreamwidth again? For like, three days in a row now, over breakfast, like I'm supposed to. So that's nice, it's nice to find out what y'all are up to, a thing I haven't actually known since mid-April or so.

*Partners are good and I love them, but I don't feel like I'm doing a good job at being present for any of them because busy and _fucking busy_ and burnt out. I am maybe seeing Tuesday this upcoming weekend, but we haven't made proper plans yet. Austin and I are trying to do weekly dates, but teaching dance is throwing it all off, and this week I have a TMC meeting and blahahhhhhhh. mek and I have like seven episodes of OFMD to watch.

And then like, I completely slept through my weekly taskmaster-watch with Tailsteak last week. Like, was asleep, woke up at 9:15 to be all "shit, sorry I'm running late, lemme log on", immediately fell back asleep. Woke up at 10 at least to be able to be like "yeah, I'm not dead, and I am so sorry". Sigh.

***

I dunno, there's maybe other things too, but they're mostly video games. Gonna post this and go put my dance shoes on so I can teach a class and stuff.

~Sor
MOOP!