chips fall where they may
A PARTIAL LIST OF MY CURRENT GRIEVANCES
- Menstruating
- Because of the above, a complete Cathy-comic cliche Trader Joe’s grocery bag consisting of chocolate and cheese
- Legs feel weird
- In a slow-motion email argument with an extremely passive-aggressive London librarian who will NOT leave well enough alone
- He likes to reply with long copypasted explanations of policy that are completely orthogonal to the thing we are arguing about
- I’m really starting to hate this guy
- I feel that I am too dumb and too distractible for my job
- I often feel no enjoyment in my job whatsoever and would quit except who does that? It makes no sense with a good salary and a fat 401(k) and a kid going to college and old age coming up
- I do not want a different job
- Unless maybe it were sticking together hundreds of PDFs to make one long PDF and then paginating everything and making all the pages the same size and such, as I enjoy that intensely
- Feeling responsible for my entire family’s mental well-being
- My kid is not always having the best of times lately; some of it is normal angst, and some is Extra
- I feel like I have to not only manage that, but manage family members’ reactions to it
- This is exhausting
- And it doesn’t matter that I objectively don’t have to do it; the feeling is still there
- Let it go; let it GOOOOOOOOOOOOO
- Taking time off this week that is not going to be exactly how I planned it
- Had some “alone in the house or nearly so” time scheduled but now LT will be home too
- This results from circumstances beyond his control so I am not mad
- But it still ends up feeling like nothing ever works out
- Which could be because of point 1
- I don’t understand my weird need to be alone and I feel guilty having the slightest glimmer of displeasure at the news that my beloved will be near me after all
- Which is stupid and I am allowed to have feelings
- And yet, spiral (see point 1)
- I am possibly just shy about letting him know exactly how many hours in a row I can read without doing anything else, and all the stupid things I eat for lunch
- A near-complete absence of common sense and reason from discourse about politics or public life, replaced by emotion-filled shrieking and hyperbole on all sides
- Tension among competing sentiments re: friendship
- “Wow, so much fun to be had in this great city, I wish to enjoy it with my friends”
- “No one talk to me ever again, I wish to stay in my house forever”
- I am actually starting to like and look forward to a dumb television show (The 100) that I started solely to keep the teen company during the traditional rewatch that leads up to a new season
- It is still very dumb don’t get me wrong
- But now it’s dumb in a way that I crave
- I have to get a follow-up ultrasound, even though my mammogram was normal, because my breasts are “extremely dense”
- That somehow sounds like an insult about my breasts
- A conference I usually attend is going to be in Chicago this year
- On the one hand, I suppose it’s nice not to have to travel, so I can stay home and Take Care Of Everyone’s Feelings, in addition to working at my job and running my domicile
- Which (see above) is stressful and unenjoyable and is not 100% focused on sticking together PDFs
- On the other, because it’s so close I’ll probably be expected to come to the office between sessions, and there won’t be any hotel naps or sneaking off to investigate an unfamiliar city
- On the one hand, I suppose it’s nice not to have to travel, so I can stay home and Take Care Of Everyone’s Feelings, in addition to working at my job and running my domicile
- In conclusion, fuck everything
—mimi smartypants sign here _____________________________________