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shadowkatI'm tired. And my allergies are making me crazy - between the heater, the dust, mold and tree pollen. I'm using a humidifier and air purifiers, which may require changing again soon. Also cleaned some stuff.
Yesterday and last week were exhausting. It's overcast today, and raining, which is kind of good - since it makes me less stir crazy. I like rainy days right now - I find them comforting. Sunny days make me restless. It's the oddest thing.
Talked to Wales finally, she's fine. Everyone thinks they may have had it - but aren't certain. I had something weird during Thanksgiving, way back in November, around November 18th - that I thought was just a cold and got weird. It became this dry chest cough that would not quit until sometime in February. I even got a chest x-ray because of it. And looking back over the journal entries...it sounds like a mild case of COVID. But there's no way of knowing, for certain, at least not without the antibody test. And an accurate one at that. They don't have it yet.
Oh, here's a link to a streaming of the MET at Home - singers from various countries around the world singing - The VOICE Must be Heard. It is a fund-raiser - so I'll warn you about that.
Wales hasn't done laundry either. Hers is in the basement, and she has to get the key. So she's been doing it in the sink, much as I have, until Saturday. Honestly who knew owning a washer and dryer was such a luxury? She said all the laundramats in her area were closed. Every one. Not one was open. They are all very small. My area does have laundramats open - one stated from 7am to 1am. I was surprised. She said she figures they don't want to touch the clothes. You can't send them out - because you risk having someone else touching your clothes. Think about it? How do you do laundry in a shared space with shared machines during a pandemic?
Church was on Zoom and a beautiful service, with the reading of a children's book, and the central theme being dealing with a life of uncertainty and being kind to oneself and others. One woman shared her story of being hospitalized with COVID and recovering - two weeks of sheer hell, and how in recovery, she'd broken out in a full body rash that was itchy. Weird virus - the symptoms seem to run the gamut.
What was inspiring about her story, was how various people in the Church's caring ministry reached out to help her, and how she managed to feel the flow of her spirit through it and find a way out the other side. We ended with the Beatles song, Let it Be. Now I'm listening to comic opera in Italian...and the radiator heat is playing havoc with my allergies again. But not like it did back in November, making me wonder if I had a mild case of this weird thing then? I hope not. I went to work during it. But so did everyone else in my workplace who had it. That's one of the things coming out about this - how our idiotic work culture makes people work while sick, and doesn't tell them to stay home. Also, methinks, biometric clocks may soon be a thing of the past.
1. Why You're So Irritated by Everything - if you are feeling cranky right about now? You aren't alone.
Sci-fi writer, John Scalzi posted a rant about the people on social media pressuring everyone to start a new hobby or discover something new, when he'd been busy getting a book out that made the best seller list, and wanted to sleep all the time.
While Dockhawk in FB posted on about people taking photographs in various areas of LA, while social distancing. He was upset they were taking these great shots and he wasn't able to. This in turn annoyed me, because I just posted a group of photos that I'd taken on a walk last night - to cheer myself up after an incredibly stressful day. It had cheered me up and made feel like I was in control of my anxiety and fear.
People can be selfish assholes under stress.
I am not immune. I apologized to my mother yesterday for losing it. I'd called her after doing two stressful things, I was proud I did them, but irritated because of the anxiety and stress. She innocently asked if there COVID-19 protocols in place at my apartment complex, stating that my brother's friends had protocols in place. (There aren't). And stressed I lost it.
At church today they dealt with the fact that we were all beginning to hit a wall. We've been quarantined now between 40-60 days depending on when you went on lock-down. More than a month. And there's no discernible end in sight, and if there is - it's not a safe or reassuring one.
m annoyed by fashion masks. I’m annoyed by quarantine overachievers. I’m annoyed by the self-appointed social distancing cops, though not as much as I’m infuriated by anti-social-distancing belligerents. This morning, as I broke down the empty boxes dumped in front of my apartment building by the terrible 22-year-old party monsters that live upstairs, I fantasized about how I might tell them off. On Zoom calls with friends, comparing recent sources of irritation has become a ritual. When I type “M” into my phone this week, it helpfully suggests “motherfuckers.”
