The Weekly Round-up

March 26, 2021 Edition

I keep thinking that maybe I need to move the idea of this weekly reflection to another day because, as I’ms starting to see here, over and over, Fridays are not my best days in terms of perspective. As I was starting another, “well, this was a rough week,” intro sentences, I became acutely aware that I’ve said that almost every week. Something to consider, I suppose.

Anyway, it’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to.

That said, I have especially heavy boots this week. Heavy boots, in case you’re wondering, is a wonderful idea that came to me by way of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a book about a precocious young lad trying to make sense of a world in which his dad was killed in the World Trade Center bombings just months before the events in the book take place. Heavy boots is his way of talking about grief and, while I’m not necessarily talking about grief, maybe I should start thinking of it that way.

I try to keep out of job talk on here. After suffering too many really awful instances of me flying too close to the corporate sun, I try to stay away from that altogether. So, dear reader, you cannot know anything about where I work or who I’m talking about, but I just need to say this whole week was ruined by one of my jobs. It’s already a situation that has been toxic for many years. Unfortunately for me, it’s focused around an implemented idea for which I deeply, deeply crave success. I believe this type of work could change the world–if only we could all get along. The truth is that five years here has taught me there are people who cannot get along, who cannot be self-aware, who cannot embrace challenge, who are power hungry to a fault, who are small people.

And though I’ve never considered what I’m feeling grief, I think it must be; I feel heartbroken, I think, every day–for so many reasons. I have no hope left. I’ve done all I can do and there’s nowhere left to turn. I think maybe my hope in the idea is gone, stolen by these people who I find really, truly disgusting. I shouldn’t say or imply all; there are many, many good people fighting this same fight that I am, feeling just as exhausted, just as disrespected, and maybe growing just as hopeless. It’s the death of my dream here. I feel sick about it. And I’m realizing I have to let it go. There’s no way I can work my magic here.

It feels like giving up. I’m agnostic about giving up pointless things; “Bring that on,” I say. I’m happy to walk away from frivolity. Nothing is important enough to physically fight about it and I choose my battles carefully. I only have so much energy. What I’m starting to realize is that I only have so much energy because my job is sucking the life out of me. I’ve been thinking through all of these health “issues” I’ve been having for the past…oh…four years: lack of energy, lethargy, hopelessness, sleeping fitfully but oversleeping alarms, weight gain, migraines…the list goes on and on. Repeatedly, I’ve been asked whether or not I have depression. “No, no, I don’t, I don’t think…” I always say.

I think I’ve had grief, heartsickness, over seeing how this would end four years ago and trying to scratch and claw my way through compounded by stress brought on by being utterly powerless to do anything about it. It’s gotten progressively worse because of accumulation of hurt and emotional trauma brought on by vindictiveness and the worst of the “mean girls” syndrome as it has calcified into middle-aged white ladies living on nothing but fear of a loss of some kind of imagined power and white fragility.

This has been my week. It’s Friday and I’m going to bed at 8:30 because I can’t take another conversation like the one I had today.

I need to re-think everything.