November 1

[rinue]

My town currently has double the active Covid cases we had at the high point of the first wave, after getting down to almost nothing over the summer (we're at about 1 person per 1000 with a verified infection). I am waiting to hear back on unrelated medical tests. There is an electrical fault in our smoke alarm system which can't be fixed until next week and false alarms go off at any time including the middle of the night. They are very loud and if there was a fire I wouldn't know.

Lows are near or below freezing and the sun sets at 4:30. The election is this week and I am captioning it. I've had a continuous tension headache for three weeks. I have lost track of how recently I've taken Tylenol so I don't know when I can take another Tylenol. Most of my day is spent unsuccessfully trying to relax enough that the tension headache goes away, while being interrupted.

I find it very hard to get anything done although I still manage to push through and get things done. Some things. Less than I want. Not the things I want to do really, not with time to enjoy what I've done. I'm feeling extra sympathy for my chronically ill friends. It's a stone gargoyle claw perched on my head all the time.

Comments

[sovay]

It's a stone gargoyle claw perched on my head all the time.

*hugs*

I don't know if one just dissociates professionaly, but the prospect of captioning the election sounds extraordinarily stressful to me.

[rinue]

I don't know if one just dissociates proffessionaly

Pretty much, yeah! Particularly since Trump talks garbage and repeats himself a lot, I don't have to pay close attention and it's kind of better if I don't, if I'm doing embroidery or taking an internet quiz or something to split my attention. He's got a ton of catchphrases and rarely uses acronyms or proper names or non-English words or jargon. I mean, it really is man woman person camera tv, with those pauses, all the time. It was way harder to caption Dubya, because he talked faster and folksy and used puns, so I did have to pay close attention. Plus I just wasn't as experienced, and the software has gotten better.

Where I get messed up emotionally and can't dissociate easily is if I'm captioning somebody speaking powerfully about a traumatic experience they've lived through and are speaking about in first person - so like the Boston Marathon Bombing aftermath coincided with Congressional testimony by the mothers of black children who had been murdered by vigilantes, and that was hard. I had trouble shaking off work those months.

It's also temporarily hard if I'm moved the other direction, like by Civil Rights speeches I find overwhelmingly powerful, because I get choked up.

But for instance I'm captioning a lot of health department and governor briefings about coronavirus death totals, and I mostly find it easier than reading about the same thing or watching it as a not-captioner, because I have the sense that I'm helping people get important information; it becomes a moment of usefulness instead of helplessness.

I did find the White House "Trump Show suckering in the news networks by saying it was a Covid briefing" month earlier this year tiresome but a lot of that was me being mad at the news networks for airing it live when it was going to be misinformation. Which I would have been mad about anyway. But the networks in general have gotten better in the last year about what they cover and how they cover it. Partly because there's not as much time for frivolous culture war stories, and partially because there's more wariness around conspiracy theorists and propagandists. Even C-Span has moved away from doing as much open phone lines call-in stuff.

[sabotabby]

Oh god, that sounds stressful. I can't even listen to Trump talk; I can't imagine captioning him. I hope both your headache and the long national nightmare is over soon.