Not feeling it

Could be it's Thursday.
Could be that the semester is nearly over.
Could be the bad/ugly news of the world (the dude who killed those people in Toronto, allegedly because "girls didn't like him*," the news that a large university is now trolling for "zero hour adjuncts" where people will get to work for "exposure," the fact that Ford must be in trouble seeing as they're dropping nearly all their sedan-sized cars, the ongoing news of people who have power - sometimes power over the rest of us - acting like spoiled brats or pulling the "do you know who I am" on people they should probably treat with respect)

But yeah. I feel kind of tired and worn this morning and it's hard to work up a great deal of enthusiasm for my work. (But then again, that's part of being a grown-up adult: you go in and you fake it. And you do the job you are paid to do.)

Part of growing up is learning that you sometimes (often) don't get what you want in life, but you make the best of what you get. (That's what enrages me so much about the alleged motive in the Toronto case.) To be honest, in some ways, those of us in education in this state were served up a heaping helping of literal SOS (rather than the chipped-beef dish that that is sometimes a jocular name for) in 2016 and we've been managing ever since. A lot of adulthood is just sighing and pushing onward, because there's no other real choice.

I guess the other thing is I do think of the times when I was rejected personally by someone. Or when a person I thought was a friend turned out not to be. And instead of lashing out at the world, I turned in on myself: what was wrong with me, personally? What was I lacking that led them not to want to be my friend? What was so awful about my personality or my appearance that made that guy not want to try even one trial date?

Of course, the real answer is: people don't always click. Maybe that guy said "no" because he just wasn't interested in me. Or maybe he was pursuing an un-pursuable and not up for it. Or maybe he just wasn't in the mood to date at that time. Whatever. Or sometimes a person doesn't want to be your friend, no matter how much you force your inner Pinkie Pie to the surface.

Also in the news today: yet another person in my region caught embezzling. What baffles me is, given all the tax rules, given all the accounting rules: how do they POSSIBLY think it would go undetected for more than a few weeks? I suppose the mentality in some cases is, "I'll make back the money and put it back in before it's missed" but I would bet that almost never happens. And, nationally, someone from the NY Port Authority pulled over by the cops and instead of being polite and somewhat deferential (which means the interaction is over as quickly as possible), she pulls the "do you know who I am" and the "I outrank you, technically" cards. (She was a white woman, so I presume she had no fear of the cops. Then again: I am a white woman and the one time I've been pulled over in the past 15 years I immediately went into super-deferential mode, hands on the steering wheel in full view, told him what I was going to do before reaching for my license and insurance information, and it did get me a warning (rather than a ticket) for my trouble)

I just don't know what it is. Again, is it that power corrupts a person, or that people who already have that mindset are attracted to power? (I'm also thinking of the thing a friend told me once about the "dating game" that I think is very good advice: look at how he treats waiters and shopclerks and movie-theater employees. Someone who is mean and controlling towards people "below" him is someone you probably don't want to be with. Someone who will scream at a waiter over a minor error in the order is someone who will scream at you if you don't wash his socks the "right" way)

I don't know. I'm having one of those days where the world seems awfully hard and sharp and I seem awfully soft, almost like those crabs that shed their skin and then have to hide for a couple of days while their new carapace hardens.

I didn't get all the binding sewn down last night; I just ran out of energy for it. It's almost done. I do find the mid-part of the week, I get home, and all I really want to do is lie down sometimes. Even cooking dinner feels like an effort some days, when I've done a lot over at work.

(I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I don't so much want someone to "date" in my life as I would want some kind of Jeeves and Fritz Brenner rolled into one, who would silently and discreetly take care of the piled-up laundry, and stack the bills I have to pay neatly somewhere in plain sight, and fix a nutritious dinner for me so I have no choice but to eat my vegetables because after all, he DID fix them...But again, you don't get what you want in life so I go on forcing myself to defrost green beans and heat up some cooked cabbage and all that even though I really don't want it, and it does somehow seem less desirable when you've had to cook it yourself....)


(*And I cannot help playing, over and over, in my head "La Goualante du Pauvre Jean" in regards this. I guess the song made these shores as "The Poor People of Paris," but in the original - and very argotty, I had to look a lot of the terms up - French, it's fundamentally about a guy who became a criminal (apparently a thief) because "les femmes n'aimiait pas." But Poor John just became a thief (and possibly a con man, if I'm interpreting it right), and ended up in prison for his troubles.

(I originally translated in my mind, Plutôt qu'une cordelette/ Mieux vaut une femme à son cou to imply he was hanged (cordelette COULD be noose), but I doubt France ever executed anyone for merely conning the rich)