Author: Myrphie Slaw

Before Thanksgiving break, I’d spoken with my principal about my intention to not renew my contract after this school year. Many emotions were wrapped up in this decision, but I was bolstered by the conviction that I was doing the right thing for me. Today was the second day back after said break, and by […]

There’s something impressive about managing to go more than a year without updating my blog. I suppose the time has come for a bit of reckoning, however, and there’s no time like the present. When we last spoke, I’d just freed myself from the bonds of my job and was basking in the glory of […]

As this complete abortion of a year winds inexorably onward, I thought it might be time to take stock of my life and see where the fuck I am and what I’m doing. After years of vacillation and guilt and fear I finally decided to resign from my teaching position earlier this month. Perhaps naively, […]

Sometimes it’s jarring to remember that I’m an adult. My childhood and early adulthood were difficult times and I didn’t face them with as much grace and aplomb as one might hope. Perhaps I’ll eventually pen a diatribe about overcoming my upbringing and mostly avoiding becoming a petulant man-child, but it won’t be today. Like […]

I’ve picked an auspicious-as-fuck time to start blogging again, apparently! It’s the third month (feels like the third year) of the COVID-19 pandemic and I’ve had to adjust to some fairly serious changes in my daily routine. Gone are the days of multiple coffee shop visits, though I still drive aimlessly around town from time […]

November is in full swing and I’m plodding along, looking somewhat eagerly to the impending holiday breaks. I’m so tired today, it’s borderline concerning. I often joke that I’m never-not-tired, but the last few days have been markedly worse in terms of fatigue. It’s not a “can’t get out of bed” malaise, just more of […]

I’m really bad when it comes to keeping up with things on a regular basis. Watering plants, exercising, diets, you get the idea. I start off with the best of intentions and quickly find myself slipping. That’s not actually what I want to talk about right now, though. I mainly want to catch up on […]

The new school year is off and running by now and all the associated events have followed suit. I’ve already got a running tally of how many days are left until the end of the school year. I’m on the tail-end of my first of many colds and other plagues because teenagers are filthy. Tonight, […]

I’ve felt oddly motivated this morning, which is entirely out of character for me. I blame all the coffee I’ve been drinking recently. Of course, feeling motivated and translating that into action are two dramatically different things. The latter being the real challenge for me. As I write this, the new school year has been […]

This is intended to be a follow-up to my posts about coffee shops and doing dumb shit. It should be pretty well establish by this point that I am severely lacking in healthy social skills. My notions of propriety and privacy are skewed in various ways. As a very nerdy, awkward man I am rather […]

I’ve had a tumultuous relationship with money for most of my life. My immediate family was certainly not wealthy when I was growing up, but we had three adults earning money and no house payment, so things were never particularly dire. Unfortunately, as an only child and living with very doting grandparents, I was also […]

I’m really bad at interacting normally with people. My sense of appropriate behavior towards strangers and even acquaintances tends to err on the side of aloof caution. I never want to overstep some invisible boundary and do something which might be construed as improper. Despite this, I apparently do mildly creepy shit fairly often and […]

My anxiety and depression are the best of friends and it’s rare for one to show up without the other. This year in particular has been pretty rough on the mental health front. Given everything that’s been going on in my life, that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. So long as I manage […]

When trying to explain the reality of mental illness to others, I will sometimes refer to the monkey on my back or the ape in my head. I’m certainly not a dualist, but consciousness is a strange, emergent phenomenon which regularly defies description. There seem to be layers to our minds and personalities and they […]

Given the highly subjective nature of our personal experiences, it’s often necessary to use metaphor and analogy to describe the inner workings of my dysfunctional mind. An example of this is The Sword of Damocles, which I use to describe the near-perpetual sense of dread which permeates my thoughts. It’s a reference to the ancient […]

In retrospect, I’ve always struggled with mental illness. Some of my earliest memories of elementary school were crying and begging my mom to let me stay home. I just didn’t like being there. I loved learning, but being at school was unbearable and I’d literally make myself sick worrying about it and trying to avoid […]

As an angsty young man growing up in El Paso, I remember when Barnes & Noble first came to town. I was so in awe of the cafe: it seemed full of smart, sophisticated people sipping drinks, reading books, writing novels, and having intense, intellectual discussions. Up to that point, coffee shops like that existed […]

A host of abuses and indignities have been heaped upon my member recently. Here’s the story of why. As I’ve already intimated in the previous post, I’m a bit crazy, and health anxiety in particular is something I struggle with constantly. As such, I’m very attuned to minute details and changes regarding my anatomy. What […]

I’ve had many blogs and journals over the years, but I’m trying to be more purposeful in my efforts as I get older. Writing is something I enjoy both as a creative outlet and as a form of catharsis so it seemed logical to make a new repository for my musings. Since this is a […]