I’m calling it: We’ve reached the irritation phase of this pandemic.
Whether you’re anxious to a clinical, diagnosable degree or simply in healthy proportion to the nerve-wracking day-to-day reality of living through a pandemic and economic standstill, constant worry is guaranteed to leave you on edge. How that heightened sense of nervous arousal will present itself might vary depending on who you are, your circumstances, or what day of the week it is. But if you’ve noticed your mood take a recent turn to pissiness, rest assured that you’re not alone.
Emotional “reactiveness” is a good indication of a person’s sense of existential balance. And irritability, in particular, is a hallmark of the anxious mind.
Why your brain is looking for a fight
It might seem odd that anxiety makes us so grumpy, but there’s a reason that “fight” is part of the fight/flight/freeze reaction. From a neuropsychological standpoint, it’s generally accepted that when people reflexively react to a perceived stressor in a way that’s out of proportion to any direct physical threat, the brain’s “primitive” subcortical and limbic regions are doing the heavy lifting of processing that stressor, without much help from the more evolutionarily sophisticated prefrontal cortex. In response to this heightened nervous arousal — aka anxiety — the brain triggers emotional responses, including anger or irritability.
Counterintuitively, this is a mechanism the brain uses to calm itself, the psychologist and author Kathleen Smith told me: “At first thought, conflict doesn’t seem like a great strategy for calming you down,” she wrote in an email. “But it’s actually quite adaptive. If I’m convinced that the other person is annoying, or wrong, and needs to alter their behavior, then I’m not the problem. So I can calm down a little bit when I tell myself that Bob is the one who needs to change his mind, apologize, go to therapy, whatever.”
So that peevish homunculus flipping tables in my brain when I see yet another loaf of sourdough on Instagram is actually trying to… calm me down? Yes, Smith says: “Experiencing anxiety as anger or irritability is one strategy our brain uses to manage the distress. For better or worse, we blame or focus on others’ perceived flaws as a way of calming ourselves down.”
How to quell the irritation
But how does one rein in that judgy, anxiety-fueled reaction? The most obvious solution is to work on addressing your anxiety head-on.
We can mitigate the anxiety of uncertain times by working to accept the unknown, though it’s not exactly the forte of our quirky Homosapien brains. The psychiatrist Jud Brewer, MD, recommends a combination of deep breathing and mindfulness to calm down your nervous system and ground you in the present moment.
Then there’s all the other stuff: Feel your feelings, get as much sleep and exercise as you can, eat well, drink water. Remember that alcohol and other mood-altering substances can make you more vulnerable to emotional ups and downs. And give yourself a breather from doomscrolling the horrors of today’s news.
You can also make a point of practicing kindness in place of lashing out. If you notice yourself on the verge of snapping at someone, take a deep breath and consider a more productive alternative. Talk to someone you trust about what’s on your mind, even if it’s as basic as, “I’m so annoyed by everything today, and it’s kind of bumming me out.”
And keep in mind that a similarly destructive homunculus is rampaging through others’ brains too — so they may not be at their kindest, most tolerant best right now. Before you react: listen. Don’t try to be right all the time. Give people the benefit of the doubt. It might help you both; studies show that acting with compassion can have a direct and positive effect on self-image, relationships with others, and psychological well-being.
2. Bob Dylan's 50 Greatest Songs Ranked
I've never been a fan of the song "Don't think twice, it's alright", unless of course it is sung by Joan Baez. Interesting story? Dylan allegedly wrote the song in a snit after he broke up with Baez. So when Baez sings it - it's a lovely commentary and somewhat ironical one on Dylan. (Dylan is one of those artists in which I love their songs, but can't stand them performing them or them personally.)
