Yeah, I got the covid booster today
so far the only side effects seem to be a sad/irritated mood. We'll see how I feel tomorrow.
I could also be sad and irritated because (gestures at world) and also that I spent five hours today grading, and got home at 6 pm, after arriving on campus at 7 am. ("Crunch time" should not be this early in the semester).
I did my PT stretches just now and that helped a little. I need to keep up with those; I hurt less when I do them.
Apparently a politician is calling to "destroy" universities and that college graduates are "worse" people. I should not let this kind of garbage get under my skin but it does. I think part of it is that I identify too strongly with my job. I mean, it's literally all I have and all I am, and so be told it is Bad means....well, it means I am Bad and Defective, I guess. And I grew up being told by my peers in school I was Bad and Defective and all the rhetoric now reawakens a lot of that and I walk around feeling kind of bad about myself all the time, and realizing I don't really fit in anywhere, and it's sad.
And I've got people mad at me/avoiding me because I know I've been worried about this renovation thing in my building, about how I can't imagine it possibly working without all of us failing at our jobs regularly next semester. I keep asking if we're going to get help moving lab supplies or even where I can store them and no one can tell me, I guess no one knows, but I don't want it to wait until the literal last minute and "surprise! You are giving up your Christmas break to do this!"
And I'm going to be late to the 3-5 pm lab I just got assigned next semester because my 1-3 lab meets across campus, like 3/4 a mile away, and it sometimes runs long anyway. I'm going to fail and I'm going to look like an idiot and there's NOTHING I can do to stop it and I hate it. I hate feeling incompetent.
I really need to find something else I feel successful at; some days I feel like I don't have anything.
I'm not a great knitter; I only ever follow patterns others have written. I haven't worked on a quilt in half a year. Piano isn't going well; I can't make enough time to practice. So it feels like nothing is going well for me.
It's very hot here. We had a heat index of 105F today. I am very tired of "forever summer." It also hasn't rained in forever, I had to hook up my hose and will have to remember to run it a bit each day to prepare a spot of soil to collect the sample for Wednesday's lab.
***
One perhaps-happier thing - thinking about my current "comfort show" (and everyone now may groan and say "no Erica not Bluey again") but it is, and I realized part of it is that Bandit does remind me very slightly of my own dad when I was a little kid. Now, he was less of a caretaker - he worked long hours - but some of the other things are similar - the bit where Bluey showed Jean-Luc how to wet down a certain rock to get ochre to paint with, that sort of small random fact was the sort of thing he'd teach my brother and me. And while he never quite entered into imaginative play as much, he still sometimes went along with stuff my brother and I did.
I miss him
But I also miss some things about being a kid, especially being able to play and having someone else to worry about all the big things. I have to worry about all the big things now and it's hard and sad.
***
I need to knit more but it's hard to make the time, and hard to find the energy after getting home late and having to fix dinner and do chores and all that. Despite the whole "we're not looking to get to the 'forever weekend'" and the idea of being zen and living in the moment.....well, a lot of my moments these days are kind of arduous, and I frankly would like a taste of the "forever weekend."
***
I dunno. I feel right now that a lot of spaces where I hang out (mostly online because I don't really have a real life) everyone is tired of me, and so maybe I just have to go quiet for a while, even though that means I have no one to talk to.
No comments:
Post a Comment