Postponing Joy
I have several articles of clothing I never wear at home. I put them on to leave. I avoid wearing them at home because they’d get dog or cat hair on them, would start to show wear, etc.
These are mostly things I wore to teach. Some things for fancy occasions. My “nice” clothes as opposed to my “play” clothes.
I started wearing a sweater I would wear while teaching to keep me warm at the end and between classes. It finally hit me that I really don’t need to save them, I don’t know when I’ll teach in person again, so I might as well enjoy my clothing now!
It’s made me wonder just how often, and in how many different ways, I postpone joy for dubious reasons. What undercurrent of shame believes I don’t deserve joy in the present moment?
It’s been a tough few weeks with my Shame Monster, “Whinnie”, telling me what a loser I am, what a drain on resources, etc. It’a exhausting, tedious, and driven by the election anxiety.
Maybe tomorrow will have hope.
I’m grateful for an unexpected urban ungulate feasting on windfall apples I saw when I took our leftover pumpkin curry over to AF’s.
The Waiting
We still don't know. It's looking more and more like it will be Biden/Harris, but it isn't done.
There are T* supporters with guns at election offices demanding that they be allowed to count ballots (Arizona) or that counting be stopped (Michigan). Like the supporters running the Biden/Harris bus off the road in Texas last week, these are the newest incarnation of the Nazi Brownshirts who intimidated people to push their political agenda.
I have felt exhausted today. As usual, teaching at 10am online helped anchor me into the day. I enjoyed chatting with a favorite student afterward, one of those people who's become a friend as well, and that helped me feel a little less hopeless.
I ended up napping after lunch for a little while with Obie. He's been wanting to lay on the bed so I've been turning on the electric blanket to warm up his bones. He reached out his paws and chirped at me, which is pretty impossible to resist. Having got to bed close to 2am, a nap with Obie and Bertie was a good choice.
I felt really unmotivated by food, aside from wanting to turn several ripe apples and pears into a crisp. CK suggested that we have takeout, we picked pizza which I really enjoyed, despite feeling unmotivated. I kept searching for recipes and ended up just making it up; I needed more salt! I also just realized I forgot the cinnamon!
What's weighing on me is how we're just barely holding back fascism. Some small part of me hoped for an outright repudiation, instead T* supporters doubled-down, recruiting more hateful people. Voter suppression has also been so successful, redistricting and gutting the Voting Rights Act continues to disenfranchise people.
There are millions of Americans who are so opposed to everyone sharing a piece of the pie, where everyone gets a smaller piece but everyone gets pie, that they would prefer to just burn down all the pie shops rather than allow the "others" to have some pie.
I see rounds of social media posts about educating "T* voting friend, now's the time!", and I'm furious. This is not about education, we cannot educate people who are willfully ignorant, truth denying, and cruelty seeking!
Also, quit putting work on those of use who are already exhausted and afraid of losing rights we've only been celebrating a few years!
How do we engage with people who don't care if they get hurt so long as they get to see the "other" hurting? How do we just shut it down? How do we say to them, "We don't really care about how you feel about it, this is what is happening."
Limbo
As expected, the American people are failing to hand T* a decisive walloping. It's still too close to call and the results will take days.
Put Zoom on and essentially had "Office Hours" ask evening. Spoke with several friends and got to see the adorable kitten.
The house is well stocked, really shouldn't need to leave for days. Tomorrow I'm going to set up the bins in the van to facilitate hauling hazardous materials to the transfer station after picking them up from friends.
I can't shake the fear that the Electoral College will fuck us again. Who cares about the popular vote?!
Trying to hold hope in my heart.
Dread not Optimism
CK asked me this evening what I think will happen tomorrow. I had to reply that I really didn't know.
2016 taught us not to trust polls. We know that people were misleading them intentionally. We know not to trust our broken Electoral College.
We know that we're one of the hotbeds of militia activity. We know T* supporters are behaving like Brownshirts and cops nationwide are enabling it.
My discussion group for the "Seeing White" podcast had some folks who are feeling optimistic. I'm not one of them, I'm just feeling so much dread.
It wasn't helped by the Governor declaring a preemptive state of emergency starting at 5pm this evening. There's all kinds of businesses boarded up.
Clearly everything will be done to protect property, not people, not our votes.
I'm wrapping up the last grocery pickup and getting fuel in the vehicles tomorrow. Then we're hunkering down. I'm going to open up a Zoom in the afternoon and invite folks to just come hangout online with us.
I'm already exhausted.
On the positive side of today. I was approved for 13 more weeks of pandemic unemployment assistance! I also delighted myself making a cover comic for my new journal, that I'll add to periodically, just for comics!
November
Here we are, firmly in autumn and working on eight months of COVID life. I see people taking about a "second lockdown" and here we've never left the first one. It feels naive to have ever hoped that we'd share Thanksgiving with our chosen family.
Tonight we checked in on tasks we want done before Tuesday evening. CK ordered more first aid supplies; we still can't easily find isopropyl alcohol, even the 70% type. I ordered groceries to pick up Tuesday afternoon.
We're making plans for kitten arrival, ordering litter boxes to replace the ones downstairs. It will be easier for Obie ultimately and we'll train the kitten to use them upstairs. This will let us close the downstairs and use the space for sorting, cleaning, etc.
Using one of my new journals from an earlier Maido subscription box to continue making comics. The square shape is perfect!
Hallowasn’t
We really don't do much anyway, but it felt extra sad this year turning out the porch light just in case anyone thought we might be offering treats
We got an invite over to a socially distant gathering, bit it came as I was making dinner. We both have been low energy today too, so we stuck with our plan to watch The Exorcist. CK has never seen it and it had been years since I'd seen it.
Today I'm extra grateful Obie wanted to take a nap with me.