anomie that's probably typical for most people at the mo

[rinue]

My mood/motivation continues to crasshhhhhhhh. Or maybe stay flatline.

It's like I got through the gamut of winter holidays and the inauguration, and now I'm done.

Tried to get amped up for wedding anniversary. Trying to get excited about Mom's birthday and Carnivale/Fat Tuesday and Chinese New Year and Black History Month (the last of which is usually a reliable rev-up trigger, because I do love a research project). But nah. Very numb. Very not excited by stuff.

It is not super visible to other people because (1) they are also going through some things and (2) I don't need to feel excited about my artwork to be able to tell whether it's good or not. (I'm not sure how that works either, but it does.)

So like today I made useful decisions about the musical with Chris, and brainstormed with Nic about the train film, and was charming at a (virtual) social event, and prevented a work crisis that would have embarrassed the company if I hadn't caught it before it happened, and commissioned a poem for a magazine special issue, and cleaned-up the line work on a drawing, and was a comforting presence for the various cats and humans in the house, and did laundry, and set up a time to record a song, and probably other things I'm forgetting.

But I feel hazy and don't want to do anything. I'm annoyed that I did any of those things I did. I'd also probably be annoyed at having not done those things. I don't feel particularly relaxed during the times when I'm ostensibly relaxing. Time doesn't feel meaningful.

Possibly relatedly I haven't worked out an ethical framework for how to grieve for strangers while in quarantine. My grief is not useful to them and feels like rubbernecking. But also it seems like I'm maybe supposed to bear witness and it's disrespectful not to. I'm pretty sure both of those are simultaneously true, which is part of why there are societal rituals to negotiate it collectively. But I'm not sure they make sense in isolation. I don't know. It's something I'm trying to think about but not too hard because I'm still gathering data and it's not a conclusion time.

Have put on my to-do list that I should paint my toenails so that I remember to paint my toenails, because that seems potentially nice and is something I usually do? Who knows.

Comments

[sabotabby]

I hear you. For me, it's the way everything blends together, and anything that's a special day just reminds me of how we can't do anything normally.

I don't think you're rubbernecking. Both of our countries have stubbornly refused to acknowledge the loss and grief of so many people and I think at this point grieving is a political act.

[rinue]

I think you're probably right. Some of the things that are hovering in my head right now as pathways are Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music in the World (which I didn't realize was a project that originated with Kazuo Ishiguro, one of my favorite writers?) and the song "Gloomy Sunday," and the ways mourning music can be communal and isolated in the age of broadcast, same song played in different rooms. It seems like mainly what has allowed me to feel connected/disconnected with grief that is not my grief is podcasts, which do that stranger intimacy.