Back to work

 * Spring break was too short. I didn't get enough research done or have enough fun. (That's always the way with breaks, though)

* More bad news - My friend Dana, who had a very happy (and sadly short, as it turns out) second marriage lost her husband this weekend. (So that's two funerals at church within a couple weeks). It wasn't totally unexpected - he had cancer and it was pretty far advanced - but it hurts a lot to think of because they were so happy together. 

*Also a student stopped me in the hall and asked me if I'd heard from W., who has been teaching entirely from home (not sure if health issue or what). I said no, and it turns out no one's heard from him in a couple days and while it could be as simple as "didn't check his e-mail over break and was slow to get to it this morning," based on some of the truly sad and bizarre things that have happened to people around me in the past several years I'm slightly nervous. I hope I don't get a bad-news e-mail at some point today. (And additionally: what DO they do about someone's classes if they are rendered unable to finish teaching them in a semester? Do they get farmed out to other faculty? Most of us are ALREADY overworked and he's in a specialty I couldn't really teach)

* So yeah, not in the best mood today. And on top of that: war seeming to intensify in Ukraine, with some demands from Russia that sound kind of dire. And a sixth (? I don't know, I've lost track) wave of COVID ramping up elsewhere and almost certainly coming here, and that means limiting my circulation YET AGAIN... I don't know. I was pretty okay much of break but now I'm beginning to feel less-okay again, like "what's left in this sad old world for me anyway?" The whole losing or possibly-losing people hits me very hard; one of my low level fears is "everyone I care about is going to die or leave and I"m going to be all alone" and it's WORSE now because I've not been able to get out to really meet anyone new and....yeah. It feels like I'm going to be alone. 

Also having come to view a certain percentage of my fellow citizens as being fundamentally hostile (given all the mask and other discourse) to me if they actually knew me makes me wonder if making friends will ever be possible again. 

I wish I had some hope of a better future, but it looks like there.....really isn't one? And that maybe our best hope is the relationships we have with other people close to us, because travel won't be a thing any more and things like plays and restaurant meals and the like will be much, much less of a thing? And people like me who don't have a lot of close-by friends (and currently no real way to make any) are probably just stuck with a life of loneliness and interacting through screens from now on.

I wish I could forget there ever WAS a before-time to compare this to, and just know this, just remember this, because if I didn't have a "better' then this wouldn't seem worse.

* I booked train tickets to go see my mom in May, but who even knows if that's going to wind up being possible at this point? I bought the travel insurance even if in the before-times I'd have said "that's $30 down the drain" but who KNOWS any more at this point? I hate uncertainty, I hate having to try to lead my life where I literally fear that a few weeks later none of us may exist.

Oh, I know life is short and we're all going to die eventually, and accidents and weird illnesses happen, but life seems much more....precarious....now than it did even a couple years ago. Like the idea of "MEMENTO MORI!!!!" is shoved in my face regularly now, to the point where sometimes it's hard to ignore it enough to actually live.

* Also it's gray and stormy today and that definitely does not help things. Even though we need the rain. I find overcast days affect me negatively much more than they did in the before-times.

* Sometimes, to be honest, I would like to lie down on the floor and have a tantrum, but what's the point? No one is going to come over and say soothing things to me; nothing is going to change as a result of me having a tantrum. 

* There's an article in Slate (so you WILL be adblock shamed if you use one) on the Book of Job and it's interesting because instead of the "pain is purification" interpretation, it's more of a "the world just sucks some times, but being alive is better than being dead" interpretation (thanks, Slate, I guess). But also an "it's on YOU to make the world a better place than it is" and you know? I've been trying that since I was a kid and (blows raspberry) you can see how far I've got. So I don't know. 

Though maybe the "yeah life sucks sometimes but being alive is better than being dead" is about the best some of us can manage these days....

I wish though I'd hear confirmation my MIA colleague was okay