Vent

I know. I haven’t blogged in over two weeks, and when I finally do show up, it’s to bitch and moan. I’m sorry…indulge me, would you?

Here’s the thing. I was clicking along beautifully–getting work done, enjoying free time, playing around on e-i’mlonley.com, and things were basically working out. Then, of course, life intruded. Stuff at work has gotten irritating and stressful (my students are being…well, students) , stuff with my family is one bummer after another, and then I got slammed with a cold, which I knew was coming, since my friends had all gone through it. And I’ll grant you, they were all pretty miserable during their bout with this crud, but I had to go one step further, didn’t I? I guess owing to my already stressed-out (coming off of a one-week duty marathon), asthmatic, and terribly out-of-shape state, I got the bronchitis-bordering-on-pnemonia version of the cold. Yay! And sixty dollars in prescriptions later, I feel even worse than I did before, because I’m on prednisone. It’s a disgusting steroid that they usually give asthmatics, and while it makes you breathe a little better, it also makes you feel like shit. And look like shit, I might add. Not that I was ravishing anyway (I’m sporting the bed-head and the little red line on my nose from the Breathe-Right strip, so my appearance is pretty comical at the moment, steroids aside), but some of the side effects include a flushed face, oily complexion, and my fave…weight gain!!! As if the moment on the scale at the dr.’s office yesterday didn’t wreck my self-esteem enough.

Blah…bleh…ick. I’m tired and I have cabin fever, of course it’s finally feeling like fall and I can’t enjoy it, and I’m getting behind at work. And I’m contemplating a major career change, which involves motivation, studying, exam-taking and most of all, money I don’t quite have yet. There’s so much to do, and so much to think about, and I just want another nap.

Once the prednisone is over and the forty-dollar antibiotics have done their job, I’ll be back. Hopefully with happier news, knitting updates, and more contemplation about major life changes. But for now, thanks for tuning in to the “i’m a freakin’ mess!” part of our program.

It’s going to be one of those posts.

Grrrr. I’m doing my thing again. It’s been a relatively peaceful summer, with happy times at home, and now it’s time to freak out. Things are changing in my life in a big way–a close friend has moved away, I’m headed to a new assignment, new staff, new supervisor. Work is a little unstable as bad news just seems to keep coming from the north. I haven’t gotten any closer in these weeks to figure out what my next step should be, and when I get home, it’ll all be waiting for me. Change.

Here’s the thing. You’d think a wanderer like me would be totally down with a shakeup. But the reality seems to be that I’m all-or-nothing when it comes to this change stuff. Moving 1500 miles away to a town where I know no one, in a new climate, new part of the country? No problem. Sure, I was nervous, but I was more excited than anything else. But a few tweaks that were decided without my input? Forget it. I guess I’m a change control freak. If I didn’t pick it, didn’t plan it, didn’t decide it, I’m terrified of it. Now don’t get me wrong–I do realize that since there is so little in this world that we can actually pick, plan, and decide with any success, this doesn’t seem like the best way to live. But maybe it’s getting older, maybe it’s the nesting instinct, I don’t know–I just want some damn stability. I want some roots. I want to dig in somewhere, with someone, and start building the kind of security that I never really had.

I know, it’s July, who’s in the mood for deep psychological realizations? Especially when it’s so freaking hot that I can’t spend more than five minutes outside. (Seriously–three years of absence made me forget the misery, and my body is rejecting this hell. Of COURSE I was excited to move to Ohio three Julys ago. Who wouldn’t want to get away from here?) Let’s face it–this is what I do. I’m not in dire circumstances. I have a job, a roof over my head, a supportive family, and a network of friends, and of course I zero right in on what I don’t have. It’s so self-indulgent of me, and if you’re still reading, I thank you for sticking around. You know what thought keeps occurring to me? I keep wondering, what would I be capable of if I wasn’t afraid of failure? What if I just did it–listened to my inner voice, went after the things I’ve always dreamed of doing and didn’t do because I insisted on being practical. Have I ever really taken a chance in my life?

Ick. This is heavy. I need to let it stew for a while.

Stop.

It’s time to turn off the TV. Like millions of other people trying to sort out what happened in Virginia yesterday, I’ve been glued to the 24-hour coverage on cable and my laptop, and the more I watch, the angrier I get. Amidst an occasional nugget of real information and some genuine condolences, all I see and hear is speculation, blame, and sometimes plain ignorance. It’s the president’s fault for not shutting down the campus when the first shooting occurred–never mind that commuter students and many of the campus’s 10,000 employees were on their way to work or class, with no way to quickly inform them. It’s the government’s fault for making it so easy to obtain a gun, or even more ridiculously, it’s the government’s fault for not allowing students to carry guns on campus with which to protect themselves. I even read a comment on the MSNBC site that used this tragedy as a reason to tighten immigration laws, since the gunman was not born in the US. It all makes me sick.