It does however bring forth a lovely memory of my old college friend, Richard Walker, who died of leukemia in 1989. After a boyfriend (we'd just broken up) sang the song in public to hurt me - it was in response to my passionate and angry poetry readings about love and friendship and loss. I was 21. He was 20. We were young and stupid and full of ourselves. Anyhow, Richard came up to me afterwards, and walked and talked with me for hours about the relationship, about what happened, and was exceedingly kind. I remember him clearer than the boy I had a romantic relationship with, the boy who got married and had a kid. Of the two men, Richard was the kinder one. A tall black man from Western Kansas, who had a voice that could melt your heart. He wanted to help the world. Switched his major from music to History. Kind and gentle, and filled with empathy and little judgement, the exact opposite of my boyfriend, who was shorter, white, from privileged white family in Georgie, and full of himself, and thought he was a great singer...and well he's not as good as Dylan.
The boyfriend went on to get married, become a psychologist/sociologist specializing in mindfulness in the Hudson River Valley, with a kid, and self-published his own albums. While Richard, bless his soul, died tragically of leukemia.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy the boyfriend survived and is happy. But I'll always miss Richard, who still resides in my heart and memories.
3. The Day The Native Americans Drove the KKK Out of Town
4. The Good Guy/Bad Guy Myth in Pop Culture
5. Gossiping may actually be Good. Uhm...okay.
6. What it's like to live in a california ghost town
7. Taking a break from the whole NY vs. the Corona Virus thing. I just know the numbers went up. I'm listening to opera at the moment, while the rain falls. Debating going downstairs to get yet another package. (It's the blueberry muffin mix.)
Yesterday and last week were exhausting. It's overcast today, and raining, which is kind of good - since it makes me less stir crazy. I like rainy days right now - I find them comforting. Sunny days make me restless. It's the oddest thing.
Talked to Wales finally, she's fine. Everyone thinks they may have had it - but aren't certain. I had something weird during Thanksgiving, way back in November, around November 18th - that I thought was just a cold and got weird. It became this dry chest cough that would not quit until sometime in February. I even got a chest x-ray because of it. And looking back over the journal entries...it sounds like a mild case of COVID. But there's no way of knowing, for certain, at least not without the antibody test. And an accurate one at that. They don't have it yet.
Oh, here's a link to a streaming of the MET at Home - singers from various countries around the world singing - The VOICE Must be Heard. It is a fund-raiser - so I'll warn you about that.
Wales hasn't done laundry either. Hers is in the basement, and she has to get the key. So she's been doing it in the sink, much as I have, until Saturday. Honestly who knew owning a washer and dryer was such a luxury? She said all the laundramats in her area were closed. Every one. Not one was open. They are all very small. My area does have laundramats open - one stated from 7am to 1am. I was surprised. She said she figures they don't want to touch the clothes. You can't send them out - because you risk having someone else touching your clothes. Think about it? How do you do laundry in a shared space with shared machines during a pandemic?
Church was on Zoom and a beautiful service, with the reading of a children's book, and the central theme being dealing with a life of uncertainty and being kind to oneself and others. One woman shared her story of being hospitalized with COVID and recovering - two weeks of sheer hell, and how in recovery, she'd broken out in a full body rash that was itchy. Weird virus - the symptoms seem to run the gamut.
What was inspiring about her story, was how various people in the Church's caring ministry reached out to help her, and how she managed to feel the flow of her spirit through it and find a way out the other side. We ended with the Beatles song, Let it Be. Now I'm listening to comic opera in Italian...and the radiator heat is playing havoc with my allergies again. But not like it did back in November, making me wonder if I had a mild case of this weird thing then? I hope not. I went to work during it. But so did everyone else in my workplace who had it. That's one of the things coming out about this - how our idiotic work culture makes people work while sick, and doesn't tell them to stay home. Also, methinks, biometric clocks may soon be a thing of the past.
1. Why You're So Irritated by Everything - if you are feeling cranky right about now? You aren't alone.
Sci-fi writer, John Scalzi posted a rant about the people on social media pressuring everyone to start a new hobby or discover something new, when he'd been busy getting a book out that made the best seller list, and wanted to sleep all the time.
