Work was okay, even if I think I spent at least 5 hours in Zoom meetings and got nothing else done all day. I had a whopping tech problem come up within the first few hours of work and then spent the next hour going over tech crap with my boss. She couldn't get the thing to work either, so she sent it to someone else and then THAT person got it to work, and then my boss got it to work, and I was all "see, this is why I hate reporting that I found a computer error, it usually boils down to it's just me and everyone else says it's fine!" The afternoon training went similarly on finding More Shit That's Wrong. I got a lot more work done on my knitalong project.

I also heard from my boss that the portals are at 500 right now and what with the phones constantly being busy with people who need their hands held while they are walked through the simplest of things (per Coworker Sarah), well, our portals are just going to go up to 700, 800, 900... there's nothing we can do about it because god forbid a phone not be answered!

Two days after her birthday, Mom finally got around to opening the cards I sent.
After texting me, "cute picture of the bathroom" (she wanted a photo of my disco bathroom) and announcing that CSU "canceled their classes" (they didn't, it's just online...as usual, UC lags on shit like that), she finally got to it. Her reaction (followed by four heart emojis and a smiley face): "I finally opened my cards!* Yours were beautiful and perfect! I loved the bracelet and the bookmark. I cried when I read your cards. Made me miss you. We will be together before too long I feel! Don't give up! We will get there! Then long hugs for you and me!" Then she went on to ask if I got the books she ordered yet. And later she did send me a video of wearing the bracelet, with "Did you interrogate my girlfriend?" playing in the background.

* I dearly hope she was too busy getting laid to do it, that would justify that one :p

It's been two months since I got groceries! I doubt I'll make it to three months because I'll run out of water or Excedrin or mouthwash or something (sigh), but I'm pretty proud of that. Meanwhile, Mon offered again to buy me some takeout and I told her that I'm so overloaded I cannot deal with the food packaging issue too on top of everything at work. I can't take on New Challenges In Fear right now, y'all. I'd rather just not eat much any more (which I'm not doing this week, I'm sick of most of my remaining "meal" food* and I'm trying not to eat the good stuff** remaining until I snap and have to), which is great since I don't exercise as much as I used to, etc. I'm relating to this video quite a bit. Having memory issues at work, I feel like I am 51% on the ball there. If I had a dollar for the number of times I said I didn't remember to my boss just in the hourlong meeting...

* Mostly soups and some stuffing.
** Frozen food--i.e. actual meals.

So there's this hippie lecture summit thing going on and I sometimes listen to the lectures, which are up for 48 hours. Obviously all of these things were recorded before you-know-what happened, so none of that is a factor in whatever hippie-dippie stuff they are discussing, like manifestation. I don't really know what to make of the topic because I think you can manage to manifest some small stuff, but fuck if I know on big things. Sometimes shit works and sometimes it doesn't is what I got there from personal, practical experience. Anyway, I was listening to a lecture by some guy I used to be on the mailing list of before I had enough of that, and he's chipperly going on about how "thoughts become things"* and how we're living in a fairy tale and how we should be imagining things to make them come true. And I'm thinking things like "well, I guess I have done that and yet obviously that isn't paying off or going, now is it?" and "I seriously wonder if this guy is thinking ANYTHING differently now that THIS shit has annihilated our lives?"

* I'm not gonna link to him, but if you want to know who it is, that is his huge catchphrase.

So I go check his website and sure 'nuff, he's got a video on coronavirus up and it's all about how the universe is all perfect and there's no accidents and there's a reason for this and "its's the reason of a healing." Look, I get that some folks gotta BRIGHTSIDE!!!!! but uh, there's a lot of fucking deaths going on right now? That are not healing? Unless we're healing the planet by eliminating human beings from it, because I guess we can make that argument. Anyway, he of course loops it all back to his catchphrase, and that life is beautiful! (... only inside your apartment...) "Enjoy your life! Have your dreams!" Relax!...well, not at the grocery store, even he admits that one. Uh... seriously, dreams are hard right now. What's next in this chapter? Uh...NOBODY KNOWS? Your dreams may no longer be possible now? Just....argh.

