Feb. Wrap Up.
I wanted to sit down to write here, and figured I might as well wrap the month up since I'm unlikely to have enough going on that I can really split it between today and the 1st of the next month or whatever. Which I like, to be honest, because no news is usually pretty good news, and I'm generally feeling my self-imposed semi-exile from everything. Partially, I think, because I'm a solitary person who can't get anything done if there's anyone else around and partially because I'm so inundated with the rest of the world's lousy fuckin' news that I don't need any of my own.
I know it's really bad out there. Any time something actually goes right, we feel the need to re-assess if we're doing enough, if we have time or money to spare. We really don't, so we just deal with whatever crises turn up on our doorstep - of which there are honestly enough. There's a sense of survivor's guilt even when you're barely making it. Things genuinely are marginally better, though. I can appreciate that. I try not to feel guilty for being able to buy stuff like groceries.
Guilt ends up being double-sided. When you don't have money, you scour your receipt for things you didn't need. You come to resent your own desire for healthy foods or "extras" like tea or coffee. When you have enough, you feel bad because others have it worse; it's a complex. It feels, sometimes, like an affliction. I feel, sometimes, like it's been inflicted on us systemically - the complex interwoven drumbeats of the wealthy blaming the poor for both the symptoms of poverty and the structure of it.
That part's weird and bad.
But I don't want you to get the impression that things are really negative, it just feels like this is something of a transitional month. We're moving into Spring. There are some uncertain situations on the very near horizon (both positive and negative). I'm pretty deeply engaged in work and I'm caught between writing new lesson plans and trying to determine if I'm going to be looking for a new position or if I'll be able to stay in this one after Spring Semester's up. Things are more stable on the day to day though, and I think that makes a huge difference in our outlook, mental health, and ability to function as a household. And that's really the only thing I'm concerned about right at the moment, because if I'm going to be honest, that's pretty much all I have the space to be concerned about.
I'm still playing Persona IS - playing something on the PSP in this house can be difficult because I have to put it away when I'm not looking directly at it because of the cat's penchant for mischief. It's a pretty long game, like a lot of the Atlus titles, so it eats up a lot of time and I don't have that much time for video games in general. There were some very good books at Verso that were on steep discount, so I picked some up even though I'm neck deep in reading several other titles at the same time. We're about to donate a lot though, so that's probably good. I typically intend to donate to libraries if the quality of the book is good. We're mostly through Ergo Proxy, but we don't sit down to watch stuff all that often, so maybe we'll watch more this weekend.
I guess that's it. Very mundane. I'm looking forward to playing Magic again, but if I do, I'll say something.