While Dockhawk in FB posted on about people taking photographs in various areas of LA, while social distancing. He was upset they were taking these great shots and he wasn't able to. This in turn annoyed me, because I just posted a group of photos that I'd taken on a walk last night - to cheer myself up after an incredibly stressful day. It had cheered me up and made feel like I was in control of my anxiety and fear.
People can be selfish assholes under stress.
I am not immune. I apologized to my mother yesterday for losing it. I'd called her after doing two stressful things, I was proud I did them, but irritated because of the anxiety and stress. She innocently asked if there COVID-19 protocols in place at my apartment complex, stating that my brother's friends had protocols in place. (There aren't). And stressed I lost it.
At church today they dealt with the fact that we were all beginning to hit a wall. We've been quarantined now between 40-60 days depending on when you went on lock-down. More than a month. And there's no discernible end in sight, and if there is - it's not a safe or reassuring one.
m annoyed by fashion masks. I’m annoyed by quarantine overachievers. I’m annoyed by the self-appointed social distancing cops, though not as much as I’m infuriated by anti-social-distancing belligerents. This morning, as I broke down the empty boxes dumped in front of my apartment building by the terrible 22-year-old party monsters that live upstairs, I fantasized about how I might tell them off. On Zoom calls with friends, comparing recent sources of irritation has become a ritual. When I type “M” into my phone this week, it helpfully suggests “motherfuckers.”
I’m calling it: We’ve reached the irritation phase of this pandemic.
Whether you’re anxious to a clinical, diagnosable degree or simply in healthy proportion to the nerve-wracking day-to-day reality of living through a pandemic and economic standstill, constant worry is guaranteed to leave you on edge. How that heightened sense of nervous arousal will present itself might vary depending on who you are, your circumstances, or what day of the week it is. But if you’ve noticed your mood take a recent turn to pissiness, rest assured that you’re not alone.
Emotional “reactiveness” is a good indication of a person’s sense of existential balance. And irritability, in particular, is a hallmark of the anxious mind.
Why your brain is looking for a fight
It might seem odd that anxiety makes us so grumpy, but there’s a reason that “fight” is part of the fight/flight/freeze reaction. From a neuropsychological standpoint, it’s generally accepted that when people reflexively react to a perceived stressor in a way that’s out of proportion to any direct physical threat, the brain’s “primitive” subcortical and limbic regions are doing the heavy lifting of processing that stressor, without much help from the more evolutionarily sophisticated prefrontal cortex. In response to this heightened nervous arousal — aka anxiety — the brain triggers emotional responses, including anger or irritability.
Counterintuitively, this is a mechanism the brain uses to calm itself, the psychologist and author Kathleen Smith told me: “At first thought, conflict doesn’t seem like a great strategy for calming you down,” she wrote in an email. “But it’s actually quite adaptive. If I’m convinced that the other person is annoying, or wrong, and needs to alter their behavior, then I’m not the problem. So I can calm down a little bit when I tell myself that Bob is the one who needs to change his mind, apologize, go to therapy, whatever.”
So that peevish homunculus flipping tables in my brain when I see yet another loaf of sourdough on Instagram is actually trying to… calm me down? Yes, Smith says: “Experiencing anxiety as anger or irritability is one strategy our brain uses to manage the distress. For better or worse, we blame or focus on others’ perceived flaws as a way of calming ourselves down.”
How to quell the irritation
But how does one rein in that judgy, anxiety-fueled reaction? The most obvious solution is to work on addressing your anxiety head-on.
We can mitigate the anxiety of uncertain times by working to accept the unknown, though it’s not exactly the forte of our quirky Homosapien brains. The psychiatrist Jud Brewer, MD, recommends a combination of deep breathing and mindfulness to calm down your nervous system and ground you in the present moment.
Then there’s all the other stuff: Feel your feelings, get as much sleep and exercise as you can, eat well, drink water. Remember that alcohol and other mood-altering substances can make you more vulnerable to emotional ups and downs. And give yourself a breather from doomscrolling the horrors of today’s news.
You can also make a point of practicing kindness in place of lashing out. If you notice yourself on the verge of snapping at someone, take a deep breath and consider a more productive alternative. Talk to someone you trust about what’s on your mind, even if it’s as basic as, “I’m so annoyed by everything today, and it’s kind of bumming me out.”