It's hard to believe in hippie shit at this point in life, I have to say. Now, my whole God thing is probably different from most people's and god knows Melinda doesn't agree with me on it, but after reading When Bad Things Happen To Good People, I agree with the author: God is not omnipotent. God doesn't like it when your three-year-old gets cancer or a tsunami hits either, but for whatever reason, God can no longer stop it. God, angels, gods, whatever beings are out there have limited ability to do miracles. Things only work sometimes. Also, this Epicurus quote. I'd rather believe that if God exists, he's not omnipotent, rather than an omnipotent asshole who chooses to do nothing because "God has a plan." God may have a plan, but if so, I don't think it's going well right now?

What I do buy into is the Monitor (transcript within so you can read about it), discussed by Emily and Amelia Nagoski in their brilliant book Burnout. I don't think I ever finished reviewing the book on the book blog because it was just so in depth on the topic, but it's extremely good, and their "Feminist Survival Project 2020" podcast is a fucking godsend, especially now when they are all, "We knew 2020 would be bad, but not THIS bad."

(I also like The Counterlife, on the life you should be having right now. Right now I would be in tech week for Robin Hood: The Musical, watching Scott do an excellent job as the evil Prince John, while I mill about as an extra. And we'd all still be going to karaoke. And there still might be hope for many things.)

Anyway, back to the Feminist Survival Project: I really liked the episode "Foop" (they made up a word), which is kind of "The Monitor" for spring 2020. We all have this thing in our heads that's monitoring how long it takes us to do something, against how long it should take us to do something. And how all the protesters are losing their fucking minds because their expectations of being able to go to church at Easter were thwarted. And how we have no fucking idea when or if this will ever end, so we are having huge problems with our Monitors.

There is no transcript for "Foop" up yet, but I shall quote the relevant stuff from "The Monitor" transcript here:

Your brain switches its assessment and all of a sudden it decides this goal is not attainable. You are never going to get to the mall or home and it pushes you off an emotional cliff into a pit of despair. And you go from being like, "Get out of my way, I can't believe this" to, "*sobbing* I'm never gonna get there. I just wanted to go home. When can I go home?" At which point, when I teach this, most people are thinking of some specific relationship they've had, some specific semester, they've had, some jobs they've had, projects they've worked on. There's usually something where you're like, "Aahhh".
Before that happens or sometimes after it happens, there's a moment, a pivot point where you may be oscillating between the frustrated rage and the helpless despair. This is a feeling everyone we know has had, but there is no name for it. So we gave this feeling a name. When you are oscillating between the frustrated rage of "Nothing's going to stop me from doing this, I'm going to get this done. These little people all just need to get out of my way" to the helpless despair of "I can't do it. I'm never going to be able to do it," we call that oscillation "Foop". Like poop with an F, Foop. And it's an experience all of us have.
So this is where frustration comes from. This is the complete emotional process and cycle of the monitor."

Yes, things are suddenly a billion times more infinitely difficult than I thought. But I don't know how to readjust the Monitor's expectations at this point, other than "at least two years from now," but could be even more every time I see another article on how we'll never have a vaccine or may not have one for even longer.

Meanwhile, Scott and I haven't spoken in over a month now, which is the longest we've ever gone. We haven't gone more than a few weeks before and usually vacation (for me) was going on. It'll end tomorrow, assuming we both show up for the online reading....and then who knows, maybe we set a new record for not speaking after that. But at this point I feel like my Monitor has given up. It's pooped out. It sees no end in sight. I want more but I don't feel like it's doable between the shitty circumstances and the "trying not to freak him out" shitty ballet from hell I am tired of trying to figure out the steps to, and probably this and whatall else. I need to change the effort that I am investing...well, hoping, I guess. Change the expectancy, i.e. having any.

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