Looking for reasons

Looking for reasons not to give up this morning.

Still barraged with work - too many things to grade coming in today, plus I had a student send me a very unpleasant e-mail complaining about their big-project grade.

Because I am too nice for my own good, I said "Okay, I'll pull out the file copy of your paper and regrade it" and I did, and their grade went up slightly, and now I realized I have just opened the door for them to tell other people in the class and have THOSE people come in to try to get their grades raised and I don't have the energy to regrade everyone's paper.

I try to make everyone else happy, and the cost is I am not able to be happy. And usually people aren't happy either because you can't give them what they really want.

I guess I was bad this year because all I got for St. Nicolas' Day was more work and a deeply unpleasant interaction to start the day. And also there was some guy out screaming in the street shortly before 7 am when I was preparing to leave the house and I didn't know if it was someone mad at their dog, or someone having a lovers' quarrel, or someone who was randomly screaming and might be violent if I happened to walk out when they were there. Because I come from such a quiet family I tend to interpret screaming as "violence is about to happen" and it scares me.

Thinking again of a couple things I regularly think this time of year:


- George Bailey was lucky in that he was explicitly shown how his life mattered. The rest of us have to take it on faith that we're here for a reason, and that the good we try to do has some effect, but right now my faith is very thin and frayed and I'm wondering some days if life isn't just a cosmic joke, and the attempt to find any meaningful narrative in it is a fruitless exercise. And that maybe it's better to be grabby and selfish and get for yourself because then at least one person is happy.

- I wish there were a literal Santa Claus, and that he was for everyone. Like I said (last year I think): some day you'd come home from work, and there'd be a little wrapped present on the hall table, and you'd know. You'd know you'd been "good enough" this year. It wouldn't even be the present that would matter - as I said it could be a box of cookies or a pot or narcissi to force or a nice pencil. It would be the *approval.* The fact that Santa Claus (or Christkindl, or St. Nicolas, or Grandfather Frost, whoever) has deemed you 'good enough" in this year.

I struggle a LOT with not feeling "good enough" and it would help having some kind of objective outside verification. But the hell of adult life is that you don't get that; more commonly you get told the small areas in which you are found wanting. They don't see the fifteen balls you are managing to juggle, only the one that you've dropped.

- I wish we lived in a world with more magic in it in general. Or at least more whimsy. I quoted a tweet by someone who calls themselves The Library Haunter and commented that if there was a "make it so!" button on twitter, I'd be mashing it hard:

"Let’s end this idea that “serious” things are all Cynical and Gritty. I’m done trying to be edgy. I’m done with nihilism. I want to enjoy things passionately. I want to love unashamedly. I want whimsy. I want laughter. I want to do things that make my heart swell with joy."

Yes. I want more fun and magic in the world. I want the idea that happiness is not silly or meaningless, that it is of deep importance. Moreover, I want earnestness and honestly and vulnerability to be things that are valued and important rather than traits that less-scrupulous people exploit in others. In general: I want people to adhere to what I think of as the social contract better than they have in the past.

I'm just frustrated and disappointed. My life has not gone in the directions I've wanted it to these past few years. I feel like I've lost my way a little bit but the thing is I don't really know HOW to get back on the path or even what I'm missing - there's just that vague sense that something's wrong, that I used to be happier, and maybe there's something I used to do that made me happier and I don't remember what it is now? (Or is this all a side effect of the stupid  medications I have to be on so I don't blow out the little veins in my body or hive myself to death?)  

(Or maybe the world has changed enough in recent years, and it's not that I've lost my way as much as I'm fighting against so many other things that it wears me out? Kind of the existential version of that Seymour Skinner meme about "Am I out of touch, or is it the children that are wrong?") 

- Our sister campus was offering therapy dogs (there is someone in that town who raises and trains collies for that role) for students suffering pre-exam stress and of course nothing is ever offered to support the professors. (And this is why I roll my eyes a little at the whole check-your-privilege meme: yes, we are "privileged" in the sense that we're paid to be here, but a lot of us are dealing with heavy things, and anyway, our workloads right now are very heavy, so of course we are stressed too). I don't even know what would be a good stress-alliviator for me; I have a lot to do this afternoon and I am still trying to reduce so something like ice cream would be out of the question




This is also the anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique killings, which was a case of a guy killing women because he apparently didn't like that they were women in higher ed. It could happen again. I remember seeing it on the CBC news when I was in college - I lived in Ann Arbor, I didn't have cable but I could get most of the Detroit stations and (I think it was?) Windsor over the air, and I often watched CBC for the news....But yeah, once again being reminded of the very specific cruelty of a specific individual.

In the past, my response to hearing of ugliness in the world was to cast on something to ultimately give to charity, or to send some money to a Good Cause. I haven't done that so much of late, because (a) there are so many things that happen, how do you decide what bad you try to balance out with good and (b) nothing I can do helps anyway, the world will not get better, not even if I sold all I owned and gave all the money to the poor.

I am very much in one of those moods where I'd like to run off and live in a cabin in the woods and never talk to anyone ever again, though more than that, what I want is for no one to every be rude to me ever again, or ask me for stuff, or pile work on me, or question my motives.