I’m writing this on the longest night of the year, at the highest latitude I’ve ever lived at. Not only is this the longest night, but it gets darker earlier and stays dark later than anywhere else I’ve been. Tomorrow the sun will be out a few more minutes than it was today, and the next day, a few minutes for, until six months from now, when it will be full daylight until nearly 10 pm, and maybe I will have found a new home, and we will be looking forward to a trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the autumn. And maybe my friends and family, many of whom are immunocompromised, will no longer have to fear death and permanent disability from going outside. The return of the sun is a reminder that there is always hope. But for now…
I’m angry. Like incandescently glowing with rage. I can’t imagine everyone else doesn’t share my mood.
This time last year we were looking forward to the promise of a vaccine. An end was in sight! I must have been uncharacteristically optimistic to not predict that the same belligerent cohort who decided wearing a small filter over their face holes to keep themselves and others from dying miserably of a novel virus was a bridge too far would also make opposing all other mitigating steps an integral part of their identity.
Of course they would.
Which is not to render the powerful in the corporations and governments of the world blameless. Hoarding the vaccine, refusing to make the formula open-source. I just don’t have the energy for analysis or explanation after nearly two years. There’s only white-hot rage left.
And the concerning thing is that I’m sitting here calmly typing this. I’m not out in the streets, or pointlessly calling politicians who have never once had to face a consequence of their (in)actions, or organizing vaccine drives or awareness campaigns. I’m the human avatar of the shrug emoji.
But hey, we’re all here, right? Our subconsciouses taking over the moment to moment work of analyzing, theorizing, figuring out each possible outcome of every likely (and unlikely) situation, and dumping the wastewater of Anxiety into our consciouses so that we can continue our day-to-day responsibilities so we can pay all the bills that seem to have missed that we’re in the midst of an apocalypse. Just sitting at the desks tucked into bedrooms and dining rooms, or in front of the TV with our Emotional Support Ice Cream, calmly and quiescently enraged.
So that’s been my last few months. Speaking of desks tucked into bedrooms, working from home has been an interesting, and I think positive experience. I’m still getting the lay of the industry, but I feel more confident every day. I have met my co-workers – at least those who are local – a couple of times and they seem nice. Doing my work from my own space means I don’t get into those weird office politics and stress, etc. All my supervisors have to judge me by is the quality of my work – not whether my “tone” is non-threatening, or how charming I am, or whether they saw me roll my eyes that one time. Ignoring the six months I did contract work after we moved here, I don’t think I’ve ever had a workplace where I was treated with even the minimum of respect. And I stayed years in those jobs, every year feeling more and more trapped, my work self-esteem plummeting with each quarter spent in those spaces. Working from home helps me turn off my hyper-vigilance, which was probably the one thing that kept me employed by people who hated me for so long. Some survival skills are dubious at best.
And yet I forgot the good news. Like the glimmer of hope that the return of the sun portends, after years of being in an abusive relationship with past employers, I will be receiving a bonus this year. I will take this as a sign of better things to come.
And here I feel I need to apologize – I hate to make such a negative post. But a negative blog post is better than complete absence. Perhaps I’ll do a drunk Witcher live-blog for balance.
nerdycellist 