And tonight's knitting

 I worked more on the Tailfeather scarf. I'm perhaps half done with it now. I think I'm on pattern 3 of repeat 3....and I think you do five repeats? At any rate, I think that's how much yarn I have.

I suspect maybe part of the reason I've been less enthusiastic about knitting is partly the "not going anywhere" part (so: I wear the same few things and just keep washing them). Part may be the "languishing," where I don't feel BAD but I don't feel GOOD or enthusiastic either - it's basically slightly better than survival mode. And part of it is just, work is harder and longer and more exhausting (part of this evening was spent reading a paper on nonparametric stats to refresh myself on a few techniques I have not used for year and years). 

Also I think some of my malaise is realizing some things, like that I'm not appreciated as much as I thought I was, and that some people that I thought I was important to, I really wasn't - there were more than a few people who have kind of "ghosted" me since my dad died, and yeah, I know, dealing with someone in grief is hard, but it's also important to at least TRY, because it's something we all wind up dealing with, and it's a human thing to need support. 

I also realize from stuff I've seen that there are just a lot of uncaring people in the world, who put their own opinions over the feelings or emotions of others (seeing a  video of a few adults yelling at masked kids going to school - yelling because they were anti maskers and thought it wrong the kids were masked. And I think of the kid I was, and that would have messed me up badly, because I generally wanted to please and obey adults, and had we had a pandemic like this when I was a kid, my parents would have told me to wear a mask, and then, here are these adults screaming at me that I'm wrong and my parents are wrong and, well....it would have messed me up. And yeah, I don't think adults should harass kids like that). 

But I wonder: could the pandemic be preparing me for more of a cloistered sort of life, for becoming more a hermit? Resigning from social media, buying a plot of land out in the woods and building a house there and live on beans and cornbread and.....I don't know what I'd do; I do need to be busy and I can't just sit and listen to the birds even though I know some people can. 

But I am simultaneously lonesome a lot but also deeply weary of fellow humans, and that causes cognitive dissonance, and I dislike cognitive dissonance; I find it upsetting and wearying and I keep trying to square the circle of wanting to be around people and wanting their approval but also at the same time realizing a lot of people believe some very foolish things and want to foist those beliefs on me....and maybe I can't? 

maybe I need to just get a dog; some days friendly dogs seem more reasonable than most humans.