maybe going quiet

It's shaping up not to be a good week:

- I fundamentally got called "humorless" over something yesterday and I am having all the feelings:

part of me wants to lean into it and go "H yes I'm humorless, life is a serious deal, there is work we must do" and just double down on it.

part of me is still hurting and the Mean Girl part of my brain is telling me:"See? You're weird and you're extra and no one wants to listen to you and you should just shut up and then they can go 'oh thank GOD she went away, she was so tiresome and we're glad she's not here'" and also that the girls in seventh grade were right to "banish" me to sitting alone in a dark corner of the lunchroom because I am someone who brings everyone down and no one wants that

part of me wants validation that I'm not humorless, and that I'm a worthwhile person after all.


- some unsettling news (about someone on campus' personal struggle) that we got as an e-mail yesterday has been press-released and I fear that people I know will be asking me my "take" on it and the only "take" I have is that "Be kind, for we are all fighting a hard battle" and also "I think the person should be given some privacy to cope with the problem they are facing" but my town loves it some good "scandal" (or even things that really aren't, but that they want to make into a scandal) and so it will be talked about and everyone will act on the surface like they're sympathetic, but really they'll be loving it and wanting all the "lurid" details (of which there are probably none)

- Just tired. TIRED TIRED TIRED. I didn't really get a weekend this week and I can FEEL it.

And we had the first search committee meeting yesterday. Narrowed the 35 down to 10. Next step is the chair (not me thank God) e-mailing each of the ten to be sure they're still in the running. Then we re-evaluate....

- There's a City Council election today. I am not voting. I don't particularly like any of the candidates and I don't think any of them will fundamentally make anything better; our city government is pretty broken and I think that's just how it's gonna be. I'm also still disgusted over the amount of time (and money) spent to try to suck up to the reality show hosts in the (vain, as it turned out) hope of getting them to name this town their "makeover town." (Not that that would have done much, I think, other than bring a couple of ritzy and possibly short-lived small businesses to town, and very likely things I would not really patronize.)

About small businesses: the other day, driving around and seeing the approximately five CBD shops that are just on my regular route to and from work and to and from the grocery, I said to myself, "I wish  people saw books as being as profitable and cool as they see CBD." Or yarn. Or any number of other things. (Though yeah, I'm not spending money "frivolously" right now, it would still be awfully nice to have an actual bookstore in town)

- Last night, flossing my teeth, I got this weird grittiness and resistance to the floss between my two back left molars (both are crowned) and I immediately panicked: did I damage the crown somehow? I thought I felt something unexpectedly hard when I was eating earlier. Shaking very hard (I was anticipating "how do I get in for a root canal soon, how do I deal with the pain and the fear"), I rinsed well with water. Tried again with the floss. (In retrospect - what I saw when I thought I saw "shredded floss" may have been a fragment of coconut, which could have been the source of everything). It went a BIT better then but it was still gritty. Rinsed my mouth again and went to bed, figuring  there was nothing I could do that night.

Apprehensively, this morning, I tried flossing that tooth again. Nothing. No grittiness and no resistance and no pain so I don't know. Maybe it was just a glob of toothpaste or a chunk of coconut that got lodged in there and the rinsing last night dislodged it.

But yeah. Things are not going so well with me right now so if I'm quiet for a day or two that's what's going on. (Then again, my Inner Mean Girl is saying: "people only read you out of pity anyway so they will be relieved to have a few days away from you" And yes, intellectually I get that that's illogical: you would not be clicking if you did not want to read, but emotionally....well, sometimes my emotions overrule my intellect.)



EDITED TO ADD: One of the ways of dealing with stuff like this is to:

- ask yourself what is really wrong?

- ask yourself, "what do I need right now?"

What is really wrong? I am doing work that is not important to me, personally, at the moment. I am doing lots of things for other people - the meeting Sunday (I would not choose to be on that committee), I have a couple students who are acting in ways I classify as "incredibly helpless and/or needy" (I have someone who is constantly e-mailing me about problems but won't come in and sit down with me to fix them, they want me to fix them for them and I can't fix the problems without their direct input). This search committee is eating my life - there are four applications that came in "under the wire" that we also have to look at now and WHEN

I planned to get some work done on my research this week and I'm not getting to it and it's making me twitch.

What do I need right now? Probably most of all for all the externals to go away so I can sit down and work on digesting these data and feel like I'm getting somewhere. To feel like I've achieved something - where I can mark off something as "finished" and not have to circle back to it and work more on it.

And honestly, yes, I do need a little validation of some kind. And a little breather to do things I *want* to do, not things I "have" to do. And while I'm dreaming of impossibilities? A day when I can just go home and be wrapped up in a nice blanket and be fed nice food that I neither have to cook nor go out and pick up (after finding parking, after waiting in line). To be taken care of for a day. I think I would be better after that.

Of course, my only option is to take care of myself. part of the problem is so many others are demanding I take care of them that I don't feel like I have any caretaking left for me.