Year 2 - Day 148 - Tired

Well, as I told mother tonight, the meditation exercises that I've been doing for four years now are definitely helping. I'm finding it easier and easier to let go of thoughts or watch them float on by. Along with information that people throw at me, I find it easier to forget it. I forgot almost everything my co-workers told me today, and pretty much everything mother told me about all the gallivanting about my brother is doing.

Mother: Your brother's lovely news and summer is beginning to bug me. I want to do all the things he's doing - I feel cooped up and it will never get better.
Me: Well meditation is helping me, I've forgotten half of what you've told me already. I just don't care. However I'd kill right now to spend time with friends at a beach house somewhere. I need a vacation - I've decided to take one around labor day weekend and go into the city and see Central Park and the Highland. I'd prefer to go somewhere - with no people, but alas, outside of Greenwood Cemetery - that doesn't appear to be possible.

There are days I wish I owned a car, could still drive and had no anxiety regarding either. But they are fleeting and I'll get over it.

The one thing I can't quite forget is how many people have died of COVID in the US, nor can I stop keeping count. This compulsive need to check every so often won't quite leave me. I have gotten better about not checking, in January 2020 through pretty much January 2021, I was checking the COVID MAP OF DOOM four times a day. Now? I check it maybe once or twice a week, if that. I don't want to forget it - because I want to remember those who've been lost - even if they are just numbers on a map.

It's been a long week, and I find my thoughts want to just float by like clouds on an ever-shifting horizon. Today I was back in the office - with about ten other people. I only saw six of them, and only talked to five.
One had barricaded himself behind stacks of paper in the conference room, every once and a while I'd get a sighting.

All, with the exception of the guy barricading himself in the conference room, want to work remotely full time. I can handle the hybrid. But I cannot handle returning en mass, nor can anyone else. Which makes me think with the Delta and apparently now, according to Babs, the Delta Plus, wandering about...we'll stay hybrid. My co-workers are hoping we'll be all sent home full time again.

So much has changed and continues to change in such a short period of time, that I've lost track, and feel at this point that I'm just letting myself float down the rapids with the rest of the debris - no longer fighting to swim upstream. I'm just tired. So is mother for that matter.

The New York News Media for want of anything better to do, has decided to pick apart Andrew Cuomo's Governorship, along with the events leading up to his resignation, and inclusive of speculation on his state of mind and what he was thinking and doing during all of it. God. Our media is insane. Note to self - never become famous or a leader of anything that will garner media attention. I have decided living in obscurity is a gift.

COVID
( NY Times Briefing )

On Twitter - shipperx, who lives in Alabama, was tweeting that everyone she knows has had the virus. Her sister's cleaning lady died of it. Her Trumper's neighbors across the street got it. And the hospitals are overrun. Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Kentucky, and Louisiana are all in trouble.

And someone I don't know, posted that his big takeaway from this is how many people are so unwilling to do a small thing to protect others. It's not hard to wear a mask. In the City, we all wear masks for the most part. I do remove it when I'm outdoors, and not close to people. But keep in mind, I live in a city, so...

We've become used to wearing them.

It's like everyone has a different experience - my brother seems to be out of the pandemic. It's not really affecting him at all, or his family that much. They are socializing, traveling, etc without any problems. While my mother, father, and I are highly affected by it - and the pandemic in some respects has turned our lives upside down and sideways.

***

New York Governor or "new head of Crazy Org"

At work, we all pondered what effect the change in governorship would have on crazy organization. The New York State Governor is the head of Crazy Org and appoints all its leaders, and the most seats on its board. And every governor changes the leadership to fit their agenda. The Governor also controls the funding, the priorities, etc.

Everyone at crazy org despised Cuomo - who was a bully. And despised working with his people. But it seems unlikely it will shake everything up.

( NY State Assembly chooses not to impeach (it can't anyhow now) and Governor's last day is August 24 )

***

It's hot here - apparently. I was barely outside, so barely noticed. Have decent A/C both at work and at home. Got filing done at work. I've mixed feelings about going into the office. If it continues to be on the hybrid schedule like it is now - I think I'm fine with it. I like working in a huge office space with only ten people.

People wore masks for the most part on the commute. There were a few folks who didn't - there's always three or four folks who don't. But they are easy to avoid. The subway had less people without...most wore masks on it. The train had more people without - which makes more sense - you are somewhat isolated and six feet from people on the train for the most part.
People wore them when they weren't.

New Yorkers are for the most part being good - at least in the city they are.

I wear masks the same amount of time now that I did in 2020. It's not changed that much in the city, if at all.

**

I'm tired of it though. I feel like I'm floating at the moment. Kind of paralyzed with not caring all that much about anything.


I was asked by apto_omn whether I'd ever done a water color or painting from a photograph. Yes, I have, multiple times in the past, albeit not recently. The below is a watercolor that I did from a photo of my niece and her friend several years ago. It's kind of rough, and I wasn't overly pleased with aspects of it. But I'm also admittedly overly critical of my work.