Man, I'm tired

Here's what I did today:

- Typed up the AAUW minutes from Thursday night
- Wrote an exam for ecology (Friday)
- Wrote an exam-review for another class
- Graded ecology labs
- Set up the soils lab
- Taught ecology
- Spend almost an hour on research reading, ordered an interlibrary-loan article I can't otherwise get easily (curse you, Elsevier)
- Taught soils lab
- Uploaded the next sets of slides for tomorrow's classes, including updating soils because it's a new book
- Arranged to get the scholarship forms (tomorrow, I couldn't face going over there today and figured I'd not be done until after the office closed)

Yeah, I think I did enough for today.

And I'm still tired. Part of it IS allergies, part of it is that I kept waking up for some reason last night (and had slightly troubled dreams). I admit I had a tiny cry yet again driving home in the car because I was thinking about how one of the important things about Steve was that he made everyone around him feel special - you know how there are some people like that? That you just feel better when you hang around them? He was like that and I admit I need someone who is openly, demonstratively about making people (including me*) feel special.

(*Yes, I admit it, I need to effectively be "told" that I am special to someone; I am not good at assuming it from the fact that people fundamentally seem to like me OK. Yes, I know, I should not be like that, but I am.)

I think there aren't enough people in the world who make other people around them feel "special." I try, but I know I'm not always good at it because I'm shy and awkward and afraid of people thinking I'm weird or that I want something from them.

I think tonight is going to be a (homemade, because sodium, and because I don't feel like going out to pick it up, and the best pizza place in town - Roma's - is not open Mondays) cheese pizza. And I think I am going to take a warm bath tonight - epsom salts sometimes settle down my hives and they're bad right now.

I was happier this morning, probably because I spent most of yesterday working on the quilt and the blanket, and before that I got to go out to a yarn shop, but this day kind of took it out of me. (Part of it is just....issues. A lot of the students don't or can't make their classes a priority (I have people who get pulled away for work or sports, and I try to work with them, I try to be flexible about deadlines and such because I get that times are tough right now and if they can't earn money/keep the scholarship they're out of school - but it makes me SO TIRED. So tired to have to juggle make up times for exams and grade labs days late and never have my grading REALLY done because of that, and it's just....that's one part of my life I like to have organized but outside forces make it all entropic, and it drives me bonkers and makes me tired. I wish our students were doing better financially so I didn't have to do this; I wish we were all doing better financially, but I suspect this is now the New Normal and we had better just hope and pray it doesn't get worse than it is now....)

But it is tiring - and that was probably what led to my little cry - feeling like what is important to you, your very job (your reason for being, or at least it feels like it some days) is not really that important to anyone else.

Which is why I need my knitting and quilting and crochet and to a lesser extent piano (because I'm not as good at it as at the other things) and also why I need reading - they are things that make me forget my own insignificance in the grand scheme of things because that doesn't matter as much; when I'm sewing quilt blocks I am not thinking about how I am going to piece together all the times people need to come in for help and getting my own stuff done, and I am not thinking about how we are slowly being replaced by online teaching....

But yeah. Days like this make me idealize the kids that other people have and in a selfish way, wish I had one myself - because it would be nice to have someone I felt like I was really important to. (Intellectually, I know: I am important to my friends and my colleagues, and I also know that kids are a lot of work and can lead to heartbreak). But when I'm tired, it's hard not to look all around me and see that the grass is greener everywhere else....