Narrative:

I had a southbound F15 at 24;000 ft; which was at the floor of my sector. He was in a relatively unusual spot for us; as he crosses 4 departure streams. I put a 5 mile j-ring on him to keep track of his position; and as the low altitude controller was climbing aircraft to 23;000 ft. And then handing them off to me; I leveled 3 aircraft and called traffic. As I had just taken a handoff on an unknown B737; my d-side asked me about how I was holding up with the lack of pay. We had a quick discussion about it; and how my wife was teaching music lessons in order to offset my salary; which was nowhere near the money we needed. The low altitude sector climbed the B737 to 23;000 ft; and handed him off to me as he was leveling. Distracted from my conversation about my lack of pay; as he checked on; I climbed him to 31;000 ft. The F15 was at his 1 o'clock and 3 miles and 1;000 ft. Above him. I didn't get a response. My brain; still on the conversation; didn't recognize the conflict. I didn't get a response from the [B737] pilot. I radioed him again and told him to climb to 31;000 ft. He came back and said; 'uh; center; there's an airplane right above us.'embarrassed; I quickly responded; '[aircraft Y]; maintain FL230… sorry about that.' I called the traffic; the traffic passed; and I climbed the [aircraft Y]. This would never happen in normal circumstances. This has never happened to me under normal circumstances. I had already previously to this mentally told myself that I wasn't going to let the shutdown distract me; but apparently I'm more susceptible to it than I thought. It's absolutely 100% my fault; a distraction caused me to miss the traffic; that I normally would not have.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ZMA ARTCC Controller reported assigning an aircraft a higher altitude even though there was converging traffic 1;000 feet above them.

Narrative: I had a southbound F15 at 24;000 ft; which was at the floor of my sector. He was in a relatively unusual spot for us; as he crosses 4 departure streams. I put a 5 mile J-Ring on him to keep track of his position; and as the low altitude controller was climbing aircraft to 23;000 ft. and then handing them off to me; I leveled 3 aircraft and called traffic. As I had just taken a handoff on an unknown B737; my D-side asked me about how I was holding up with the lack of pay. We had a quick discussion about it; and how my wife was teaching music lessons in order to offset my salary; which was nowhere near the money we needed. The low altitude sector climbed the B737 to 23;000 ft; and handed him off to me as he was leveling. Distracted from my conversation about my lack of pay; as he checked on; I climbed him to 31;000 ft. The F15 was at his 1 o'clock and 3 miles and 1;000 ft. above him. I didn't get a response. My brain; still on the conversation; didn't recognize the conflict. I didn't get a response from the [B737] pilot. I radioed him again and told him to climb to 31;000 ft. He came back and said; 'Uh; center; there's an airplane right above us.'Embarrassed; I quickly responded; '[Aircraft Y]; maintain FL230… Sorry about that.' I called the traffic; the traffic passed; and I climbed the [Aircraft Y]. This would never happen in normal circumstances. This HAS never happened to me under normal circumstances. I had already previously to this mentally told myself that I wasn't going to let the shutdown distract me; but apparently I'm more susceptible to it than I thought. It's absolutely 100% my fault; a distraction caused me to miss the traffic; that I normally would not have.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.