(no subject)

[quente]

I’ll just bullet point all my scattered thoughts.

• I had a spell of ill health (dizziness/nausea) related to one of my many fine physical ailments, and had to lie flat on my back for a bit. Luckily I had Friday off work due to … I’ll digress in another bullet. But anyway, I lay around listening to Tolkien’s Extended Edition Letters. I clicked at absolute random, and happened upon letter 131, in which he explains in great detail everything I needed for my talk, actually. It was so relevant and so good that I got the creepy shivers — how did I manage to stumble upon exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it? This ghost in the machine might save the world yet.
  • Speaking of which, I need to plan out my reading and work on that presentation.
  • Friday off for work: My first ever schedule change in my history of civil service is due to the fantastic “return to work” mandate. If I have to be in a building so decrepit that it actually caught on fire, I refuse to be there more than four days a week.
• Health: I have another brain procedure this week Wednesday. As always, my husband can be contacted via e-mail (dave.rezak@gmail.com) if it looks like I haven’t shown up in a while. Just introduce yourselves as friends from fandom, and he’ll give you a status update. 
• Employment: The structure of support systems for our country are coming apart around my ears and I feel this stupid sense of survivor guilt, at least this week. By next week maybe I’ll be fired and no longer have to feel survivor guilt.
  • My fantasies about punishing the people who are responsible for dismantling the National Institute for Health and US AID put Melkor to shame. I’m a gentle soul, but the callous self-interest of the kleptocrats who have taken over our government is … breathtakingly horrifying.
  • There is no Frodo and there is no Ring. We all have to pitch in and kill them with a thousand paper cuts. Acts of kindness, boosting the local infrastructure. Being present for each other. And eventually, resisting.
  • For example, the “millions” of people Trump planned to deport are actually at around 10,000, because zero people are going to turn in their friends to ICE.
• Anyway the stress of continuing on with life as usual when literally everything is falling apart around me is kind of preying on my health and mind. I look frazzled, I feel exhausted, and life at the dawn of the fourth reich is as horrific as one might imagine. 
• Be strong, my fellow Americans. Be strong, people of the world. Resist!

Comments

[dine]

thinking of you! so sorry you've been poorly, but how cool you accidentally came across just what you needed for your presentation.

and sending all the positive vibes possible for Wednesday

I hope you're able to find bits of joy in this time of extreme stress - it's hard sometimes, but that may be what helps us survive the hellscape

[quente]

Thank you -- finding joy is absolutely how to survive, there are so many out there at the very edge of survival even now, and maybe some joy will help me support them as this all gets worse.

[bunn]

Sympathies with the frazzlement, and good luck with both the op and the resistance.

[quente]

Thank you. On the plus side I booked flight and hotel for the Mereth Aderthad! Looking forward to the whole experience.