Something terrible happened yesterday. Terrible things happen all the time, all over the world. Our sense of insulation here in the US is highlighted by our eagerness to blame someone, to insist that this kind of thing shouldn’t happen here. Maybe it could have been prevented. Hindsight is 20/20. But the truth is, blame won’t bring back those we’ve lost. And no matter how hard we try to protect ourselves, none of us is ever really safe. Life is a gift. It is fleeting. There is no way to predict when it will end. Those students and professors did not deserve to die. Neither did the children lost in Katrina, or the civilians killed every day in Iraq. And neither do the thousands who die every day all over the world due to starvation, lack of clean drinking water, and disease.

I hope that we learn some things from this tragedy–how to get information across our campuses quickly and efficiently, how to educate our students and hall staff on personal safety. But most of all I hope we learn to value life, and realize that it is fragile and can so easily be taken from us. Our desparation for answers to the question of “why?” only leads to more questions.

Let us stop pointing fingers and put our energy into praying for the victims, and paying tribute to their lives by making the most of our own.

Perspectives

I have a knack for seeing the “downer” in just about anything. I’m also pretty good at finding people and entities to lash out at when something’s happening that I can’t explain or understand. My last post came from that place. The truth is, I’m still disheartened and disappointed with the lack of preparation for something we should have expected. But I needed to hear good news, and I thank Vixen and CL for reminding me that all is not lost. My home state is opening its arms like never before. (Although I just heard on the news that Gov. Rick Perry wants to start turning people away because Texas is becoming too strained. For the love. It takes three days just to drive across the damn state. I don’t think it’s going to burst at the seams anytime soon…but look at me, bitching again. I digress.) I’m pretty proud to be a Texan at the current moment. I wish I could drop everything and head home, be with my family, and give my time to the people who seem to need more help than even my students right now.

I can’t go anywhere, though, so I’m trying to round up a shipment of clothing, since I read online that the City Waste Management services are taking it to donate to the different shelters around the city. And I’m taking stock. Why is it that disasters are needed in order for people to figure out what’s important to them? When things are going well, we get mired in the mundane and find little things to worry and complain about. It takes a shakeup of Biblical proportions to help us remember to treat each other well, to relish our time on earth. It seems blasphemous to imagine any good coming out of this terrible time, but if we emerge on the other side of this nightmare to be a more humane society, even to the tiniest degree…well, that would be something.
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Broken hearted

I am disillusioned by what is happening in my country.

It was easy for us to rally together as a nation after September 11. We were united against a common enemy. People of all colors, creeds, and socio-economic status were affected. We didn’t dare criticize our government, at least not during those first hours. We were unprepared, yes, but we pulled ourselves together and by a day or two after the attacks, there was a sense of control. We were still terrified, but we were cleaning up.

Three days after New Orleans fell apart, we’re hearing about a city in complete chaos. Trucks are driving right by people in need. Aid isn’t making it to where it’s most critical. One day the police are ignorning looters so they can rescue the living; the next day they’re told to abandon the rescue efforts and go after the criminals. Buses are taking people to Houston and San Antonio, but they aren’t telling their passengers where they’re headed. These people don’t have television sets. They aren’t watching MSNBC as events unfold. Somebody tells them to get on a bus, and they do it–with no idea when they’ll be back, when they’ll see the rest of their families again. FEMA goes on and on about how it’s doing the best it can, but the reality is that there was absolutely no preparation, no game plan, no idea of what to do. It’s not as though the idea of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was out of the question. The city is below sea level, and it’s on the gulf coast. How hard is it to put two and two together? Why hasn’t our government bothered to prepare for something that we always knew was coming?

And what makes me even sicker is the fact that this disaster didn’t affect all people equally. Some were able to get out–to pack up their valuables, gather up their families, load into their SUVs and head for hotels and relatives out of harm’s way. But the poor, the folks without cars, without the money to buy gas, without anyplace to go–they’re the ones stuck in the Superdome, stuck on the side of the highway surrounded by the dead and dying, stuck in the Convention Center watching the National Guard trucks drive right by. They couldn’t leave. They didn’t have a choice. And now as a country we seem to have absolutely no idea what to do with them.

This morning the Congressional Black Caucus held a press conference and expressed a harsh reality: there’s no denying the reality that many, if not most, of the poor and suffering in New Orleans are people of color. They were in dire straights before Katrina even existed, and now they have nothing left, and no assurance that help is on the way. I am relieved to hear Bush say that the relief efforts thus far are “unacceptable,” but that’s not enough. There is no excuse for a country as rich as the United States to leave thousands of its citizens without food, water, hygiene, and shelter. Somebody needs to get control and make something happen.

Like most people, I’ve always had faith in my country. I always believed that no matter what bad things happened, we’d be taken care of. The goodness of human nature would prevail, and the resources of my government would come to my aid. Weren’t we raised to believe that “the US is the best country in the world?”

Today that faith is shaken to the core.