Last week was exhausting; the end of Daylight Savings Time always throws me off, but I really felt it this year. I also got double vaxxed the next day, so I wasn’t feeling the greatest last Monday. Add to that a trip to the pharmacy after work on Tuesday (and using up my energy walking home), laser on Wednesday, and my mind generally shutting off around 2 PM every day, by Friday afternoon I was ready to hide in the apartment for the next three days.
I tend to get overwhelmed by the number of things to do, the need to prioritize, and the limited amounts of time and energy I have. My brain turns everything into obligations, and my decision paralysis and instinct to procrastinate are activated. It usually makes me feel better to just do the thing, but I spend so much time just trying to psych myself up to do it. If I weren’t so exhausted and overloaded at the end of the day, I would be more interested in just hanging around with someone, or going some place to bask in the presence of others.
I did manage to get out of the apartment on the weekend, though. My friends Steve and Alecia bought me a ticket to go to the Dan Mangan concert with them on Sunday night. It was a really good show, and the opening act (Aysanabee) was particularly spellbinding. Steve and I went to a Dan Mangan concert back in February 2015 when my friend Dave sent me a pair of tickets (IIRC he couldn’t go because of his job taking him overseas), so it was nice to have a follow up to that experience. It had also been a long time since I’ve been out to see some live music; this was much needed.
The horrors in Gaza continue. Thousands of children dead, unspeakable sights becoming commonplace, and a lot of government people are just saying “Get used to it”. I want the hostages returned safe, but I worry that Netanyahu doesn’t even care about them so much as his chance to wipe Gaza off the map. I can only speak to my perspective as an outsider, and don’t any familial or cultural ties to the region. What Hamas did on October 7th was inexcusable, but the response seems equivalent to a police officer shooting all the black babies in a maternity ward because he believed they were just future criminals.
I worry about the implications this has for the future, particularly the actions (or lack thereof) taken by Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau. The naked with-us-or-against-us posturing and the steps taken to stifle dissent. Is this going to deliver the governments of the United States and Canada into the hands of salivating would-be autocrats? I’m also painfully aware of the major end-times boner these events give to some sects of evangelical Christianity that see Israel and the Jews as only the means to their desired endgame of Armageddon.
Even with the repudiation the anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ candidates received at the polls in the States last week, it’s becoming clear that a faction of people who don’t believe in democracy and human rights that are way too close to the levers of power right now.