New times here are not forgotten...
I am a creature of habit, and this becomes more ingrained as I age. Much like addiction, it is mentally and physically challenging to do most anything in my typical day differently than I've become accustomed. Some of this surely is just that, as with anyone, I tend do to do so many mundane routines on autopilot because I'm always thinking about other things. The classic of even simple things like my wife asking me to go to the other side of the house to set the thermostat warmer or colder...but the time I get to that area, my mind is on utterly other subjects and I'll come back to her bedroom later, having accomplished completely different things along that path, but having totally forgotten about the temperature. There's a tendency for myself or others to assume this is early dementia (or long-term effects of decades of weed), but really it's that my brain is too busy, not forgetful per se.
Point is, I told my wife last night that I just don't think I can go through 4 more years of hearing about Trump. We don't watch many specific shows on TV, but we do like Daily Show, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers that we record on the DVR and watch at our convenience (I can't stay up that late anymore...), and habitually I listen to NPR news in my ~2 hour each way trip to and from home/work.
But I just can't anymore, it's too depressing and maddening.
So I'm trying to decide if it's even possible to re-wire my brain and change both of those rather ingrained aspects of my every day.
Indirect but vaguely related to where this particular version of the multi-verse is going with this election outcome of emboldening assholes, several of our black graduate students came to the chair's office today to let his assistant and myself know that they got text messages to their personal cell phones telling them that our university had scheduled them to pick cotton at an address at 2pm today, that they'd been scheduled by their masters to attend. And it included something like "Welcome to AmeriKKKa".
Yeah, this next 4 years should be worth finding a hole to hide in from the news of the world, even news that manages to walk in the office door just one day after the election has been called.
However, as I've said to folks in the office with a apologetic tongue in my cheek, really I've got nothing to worry about for myself, though life sucks for them: I'm an old, middle-class white male - hell, like it or not this administration has my back.
I'll be fine.
Point is, I told my wife last night that I just don't think I can go through 4 more years of hearing about Trump. We don't watch many specific shows on TV, but we do like Daily Show, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers that we record on the DVR and watch at our convenience (I can't stay up that late anymore...), and habitually I listen to NPR news in my ~2 hour each way trip to and from home/work.
But I just can't anymore, it's too depressing and maddening.
So I'm trying to decide if it's even possible to re-wire my brain and change both of those rather ingrained aspects of my every day.
Indirect but vaguely related to where this particular version of the multi-verse is going with this election outcome of emboldening assholes, several of our black graduate students came to the chair's office today to let his assistant and myself know that they got text messages to their personal cell phones telling them that our university had scheduled them to pick cotton at an address at 2pm today, that they'd been scheduled by their masters to attend. And it included something like "Welcome to AmeriKKKa".
Yeah, this next 4 years should be worth finding a hole to hide in from the news of the world, even news that manages to walk in the office door just one day after the election has been called.
However, as I've said to folks in the office with a apologetic tongue in my cheek, really I've got nothing to worry about for myself, though life sucks for them: I'm an old, middle-class white male - hell, like it or not this administration has my back.
I'll be fine.