I’m just tired. Things that I used to be able to churn out, now exhaust me, mentally. I"m getting really good at saying to myself, “What two things do I do today?” instead of the four or five I used to try to get done.
This past week I did a brief and did the formatting for a report for court and I was beat by the end of it. It was good work, and those are the kind of things I like doing as a lawyer, and I enjoyed doing both, but the mental energy and concentration that it took…
I’m working from home half the time, and the other half in the office. My office is a right mess, because all the usual tidying up and filing that I do every day is now squeezed into half the time, plus, if I’m in the office, it’s because there’s something major needing my attention, so not much time for just tidying. And seeing the mess just building up and up puts more mental strain on me, because I’m afraid I will lose something or forget something in the paper piles.
If you mean “none,” then yes, I did. Actually my neighbor picked me up a T-Day lunch from a local restaurant and handed the bag to me at my front door, so I guess that counts.
Being retired, I’m not so much into “getting stuff done” anymore, but heck, I barely have the attention span to read a magazine article. I don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about much. I watch the same “comfort TV” shows over and over. Last night I put on the Bob Ross YouTube channel and watched several episodes of happy little mountains, streams, and clouds while trying to read a piece-of-fluff magazine.
The Bob Ross channel is great to put on if you want something soothing in the background, but you’re not in the mood for music. I watched a documentary about him and gained a new respect for the impact he had on thousands of people’s lives.
Aside: My late husband was hospitalized many, many times. If he was in the hospital over a weekend, we always watched Bob Ross on Saturday morning. Usually they leave you alone on the weekend in the hospital, but if you’re even there on a weekend, it’s usually something pretty serious. So watching Bob was a comforting respite from tests and the dreaded question that we were always asking, “What did the doctor say?” But that was 20+ years ago, and the ache of it is gone so I can watch Bob in peace again. /Aside
Whoa! That sounds like a buttload of work that you got accomplished! WTG!
This might be something similar: a friend of mine called me to design a Christmas card for him. So I was able to spend some time doing the work that I love best. Holy crap, when I opened up Photoshop, it’s been so long it was like seeing it for the first time! I still pay for the annual Adobe subscriptions, which cost a fortune, and don’t make any sense for me to spend money on, but I’m reluctant to let go of something that has been a cornerstone of my identity…
Anyhoo, I got lost in the design process and it felt great to use some of the creative muscles that I haven’t used in forever. When I emerge from a project like that, it’s like crawling out into the sunshine after being in a sweet, dark, warm, delicious, stimulating, private, mental cave. I feel happily disoriented and tired and well, joyful– something I haven’t felt in a very long time. Plus, he LOVED the card.
I have suffered a lot from this the last 3 months. Important items with deadlines looming that aren’t in and of themselves difficult that become so toxic I can’t bear to think of them, much less do them.
I call this the “bulldozer blade effect”. When you see a dozer working, it starts by easily scraping a thin layer of dirt that slowly piles up in front of the blade until it’s big enough to stall the dozer’s forward progress. A large enough pile of even tiny grains is enough to stop a dozer.
As applied to humans, once your blade is full, you’re paralyzed.
The only escape I’ve found is to back off, ruthlessly cull the ones that are obsolete or “nice to have; not need to have”. Then mentally scatter the whole remaining pile into a wide thin spray of individual items, then kill a couple of the smallest funnest ones. That may be enough to dispel the feeling of being stalled. If not, repeat and eventually you climb over the pile.
It isn’t easy, it isn’t fun, and I’d be lying if I said it always works for me. But it’s a helpful technique. For me.
We were talking about this last night. In our salad days, we’d rush home to our little apartment for lunch, and watch reruns of Perry Mason (on at 11:00 am weekdays) with our PBJ sandwiches. Now that we’re better off, with a nice den, sound system, a flat screen TV and thousands of streamable shows – we sit on the couch and watch DVDs of Perry Mason.
After months of lockdown and rummaging through everything in every genre on Hulu, Netflix, Disney+, we’ve found almost nothing that holds our attention for more than 10 minutes. The only exceptions have been Cheers, Columbo, and Rockford Files.
In a few years, we’ll be wondering where all the doilies came from.
Perry Mason is definitely one of my comfort watches. Especially the first two seasons where Perry’s character and his relationship to Della was still settling in. In one episode, he’s sick at home in his freakin’ PAJAMAS, and Della feeds him soup from a spoon!
Having lived through those times (as a child) I’m fascinated by the backgrounds, the interiors, the clothes-- every time you turn around Della is either taking off or putting on a pair of gloves-- and oh, the cars! Be sure and read the trivia section on IMDB.com-- lots of interesting details.
This is one aspect of the pandemic I still haven’t figured out: I have absolutely no desire to watch TV. I’ve never been a big TV watcher, but when all this shit started I kinda figured “hey. now I’ll have time to catch up on some TV that I’ve been missing.” Unfortunately I didn’t take into account that there wasn’t much TV that I was missing. I watched the first 10 seasons or so of The Simpsons, which was fun. We also watched most of Supernatural but stopped somewhere around season 13 when it went off the rails and jumped the shark, simultaneously. Other than that… hmm… I watched the remake of True Grit a few months back, and the computer animated Grinch a day or three ago. But other than that I haven’t had the desire to watch anything.
I’ve also not been reading for pleasure much. I don’t really know why, but I just can’t seem to get into a book anymore – and I used to be a voracious reader. So boredom has been a big part of my pandemic experience.
We all know that coat hangers reproduce in hall closets from the atoms of socks the dryer ate.
Doilies are similar. They form from the dust that sticks to pictures of the kids and grandkids. Once you have every flat surface in your house full of little picture frames of those kids, the doilies will spring up like mushrooms after a rain.
Ooooh! The cars! I salivate at those beautiful late 50’s / early 60’s machines and really want one. Until I realize I never see Paul or Della or Perry use a seatbelt. As an old EMS worker that’s a non-starter.
Sorta related story: My Dad is a mechanical, and electrical engineer whose job concentrated on safety issues. When we bought our first new car in 1962, he used his own tools (tap and die, etc.) to install a complete set of restraints, front and back. You can’t imagine how weird this was back then, as he required everyone onboard to wear them. Other adults (and their kids) laughed at this and thought we were really oddballs. I remember some fathers ridiculing him and asking me if I had to wear a helmet too.
This is strange for me too. We still watch TV, and I have the news on in the background during my work day, but we watch much less TV. My Wife and I play chess, board games or cards instead. A lot, like a couple of games a night.
Also I’m reading LESS, which is really weird. But that’s caused by something else, my sleep schedule. I’m getting up real early, usually around 4:30 am and always by 5am. As I usually read before bed, I’m dead tired when I hit the hay, so not reading.
