10 Questions: 6. Describe one thing you'd like to achieve by this time next year. Why is this important to you? I'm not going to repost my answer to this, but it boiled down to "I have no idea if anything I'd like to do is doable and I can't really work towards any of it unless an opportunity happens." It was like that, but whinier.

Supplemental Question: As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, what is one thing that you find yourself reassessing in terms of the future? (For example, personal relationships/ your relationship with money / with Work / with technology/ the media / body image / with your kids/ family members) These days, we can't keep a relationship going without contact. Which some people are better at than others. I feel like I could end up losing a lot of people without our usual ways to connect and if they aren't willing to communicate via text or email or whatever online, then it's going to be gone. I can't get anyone of this population to meet with me online, so what the hell else is there? I don't know what to do. I am building some new relationships with people who want to, and that's great. I just don't know how to keep certain people who briefly surface and then go deep again. I want them to be there if we can ever leave the house and be together again, but will we have any connection or ability to? Are they lost forever already? Also, having to treat all other humans like they and we are biohazards fucks with me so hard I can't even deal with it.

Work was exhausting and I wanted to scream from about 1-4. I had two giant fuckups within an hour that I had to get Lioness to fix/help with, I got asked to fix a bunch of things, I can't even make it through the goddamned emails and I need some time from BUT THE EMAILS to do my actual job.... again. Also, I still have to print out 110+ labels for mailing manually the next few days, sheesh. Though I am pretty confident that the two who are allowed to go into the office can do stuff....sometime, I guess? I'm getting "where's my Important Document" emails from every single international client these days I also ticked off my boss when I said we had to print the labels on the day they got mailed and she was all (note: this was delivered as nicely as possible and god knows she was trying, but I could still tell she was mad and she was right to be) "I KNOW I told you this, they said they don't reuse the tracking numbers for like a month, we established this." Sigh. I apologized again and again today. I just suck. I just suck so hard.

As for today's work meeting:

(a) The new hire was announced...and it was not Lioness, so I am guessing maybe she did not apply after all? Instead, the winner is our remaining temp, who I probably last mentioned here in March because she started the day before the shutdown and I haven't had much contact with her since other than group meeting chats since she's been on the public service side. I don't know her very well other than in the "she seems nice and certainly outdoorsy because she's always going running/hiking" sort of way, but hopefully we shall all get on, and for once they might have enough younger employees that losing a temp won't totally screw them on the phones (I suspect her six months was about up as well anyway). And she's definitely been trained in a good chunk of the office by now, so there's that! I thought about texting Former Coworker Sarah about it but (a) Lioness probably already did and (b) it might bum her out, I dunno. I feel like we have been through SO MANY PEOPLE applying for that job. Hannah (now in scheduling and not talking to me), Luis (now elsewhere), Sarah (sigh), Christine (somehow didn't get the job after 15 years of related experience), whoever the heck else got as far as interview round one that I don't know.... and now the long nightmare is finally over, I guess? Well, she starts October 6, we'll see how it goes fully staffed....eventually....god, I can't wait to pass some of this shit onto them, I'm so lost now.

(b) One of my coworkers--the one who's been camping and went ziplining in fire air--is going to San Diego this weekend to swim with the sea otters. I cannot make up these details, y'all. I think I shall dub her "Adventure Girl" if I need to specifically refer to her in the future for whatever. I don't really super need to nickname her since her name's not massively unusual nor is it duplicated in the journal already, but it might amuse me to do it?

Seriously, it makes me wonder. I stay inside almost all of the time, I'm a good girl, I don't go out, I don't get exposed to people, and she's off having a life and seeing her mom and having fun and going to the office and nothing bad happens to her? Lioness goes to and throws parties and doesn't get it? If 200000 people have died and whatnot from being around other people, how are my coworkers having fun and having a life and not catching it?!?!? Why do I even bother trying to be careful with my life?

Then again: I don't actually want to throw any parties or go ziplining or go camping (would have to do alone, blech). What I desperately want to do is hug people, sing karaoke, go to the bar with my friends, get my hair redyed, be in a play rehearsal (online or IRL, just any will do), and go on vacation and stay at a friend's house and not be home for at least a week. I want to go hang out in stores for an hour or two and generally be able to go out in the world without constantly thinking about virus with every step I take (outside the patio). But I can't do anything of that and stay alive, right?

I guess my Tier 2 of that list of what I want to do that's not totally deadly would be...I dunno, get takeout, except at some point I still have to be closer than six feet to get the food from someone and/or pay for it, so... never fucking mind.

I swear I could deal with it all better if we only had to wear masks and not touch and didn't have to worry about the six feet (preferably more, preferably a lot more) thing. Oh yeah, and not avoid the indoors. That too.

I went outside during lunch and was out for 15 minutes and then someone above me sneezed. I held my breath and went inside and closed the screen door.

I did hear back from Eva wanting to get together for lunch sometime! Huzzah! So there is that.

Satire class started out badly when my old computer decided to crash the Zoom and it usually takes like 15 minutes to reload itself and all the programs again. AGAIN I went to my new computer and tried to load that up. But both computers AND my phone refused to load my email so I could get back into the Zoom, for a half hour. So much for fucking technology, and what a fucking waste of an hour-plus class to have that go on. What is the point of the new laptop if freaking Yahoo mail won't goddamned load on anything? So I missed the whole lecture on lists and what everyone else did. Though I did end up showing my list at the end of class and it actually went over pretty well and got some laughs, go figure.

Other than that, we talked about doing monologues from the POV of oh, any random object around your house, as satire. I actually got more inspired by this and wrote one from the POV of that animated candle, and another one from the point of view of Virginia of the "Meet Virginia" song by Train. I tried doing some of the revisions they suggested for the list I wrote (life ruining parties as bad as gender reveal ones), but I'm not sure if I want it to go so much like a gender reveal so much. I preferred it more "people throwing parties over stupid ideas, like being caught embezzling or cheating on the wife with a student." I dunno if I'll turn in a revised version for class or not, we'll see.

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