Oh, nothing is *terrible* or even bad, I am just tired. It's allergy season, the end of the semester is approaching. I have things I need to do but not a lot of motivation to do them. And it's Thursday, which is always a hard day, because you've had the Tired from all the previous workdays build up, but it's not Friday yet.
Also mail has been uninspiring. I am wondering if it's slowed down yet again (and the card from my mom that was supposed to have that check in it *never* showed up; her bank will cancel checks for free so I think I will tell her it's time to). I get junk mail (charity solicitations and ads from local loan-shark places) but nothing that interests me.
And I dunno, getting nice mail is important to me, it's disappointing to come home to either an empty mailbox or one with just crummy ads in it.
My doki doki crate for April FINALLY shipped but it could be six weeks before that shows up. And I checked and the next Asterix omnibus (I pre-ordered the next few from Bookshop) won't ship until April 20. (And yet: Amazon seems to have them in stock, which, trying to do things the 'responsible consumer' way sometimes hurts you - then AGAIN, Bookshop has them for $6 less than Amazon.)
Am debating about this weekend: yes, going to Sherman is a little woeful now with all the road construction but ALSO I get cabin feverish and sad and I've sat at home almost entirely for a whole entire year. I don't know. I wish Atoka had something attractive for me to drive up there for but really, the best shopping is in Sherman (with road construction and a narrow-laned bridge between me and them) and Ardmore is maybe the next most attractive shopping but there's a bad bridge with bad construction (or a v. long detour) between them and me, and they're also twice as far.
And I'm tired of walking around Pruett's longing for some kind of *different* food that they might sell. I might just go INTO the dang wal-mart again on Saturday, but go very early when it's hopefully almost empty. I have been wracking my brain for other places but: the little new grocery south of town was disappointing, Madill only has a wal-mart as far as I know, Caddo has nothing....it's three hours to Texarkana and that's across a state line. There's another road into Texas but it runs across the top of a dam and I think my mild fear of heights and driving near deep water would make that uncomfortable. Supposedly there's another bridge somewhere east of here but I have no idea where it is or how to get there....and how I'd get to Sherman FROM there.
I think a lot of this is just restlessness brought on by a year plus of mostly doing nothing. I want to do something but the 'somethings' that are easily possible don't really appeal.
***
and it got a little worse. I was already not super enthused because this evening I have a Zoom meeting* of a group I am part of, and there's going to be discussion of a Thing, and there are a couple people who are very vocally in favor of Thing and have probably not thought through all the potential consequences of Thing, one of which is that it will generate considerable extra work for those of us who are volunteer workers in this group. I get the sense the rest of the membership either really doesn't care or is not in favor of Thing, and I suspect the vocal voices will win out, and that will mean more work drops at my feet and.....maybe I just don't re-up with this group in the fall, after years of being a part of it? I don't know.
But I am tired of how a few very loud people who are willing to complain and also slightly inflate information get their way, and the rest of us just have to live in the world they make.
There are a number of things I do in that group that if I didn't re-up, they'd have to find someone else to do it. I'll just note that.
* I think part of my dislike of Zoom-from-home for things like meetings and work is that it feels like people are invading my house that I would not let into my living room in person. But because pandemic, they have to be there. And I can't get away from it. And it does low-level discomfit me; I find I sleep worse on nights after I've had from-home-Zoom meetings that were at all stressful.
Knit-group is the ONE exception, and I think part of that is it's low key (no decisions to make, no work to do, you don't even have to talk if you don't want to) and the people in that I'd let in to my living room in person.
***
Also lab this afternoon did not go well. I had a student become very angry because they did not like how the TA graded their lab, they thought they deserved more points and also that it had been misgraded. Well, one thing had, and I said, calmly, "I'll take it back to them for a regrade" and the student kept going: I didn't do extensive enough pre-labs, that I should know their lecture section was only on chapter x and they hadn't seen this material yet, and they couldn't learn it in the 15 minute talk I give and I commented that no, I didn't know that, because my lecture section was a different section and we are actually on chapter x+3 right now and my students had had all the stuff, and also, I did not have time in lab to teach an entire chapter and still give the students time to complete lab but YES I would have the TA look at it again.
TA did, gave back the points for the one misgraded question. I took the lab back, thinking that was the end of it, but no - the student was still unhappy and still yelled at me and finally I said - getting as close to angry as I ever do, "Fine, I will take it back and ask the TA again"
And I did, and of course there were no other misgraded questions.
And then for the rest of the lab, that student and their team, every time I answered some other team's question, wanted to know EXACTLY what I said because God forbid they might lose an advantage, I guess. And at the end, the person who was so difficult about their lab, handing in THIS week's lab, glared at me and slammed it down on the pile.
But I'm tired and sad now. And I find myself reflecting on how, pretty much since middle school, I've absorbed the anger/meanness/impoliteness of others - first, peers and sometimes teachers or other adults in my life (my first experience in a "real" yarn shop was not a positive one; the owner was a snob), and then later bosses of various stripes and still peers, and now sometimes students. And because of who I am - wholly conflict avoidant and also loath to add to the balance of rudeness in the world - I just....absorb it...
And I wonder: what becomes of all that vitriol I absorb? Is it slowly poisoning me, so it shortens my life, or some day I get full up and I just explode into cursing and anger because I can't deal with it any more? Or what? Would people do this to me less if I were a scarier person?
I don't know. But of course this interaction is now coloring my day. And yes, I know: students are worried and stressed out but guess what? SO AM I. I have lived through what I sincerely hope is the worst and hardest year of my life and I am tired and lonesome and sad and some days I STILL feel like I will die before it is safe to be hugged by friends or go out freely and shop in comfort again.
I get tired of cutting infinite slack and not getting slack back myself :(
and it's only bills to look forward to in the mail today - can tell that from the informed delivery digest.
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