And keep in mind that a similarly destructive homunculus is rampaging through others’ brains too — so they may not be at their kindest, most tolerant best right now. Before you react: listen. Don’t try to be right all the time. Give people the benefit of the doubt. It might help you both; studies show that acting with compassion can have a direct and positive effect on self-image, relationships with others, and psychological well-being.
2. Bob Dylan's 50 Greatest Songs Ranked
I've never been a fan of the song "Don't think twice, it's alright", unless of course it is sung by Joan Baez. Interesting story? Dylan allegedly wrote the song in a snit after he broke up with Baez. So when Baez sings it - it's a lovely commentary and somewhat ironical one on Dylan. (Dylan is one of those artists in which I love their songs, but can't stand them performing them or them personally.)
It does however bring forth a lovely memory of my old college friend, Richard Walker, who died of leukemia in 1989. After a boyfriend (we'd just broken up) sang the song in public to hurt me - it was in response to my passionate and angry poetry readings about love and friendship and loss. I was 21. He was 20. We were young and stupid and full of ourselves. Anyhow, Richard came up to me afterwards, and walked and talked with me for hours about the relationship, about what happened, and was exceedingly kind. I remember him clearer than the boy I had a romantic relationship with, the boy who got married and had a kid. Of the two men, Richard was the kinder one. A tall black man from Western Kansas, who had a voice that could melt your heart. He wanted to help the world. Switched his major from music to History. Kind and gentle, and filled with empathy and little judgement, the exact opposite of my boyfriend, who was shorter, white, from privileged white family in Georgie, and full of himself, and thought he was a great singer...and well he's not as good as Dylan.
The boyfriend went on to get married, become a psychologist/sociologist specializing in mindfulness in the Hudson River Valley, with a kid, and self-published his own albums. While Richard, bless his soul, died tragically of leukemia.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy the boyfriend survived and is happy. But I'll always miss Richard, who still resides in my heart and memories.
3. The Day The Native Americans Drove the KKK Out of Town
4. The Good Guy/Bad Guy Myth in Pop Culture
5. Gossiping may actually be Good. Uhm...okay.
6. What it's like to live in a california ghost town
7. Taking a break from the whole NY vs. the Corona Virus thing. I just know the numbers went up. I'm listening to opera at the moment, while the rain falls. Debating going downstairs to get yet another package. (It's the blueberry muffin mix.)
no subject
Date: 2020-04-26 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-26 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-26 10:28 pm (UTC)My next apartment had only 2 machines and very often the dryer wasn't working. I was very happy to move into my next apartment for a number of reasons. A major one was a washer and dryer included. In fact since I got the key before my official move in date I actually went there a week early just to do my laundry!
This was my next apartment and it had hookups only, but that was ok because I brought the machines from home when we sold the house. And I still have to go use laundromats when I need to wash the comforters because they're too big for the machines and take some time to dry anyway. But we rarely need to do that.
Besides money (which is not as relevant, since costs are high either way for years), having to go to a laundromat is a major time sink, especially if one doesn't have a car and has to use public transit. Once could easily take the better part of a day to do only that. Here at home it takes me half a day as well, but I can do other things while it's running in the other room.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-26 10:46 pm (UTC)I remember really hunting for one - but alas, no, they all cost too much. I'm going to have to move out of the city for that or get a house in the city, neither of which I can afford.
Oh well, in a way the basement washer/dryer situation is better than most people have. It could be worse - my last apartment was in the top of a brownstone and it had no washer/dryer - I had to lug stuff to a laundramat. If I was still there - I'd be stuck doing laundry in my sink for the foreseeable future.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-26 11:55 pm (UTC)Thanks for the story links too -- very much enjoyed the one about Robeson County: "“In 1958, people understood that the Klan didn’t have a side worth defending.” Indeed.
Also thanks for the one about changes in storytelling. It's timely for something I'm drafting.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-27 02:13 am (UTC)