Tuesday morning random

 * Have my first class meeting of my fourth class today. I don't know. This year feels different; it seems like everyone is kind of flattened. I got very little interaction from students yesterday. I've seen the statistics pointing out college freshpeople's mental states seem to be at an all time low.

I can't fix it or help it and that frustrates me. I did point out the information in my syllabus about finding the campus group therapy and stuff. 

Maybe things will get better over time? Maybe people were just anxious in this first week? I hope so. Very few people spoke.

* I started a new hat. I'm not v. far so no photo yet - it's the Antler Toque from Tin Can Knits (a simple antler cable hat). I'm using a skein of "Germantown" (this is an old, old style of yarn, still being made - I think Kelbourne is the company making it now? Used to be Minerva, I think.) Anyway, my friend Purlewe sent me a skein of turquoise colored to try out when I was speculating whether I wanted to order a sweater's worth.

One thing about me is that I very, very much like those "connection to the past" feeling things (though I guess some would argue that the past was Bad, Actually, and we shouldn't want those connections; I don't know). It is a bit coarser than what I'm used to so I will have to think on whether - when I am buying sweater yarn again, I have a lot ahead - if I want some for a sweater. Hopefully it is still going on in the future. 

* I do kind of feel like I want to start all the projects even as I know I have many in various states of being stalled out. I should finish something. I've worked a bit on the big fluffy sweater but after a while that yarn (Bernat's "Plentiful") gets super annoying to work with (and I don't know how comfy the finished sweater will be, alas).

I want to be knitting but when I do sit down to knit I get restless and think of other things I should be doing through and so I knit a lot less than I once did. I find television fails to hold my interest and keep me in the chair knitting. I suppose I should try audiobooks; I think I have a few credits I could use on my laptop. 

* I admit my own mental state is not excellent right now. (I do have a counselor appointment Thursday). I am tired, little things nettle me, the world feels even more than ever that it's falling apart on every front. I taught wearing a KN95 mask because of concerns about Delta (though I will say? It was actually maybe easier to speak in than the cloth masks? But it might rub the bridge of my nose raw, I will have to watch that and figure out some salve if that happens). I'm not going to Sherman lately in part because the construction has become absolutely horrific right now - and there's really nowhere else to go, and I see that's something that bothers me, when I feel kind of trapped in amber like I do right now. 

I also confess I feel jealous of my niece; every time my brother calls he talks about the different things they have done - they went to The Wilds (apparently a safari reserve in Ohio?) and she got to feed a rhino a sweet potato, and they went to a coin show, and they went swimming. And I think of how we mostly didn't do that kind of thing when I was a kid - it was largely on me to find my own entertainment climbing trees and the like - and while I suppose that was good and fine, right now, when I have very little "rat cage enrichment" going on, it does make me feel sad that there is literally nothing outside of my house or workplace to do right now (still too hot for hiking).

I also just still feel weirdly lonely. More than anything, I confess, craving some validation - I have learned through this that I am very much someone who needs to hear praise from time to time, or things like "I love you" (I don't hear that, hardly ever. My family is not good at saying it and I know I'm not good at saying it to people so in return I probably don't deserve to hear it) but it's been a very long year and a half with very little to affirm me, and I'm running out of energy. 

Another frustrating thing is I don't know how much of this is just unfortunate circumstances and how much of it is messed up brain chemistry and how much of it is just me needing to get over it and keep pushing (which is mostly what I do, though sometimes - like when I first went to bed last night - I will have a short crying jag all alone just because I don't see how things get better any time soon). 

* Having to try to set Pomodoros again to work; I did get a series of questions written up for the first reading and had to also do a brief summary of Hume's Guillotine just in case it comes up (I cannot expect the students to be familiar with philosophical concepts) (This article is about ethics in ecology and it references the "is/ought" fallacy, which Hume wrote of). And I admit I laughed, and commented on Twitter: "Chidification 25% complete" and while I don't ever expect to *understand* philosophy, I am coming to learn more about it - and care more about some aspects of it - than I ever did.
 

I have a copy of the Will Durant short-guide book to philosophy somewhere, should dig it out and try to read it some time. 

 *I am rewatching The Good Place - confession, I missed some of Season 3 and all of Season 4 (though I know more or less how the show ended) so these next episodes will be new to me, mostly. I just finished Season 2 this weekend and I admit the point where Michael (thinks) he is fundamentally sacrificing himself for Eleanor - when he stuck his pin on her and shoved her into the portal - well, I cried at that. That's the thing - I find stories of either self-sacrifice, or stories of redemption are the things that get to me the MOST emotionally these days. I can't quite explain why, whether it's that I WANT to believe that people will be like that (self-sacrifice in extreme cases) or whether I'm crying because I once believed that and now I don't, I don't know for sure.

I do know I want the world where people are willing to care for each other, and, yes, consider what we owe to each other. But from what I've seen in recent times, not so much.

(Like I said a while back: I think during the isolation period when I wasn't seeing much of humanity, I started romanticising things and imagining people as better than they were, and now I'm extra disappointed when I go back out into the world)