Tiny bit better?

Maybe. I don't know. I feel less "why was I even born, then?" this morning though I still feel kind of overtired and a little useless.

My entire "free time" yesterday was either spent practicing piano or reading on that book. (It's too hard to knit and read in the space I have to comfortably read at home). That may be a few days until I get it done; it's due back on the 17th (been renewed once) and I have about 200 pages to go.

And yeah, part of it may be that I'm reading about stuff that went on in the late 70s and 80s right now (a lot of the Superfund stuff, some of which I vaguely remember because my dad's career as a geohydrologist was kind of dealing-with-hazardous-waste-dumps-adjacent) and I think it just brings up bad flashbacks to the past, to my anxious childhood, to being unpopular in school (and it doesn't help that a couple of my students now push some of the same buttons that got pushed by the mean kids I went to school with).

What I really need is some kind of virtual emotional armor: something that I could imagine as protecting myself from the unpleasant people and also just the slings and arrows (of which there seem to be many: seriously, folks, when did most of humanity lose its collective marbles?) of daily life.

The problem is that some of the things I regard as "clothing armor" are too warm to wear right now...

I did start, late Monday evening, the Smol Robot that I saw a pattern link for on Twitter. So far I just have one of the four legs done.

For one thing, I am making them a couple rows longer so it won't be so squatty.
For another, I'm wondering if I can adjust the increases at the top of the head so it's not so pointy because a round-domed robot would be more aesthetically pleasing to me. Maybe increase "faster" (more increases per row) so it's more flat at first?

But yeah. I could have used a Not Okay Bot last night, because I was decidedly Not Okay. (I still kind of am not this morning, but I'm doing better)

I still haven't heard back about the potato in the bag of fries, but I did fill out a long form (including things like the "sell by" date and the plant code) about it on the Ore-Ida (well, really: Kraft, because everything now is run by one of about five megacorporations) website. I'm hoping that at least I get some acknowledgement and maybe at best a coupon. I dunno. I'm not expecting much though; I feel sometimes like my fate in life is not to be heard or to be talked over.

I also think one of my frustrations right now is in phone conversations. Usually the only people I talk to at any length are my parents, and right now what is happening is I'm getting brief "update" calls from my mom when she gets home at the end of the day - and she has other people to call and update, too (my dad's brothers, my own brother) and so the calls are short. And I also feel like I can't really "unload" any of the stuff I am going through (other than the light stuff: I did tell her about the potato) so that's another avenue of comfort closed off to me. (And also the baseline, lowgrade worry)

A friend floated the idea of me maybe finding a counselor for someone to just talk to - I don't think any of the issues I have rise above the regular existential angst that everyone feels some times - and I admit I resist it because I am saying to myself, "Wow, you are really a failure at making friends if you have to pay someone to listen to you" so I don't know.

(I fully plan on, though, when the time comes, availing myself of a grief counselor. Because given how I feel with  my dad just in the hospital/rehab....I can tell I will need one when the time comes. I perhaps should have seen one when he was going through (successful) cancer treatment, but I was younger then, and less battered by life, and somehow better at stiff-upper-lipping my way through).

And no, there's not really anyone at church I could talk to. Our minister is part-time and I know he's very busy in his other job. And also, the problem is I kind of have positioned myself as The Strong Tough One and it's kind of hard to back off of that now. So I don't know.

I am hoping once the allergies calm down, things will be better, or once classes settle down, things will be better. (How much of my life is spent hoping things will be better in the future?)

I e-mailed my research student floating the idea of NOT going out to do fieldwork this weekend (likely to be very wet) and I am still thinking about doing a Sherman run because I seem happier in the weeks when I get out and do something than in the weeks when I just stay in town.

What I really would like would be a regular knit-night or quilting night, but there aren't any in town, the one at church fizzled out, and I sure don't have the energy (or the logistics) to start one. I know people say "be the change you want to see in the world" but I get tired and it's hard to get any change and sometimes you just want other people to do the heavy lifting for a change.