Distressed, Depressed, and Down: Where To From Here?

Despite being relentlessly critical of stuff, I have always tended to focus on the arc of progress--that things will get better even amid the bumps of today.  This weekend?  Damn.  An entire country mostly disappears beneath a volcano (any idea of how the Tongans are doing?), the Supreme Court continues to reveal itself to be not just partisan but enthusiastically so, gutting reasonable policies and putting much of the progress of the past fifty years in doubt, a "good" hostage crisis causing us to experience relief or just more anxiety, Trump amping the white supremacy with insufficient outrage aimed against him, stories of African-American voters unlikely to turnout since Sinema/Manchin have blocked any progress on voting rights, the likelihood that the GOP's bet to ally with the pandemic so that Biden would pay for the continued pandemic will pay off, etc.  

I can go on.  This is definitely the winter of my discontent.  I was hoping pre-omicron that we'd have a bit of return to normalcy--return to classes, in-person events, more skiing, actually going to an ISA conference after missing the last two of those.  And now all we have is uncertainty.  I haven't felt like blogging because I didn't want to just whine and complain, but I also wanted to mark, as I indicated in my first quarantine post way back when, my descent into madness.  And I am just so mad these days.  So much so that I am crapping on the joy to my friends that is wordle.

It is definitely getting in the way of my work as I so easily distracted these days.  I tend not to get depressed, but I kind of feel that way now.  I am one of the lucky ones--I haven't lost any immediate relatives to COVID, my relatives have managed through this economically ok, the next generation is mostly in pretty good shape even though most of them have had covid (LA Spew continues to dodge the disease better than I can dodge a wrench).  And damn, not must my younger relatives but all the folks I meet in my classes and I see out in the world are so impressive.  I hate that we are giving them a shitty present and a very uncertain future, but I have more faith in them, in their tolerance, in their creativity, than I do in those that came before us.  I guess that is the reed upon which I am placing my hope these days.  

That and endless tv/movies streamed to my house help keep me from descending too far.  I hope you can find ways to get through this awful time.  As they say, the only way out is through.