I could have used a morning without violence.
This TV shooting was upsetting to many because it was an upsetting thing. Tawdry. Petty. Awful. I have not always been a person that is sensitive to this kind of violence. Until recently, I didn’t think of myself as someone that would have trouble looking directly at the ugliest things that exist in this world. I thought of those people as accomplices to all the ugly, protecting themselves from the knowledge of the evil things that make their lives possible.
I think what changed was a challenge to my belief in the goodness of the universe, what I saw as a giant machine that sometimes provokes a kind of holiness in the people that are, by chance, within it. When that became a point of debate, any bad news became evidence that the whole shithouse is a machine for suffering, evidence that sometimes I can handle and sometimes I can’t.
And the worst thing is waking up in the morning, checking social media, and finding out that the topic of the day is some fucked up thing that happened.
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I got a speeding ticket on the way to work this morning. It smarted extra because I was on my best behavior on the drive up from California on Sunday. It felt like a big fuck you from the world to get a ticket so close to home.
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Work went. I got my new work area all cleaned up, and finished the monotonous data management task that I set for myself for the day. I’m going to make my coworkers embrace my digital file system if it’s the last thing I do.
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I left early to go to my first appointment with a new therapist. I dislike breaking them in, but I’m excited to start afresh with a new person who only knows about me what I tell him.
I stopped for chicken wings after the appointment to reward myself.
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I have to go to bed, right now.