I dunno. As I said, I'm really not feeling going out to these meetings next week. Part of it is I get the sense from other places I hang out online that everyone is just giant raw emotions running around and I'm afraid if I say the "wrong" thing (unintentionally, of course: I never set out to hurt someone's feelings) I will have someone ticked off at me who will just retaliate. Verbally, only, but even then, it hurts to sometimes be an awkward person.
It also seems to me that there are a lot of folks yelling at their neighbors as retaliation for something some guy on the other side of town did to them. Kicking the dog because you had a bad day at work is never a good thing - it doesn't make you feel better and only makes the dog feel worse and in some cases, question his whole existence - but it's also human nature.
I dunno. I just don't want to go out into the world today. I have to; I have teaching and I have things I have to do in my office (paperwork) and I have meetings tonight but I'm tired and my allergies are terrible (having a hard time getting my eyes to focus this morning and that's why there are typos if there are any typos in here). There are lots of people calling for people to go out and "make the world a better place" but I'm so small and there's so little I can do and it doesn't seem to help much any way, so I would just rather back away, stay in my house, and only engage with people through screens.
Part of this is just how I get some summers. This year seems worse I think because (a) the meetings scheduled at a totally inopportune time and (b) it's an unusually bad year for grass pollen and I know a big part of this is my allergies. Part of this is that it does seem like everyone is upset about everything out there. Don't get me wrong: some of the upset is entirely justified. But I'd just rather not go into it. (And yeah, yeah: WWJD? But I'm very far from being J and I'm TIRED.)
I dunno. I tend to think it's a bad day ahead if, upon waking, you think, "What do I have to look forward to today?" and the only pleasant thing you can think of is getting back into bed at the end of it.
I totally can't justify a sick day but I kind of wish I could. (And if I took one, I'd feel guilty, not being GENUINELY sick, so I'd just feel worse emotionally.)
***
Sometimes I wonder if the sound track of 2016 is that horrible, derisive, excluding laughter that you hear after a "gotcha" question or comment. Sometimes it feels rather like the seventh graders are in charge.
I *hated* seventh grade.
***
It also occurs to me that humans are excessively good at pointing out the failings of others (and I include myself in this) but tend to be very poor at either acknowledging their own failings, or doing something to help the person who is "failing" correct it.
Neighbor: "You know, the city isn't going to pick up that brush pile. You need to arrange to get it removed."
Me (utterly exhausted and overwhelmed): "I'm working on it. I'm sorry." (goes off and cries a little bit because she feels like a failure).
never mind that Neighbor has a friend with a pickup truck who could remove the brush in less than five minutes.
And yeah. I get tired of being told to go out and make the world a better place when I get lots of sniping over the little things that go unfixed because they are less-critical than the big things I am trying to fix.
***
Someone I follow on twitter posted a photograph from one of those truly beautiful European libraries and made a comment about how he could "carry around more books on my phone" and it seems to me that that's a big part of the malaise of our times - or at least, the malaise I am feeling. That the beautiful and the aesthetic are slowly being replaced by the functional but ugly, and no one seems to think that losing those aesthetics don't in some way impoverish us. I once referred to it as "the gradual crappification of everything" - how some nice groceries close up and are replaced by wal-marts with bad management and surly employees and tvs at the end of every aisle blaring ads, how it's no longer "profitable" for students to do anything outside of technical or STEM degrees, so the humanities are in decline or are derided, that instead of lovely places being appreciated people complain about how the space could be "better used more efficiently" or something like that.
And I admit, sometimes I feel like we will someday be surrounded by nothing but concrete-box buildings, noise, and greyness, and very few people will ask, "Why are we here? Isn't this an unpleasant state of being?" because everyone will have been convinced that this is The New Normal and it is all we merit, because anything else is "unprofitable" and therefore not worth it. Or that it's somehow all we deserve because we are awful. And I don't know, yeah, humans are awful but having an awful world around us doesn't exactly encourage us to be better
I don't know.
***
I need to pack. Not sure when, maybe I can make time Thursday afternoon after my second long day of the week. I also need to do laundry first. Not sure what projects to take. I have a pair of just-simple socks I began and I printed out a fingerless mitt pattern to take yarn for, but part of me is going "You're going to be in meetings the whole time so don't take any other projects because you won't have time to work on them" and that makes me sad.
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