Another long day

 And two of my behaviors/mental things that make it hard to be me some times.

First of all: coming back to campus from lunch, off in the distance, I saw someone walking on the sidewalk. A larger man, with longish frizzy brown hair. And for a moment, before I remembered, my mind blipped to, "Oh, its' Dell! I haven't seen him in SO LONG"

And then I remembered: he died in March 2021.

And then I was sad.

But I tend to do that - my pattern-seeking brain will grab onto some person who looks a bit like someone I know, and for a moment I'll be convinced it's them - I once thought I saw my brother standing in line at the Kroger in Sherman when I knew very well he was at home in Virginia. 

But yeah, a lot of old griefs being brought up for some reason right now.

I also had a bad "pain" day; I think I pulled something working out yesterday, and also, my asthma was bothering me. 

But the other thing - I had had a student e-mail me about "poor performance on my exams" last week and I e-mailed them back and offered to meet and discuss and I was *dreading* it because often times this is a litany of complaints about the class being too hard or too boring and that they are due extra credit or something. But they never e-mailed me back and frankly I forgot it.
Well, the student stopped me after class. And I admit I cringed inwardly.

But then they said: "I want to apologize for my poor performance recently. I'm in the honors program and I got drafted to do some volunteer stuff and I guess I'm just having some trouble juggling everything" and I kind of chuckled and said "Yeah, it's a lot harder to juggle stuff now" and they said "Oh, I'm still passing the class, I'll still get a C at least, but I wanted to apologize"

And yeah - I always expect the worst, most interpersonally-difficult outcome of these things.

I also had someone e-mail me about the quiz - these are online things - and I braced myself for some complaint. But instead it was "I know you have the capacity to delete our attempt and let us do a new one, would you consider that? I was taking it last night* and my wifi cut out, and I only finished five of the questions"

(*we had big storms and a lot of people lost power, so this is surely true)

And I said "Yeah, I'll do it right now" and went in and clicked the commands to do that. And then they e-mailed me back thanking me. 

But yeah: I do tend to expect the worst possible outcome in a lot of interpersonal things. I don't know if it's a defense/self-preservation thing - that I prepare myself for something bad, and when it's less than that, I'm relieved. I do know it probably makes me more cautious and guarded than I might be in my interactions with people. 

(I also got a call this afternoon from someone in CWF and my heart momentarily sank - "oh no, who died now" but she was just checking up because she and I are the hostesses for the next meeting and wanted to know what we wanted to do for food - I am going to bake a simple cake and she's getting iced tea and making coffee and having the plates and forks and napkins.)

But yeah. This has already been a hard week and it's only Tuesday.