I really would rather spend this weekend watching cartoons and knitting, or going shopping and buying succor-to-my-sad-feels things. But instead, I have Stuff to do so as soon as I pay a couple bills and do a bit of piano practice, I'm in to work.
I had an instance yesterday of "When someone is a jerk to you, it's more a reflection on them than it is on you." (If one person is the jerk, they are most likely the jerk; if everyone seems like a jerk, it's most likely YOU that is the jerk. In this case, it was one person totally blindsiding me with something they said).
But if I know that, why are my feelings still hurt?
Next week is going to be effortful: two meetings Monday (one during the time I'd normally be working out and I don't know, maybe I do have to go back to setting my alarm for 4:30 am and just being sleep-starved so I don't have to worry about getting the workout in). Thursday is the funeral for my friend's son and that is not good because that's my busiest teaching day EXCEPT it is also Curriculum Contest and they need one of my classrooms so I figure my 11 am class won't meet, so I can go and see the family for a little while, maybe. Also it's AAUW, and I'm tasked with providing food, and since I'm still trying to abstain from dessert-like things, it's going to be stuff like cheese and fruit and anyone who doesn't like that can go pound sand. (Though I might buy a box of those mini quiche things because I like those and am kind of craving those right now).
Friday is the state Science Fair.
The following week I give two exams, so next weekend will likely be spent writing those.
I dunno. I ran to the Mart of Wal this morning. The one good thing is my groceries and stuff were mostly paid for by the $50 "gift card" that Jackson-Hewitt gave me for getting my taxes done there (though honestly, I'd really rather, I don't know, pay $25 less or something to have them done. But I suppose promotions don't work that way). The bad thing: even when the wal-mart isn't crowded, I find it somewhat depressing to shop at.
SOME of this is just bad allergies. Some of it is probably the time of the semester - this is when everyone is tired of everyone else and it just seems like forever until it's over.
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Driving in to the office - I went a different way to swing past one of the "blue box" public mail drop-offs (I am sending out a sympathy card, a birthday card, and an ITFF card-exchange card, and I am again in the mode of not trusting to put stuff in my home mailbox).
On the next street over, there is a house that has a yard sign out that says "Love More" on it, and has a picture of the earth and the peace symbol.
And it's a nice sentiment, but....it made me slightly sad. "Love more"? That's what I've been trying to do all my life. ("...the stars, I know quite well/ That, for all they care, I can go to hell..."). That's what a lot of people I know have been trying to do lately. And it's not enough. Things just keep getting worse, it seems like people get ruder and more self-centered and all that. And I get some of that may be fear - fear that we're all going to lose our jobs to robots, or fear about what's going to happen in the coming weeks, or fear that there are nations in the world run by people who probably have no qualms whatsoever about killing someone who disagrees with them.
But it's just....it sort of underscores the whole feeling of "I'm not enough" that I've had for a while. I don't know. I do my best and things never get any better, so either things are so screwed up they won't get better, or I'm so utterly ineffectual at doing anything to make stuff better.
And it also underscores my big fear: that the world is getting progressively worse, that the rest of my adulthood is going to be an increasingly miserable slog with fewer and fewer of the little comforts I took for granted. (All the "brick and mortar stores are doomed" stories - I actually like going for "fun shopping" (like in antique shops or bookstores) and if those are gone, if all I'm left with is browsing eBay or Amazon at home.....the point of "fun shopping" is to get me out of my house and out of my own head.)
I wonder: what are our "third places" going to be in the future? That is, places that are not home and not work? For me, church is one, but many weeks I'm only there once a week....and for a lot of people that's not even an option. There's no yarn/quilt shop here any more so there are no knit nights. There are a few groups but most of them meet WHILE I am at work and I've tried joining a few and felt too "outsider" to want to keep going.....and I don't know. I also read stories about how "getting a place to live in the future is going to be so much harder" (economics and things and increasingly restrictive rules on mortgage lending) and I think "I may not even have the retirement option I thought about of moving to Eureka Springs or somewhere" and I just feel sad....I don't want to live my retirement years in a town that has a wal-mart and a few fast-food places and that's pretty much it.
I don't know. I'm in here trying to analyze data and I see all the ways I designed this study suboptimally. (WHY WHY WHY did I use a sample size of 9 and not 10, when I'm going to be dealing with percent data?!?!)
I also got super frustrated with myself while trying to practice piano - dangit, I had a string of days a couple weeks ago when I thought I was making progress, but now, I don't know, I can barely play even some of the Anna Magdalene pieces I had mastered. And I wound up screaming at myself for being a (redacted) idiot and not being able to play right, and yelling at my brain "HAVE YOU HAD A STROKE OR SOMETHING? BE BETTER"
I don't know. I wouldn't yell at another person that way, but, that's how it's always been with me: I'm harder on myself than I can ever be with anyone else.
As I said on Twitter, this is probably brought to you by the letters P, M, and S, but still. I should have gone somewhere for Spring Break. I'm just....really worn and frayed right now.
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