just came back from taking the dog for his evening constitutional, and i'm trying to thaw out. it's cold out there, i'll tell you what. and going to get colder. perhaps a little snow tonight and tomorrow morning, and since it's Delaware, where snow always seems to come as a big surprise, this may mean the treat of sleeping late tomorrow. it's weds pm and i'm already worn out. a new semester is always like that, though. takes a few weeks to get into the groove. the groove only lasts a little while, then comes terminal exhaustion towards the end of the semester. my first spanish class was last night, something about which i was very nervous. needlessly, however. it's a big class, 26 people, all of whom seem enthusiastic about learning the language. we all seemed to enjoy the class. my ESL classes are smaller than usual, a good thing, as i can pay more individual attention to the students. with only seven in my writing class we should be able to do good work.
my actual life is just fine, but i am in a dreadful state of despair and depression about things political and social in this country, this world. the more i read news, especially alternative news, and commentary on news in the online media sources upon which i depend, and in blogs and journals, the less able to cope i feel. also the less able to add my voice to the swarm of comment and discussion swirling about us. so much distresses and enrages me, i don't know where to begin, how to deal with it. so i read Atrios, Josh Marshall, Paul Krugman, Orcinus, Old Hickory, Progressive Musings, Common Dreams, True Majority, Truth Out, etc (all available in my sidebar links). i suppose it's a source of comfort that there are so many intelligent articulate voices speaking out, holding the administration accountable. it should be impossible to feel alone in the wilderness with the voices growing into a chorus. sadly, i am feeling that we're all in a terrible and hopeless wilderness from which we may not emerge any time soon.
5 comments:
I know how you feel about current events. I've hardly been able to read the news lately, much less to comment on it. I feel exhausted just ATTENDING classes this week; I'm sure it's MUCH worse when you're teaching them!
thanks for your commiseration. you always manage to seem so upbeat, even when you're writing about the events of our times you don't sound like you want to have a Valium drip inserted in a vein and spend the rest of the Republican time in office in a total coma. which is how i mostly feel. so, okay. la lucha continua.
Call me the eternal optimist, but the very fact that so many are speaking out--intelligently and with much conviction I might add--about what ails this country tells me all is not lost. This is the year that we can do something about it and so many are standing up to say we are not taking this anymore.
ah, muse, i can only hope that you are right. i'm in a black hole right now, having a hard time with optimism.
LOL "Mari"
Even in real life (IRL) people seem to think nothing ever really bothers me. Comes from all those years of working with the public in a customer service capacity, I guess. I find that if I ACT cheerful, generally I FEEL cheerful, but I think I'm often in serious denial. In the 80's I went into an extended period of what seemed like permanent apathy which I didn't snap out of until after the optimism of President Clinton's election!
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