Today is fired

 A bad day

One thing, when I asked an office to do something that it was their job to do, and which I had to interact with, and which I will have some degree of trouble (in the sense of being complained at for not doing it) if it goes undone, but the office had not done it.....well, they basically pooh-poohed my concern about it being done in a timely fashion (it was supposed to be done Monday - as in, Monday the 27th). And so I feel not-listened-to

I mean, the thing will be fixed, but I'm just...I'm tired.

And another situation - a student I advise is running into problems, they asked their other faculty for some accommodations in re: exam makeups on very short notice. The thing spun up into a whole thing, short answer is, there's no way the student can complete the stuff. They asked for an incomplete in the classes, initially we said no, you have to be passing, and you are not. Then they played the "I'm an athlete" card. Then they called around to admins. Apparently one of them said "well, the requirement you be passing isn't really a REQUIREMENT requirement" and I admit their other prof and I were going to accept that at face value and told them 'okay we do it this way' but when I checked with my chair - which, fair, I should have done first, but the other admin told us the thing - they can't.

So I've frantically been e-mailing to try to do damage control. I feel almost like it's my fault, though I wasn't the one who skipped the exams, and I wasn't the one who claimed that the "requirement" wasn't a REQUIREMENT requirement.

And an aside: I saw maybe half of Encanto last night (I came into it late). I had been wanting to see it, didn't realize it was on Freeform. But I came in early enough to get the gist* of it, it was the point where things started failing  - Luisa losing her strength, Isabella apparently upset about the match being made for her, Marisol thinking she had no Gift....and dang. A friend of mine commented when it was first out about how "Oldest daughters will relate hard to Luisa" and while I am not an Oldest Daughter in the sense of one of many (I have only the one brother), I definitely see the "expected to be strong, expected to literally carry everything" part of it. And yes. Sometimes you do feel weak even if you do present as strong. And things are heavy, and sometimes you just have to suck it up and carry them because there's no one to help.

 (*And if I can find it scheduled at a time I'd be free, I'm going to watch the whole thing. I know some critics panned it but I liked what I saw. And I know some cultural commentators have been all "Disney is failing because they don't make movies about Princesses finding their Prince any more" but frankly movies like Brave (where the Princess decides that she will only marry if and when she finds the right man - and maybe he won't even be a Prince, and the main relationship is a girl and her mother) or Frozen where there was the whole sister thing. And this one, about a whole entire family. And arguable Tangled (which I enjoyed) was a pretty traditional princess movie (just, with a princess more spirited than most). But you know? The whole waiting-for-your-prince thing was never that realistic and a lot of us looked but never found him)

And yes: one of the themes of the movie is, I think "you are more than your Gift" so that your abilities, what you can do to serve others doesn't define you, but I've REALLY struggled lately with "if you're not Useful, then what are you" and I think because I haven't done much research (and worry about that)

But anyway. The idea of the pressure of having a Gift - think of the "Former Gifted Child" trope - is a lot. And I'm not sure how to exist without feeling like I'm either useful or achieving stuff.  And I feel less and less like I'm doing either of those things.

And also, I had to scramble at the last minute and zoom-and-record my class today, because like six people are out with COVID. Granted, several of them are teammates on one of the teams and they have one sick team member and have just been possibly exposed and not sick, but I also have another student in another class who DOES have COVID. (And I recorded that lecture for her).

And it's a little upsetting - for one thing, it's a lot more fiddly to set up for class, more things to do right at the start. And the usual "slide advance" doesn't want to work so I have to walk over and hit enter every time I need to change. 

But also, psychologically, two things:

- it takes me back to fall 2020, an upsetting time in a lot of ways

- I'm expecting people to ask "why don't you just record and post all the lectures next semester" and while my reasons are valid (primarily, that when recordings are available, people just skip, but also never watch the recordings, and it enables skipping, but also, the whole "extra work and mental fatigue" part)

And it was after 5 when I got home, and I also spent time e-mailing back and forth to try to resolve the previous problem, and I was also trying to get FaceTime to work again on my phone (the new phone, but everything was supposed to be "ported" over) but it won't work with my mom's e-mail address so maybe we can only talk on the phone now? The problem could be on her end but she's not savvy enough to diagnose it, and I can't do a long distance diagnosis

So it was an upsetting day, and 6:20 or so rolled around and I'd still not eaten after an early light lunch. (I had THOUGHT of coming home and try restarting a short workout, now that I'm no longer coughing myself to pieces with any exertion but of course that fell through). And I was upset enough and agitated enough I couldn't think of anything I had that I wanted to eat or to fix.

And really, what I wanted in that minute: I wanted food that someone else had made. I wanted either restaurant food or something someone else had cooked. Except: I was already in pajamas, it was raining out, and it was getting dark (I do not like driving in the dark; my night vision is not very good). Nowhere delivers except pizza places (we don't have DoorDash here). 

And I realized why I wanted food someone else cooked, and it made me sad:

I wanted the illusion of being cared for.

I have to carry everything by myself here. I get asked to care a lot, and help a lot, and sympathize a lot on campus, and I don't always get it myself. And at home I'm the only one here. 

Ultimately, I made scrambled eggs and opened up a can of mashed sweet potatoes and had a piece of bread and Nutella, but it's hard taking care of yourself when the capacity to "take care of" gets exhausted.