People and Pandemic Fatigue

Cartoon of me, a sad-looking, green-eyed
brunette-with-grey woman, in a floral jacket
lying on her side on a white pillow.

That must be what it is. I mean, here I am, same Jenn in the same house with the same kids and the same job. I'm contented; I love my job, I love the kids at home and at work, but pretty much everyone else on the planet can go take a flying leap right now.

Well.

That's an exaggeration. 

I guess mostly it's disappointment in people I would've thought know better.

Yeah, yeah, I said I'd separate my personal life (here) from my public opinions (Vocal). Go over there if you want to read serious ranting on my part. But it's hard to compartmentalize to that degree, because I am part of the world. I may be a lot more introverted than I was before Laston's death and all this social distancing, but I'm not a hermit.

I'm a social being.

And it hurts me - sometimes (like now) to the point of actual, physical pain - to see people I otherwise respected until recently behaving so simultaneously unkindly and illogically.

How can you possibly think, for instance, that having an expert (whom you otherwise decry as being "a tool of the union") teaching your child their ABCs in person is more important than that teacher's life and health? Or that your child knowing they have a right to ask people not to touch them is wrong? Or that somehow, someway, being asked to wear a piece of cloth over your face is equivalent to actual atrocities?

I used to like everyone, or nearly everyone.

I don't right now.

Right now, school bus drivers are being stabbed in public school parking lots (we'll know more details of that on Monday) and we don't know why, but it'll probably be something like masking requirements in public school. Or the recent boogeyman of "Critical Race Theory" which isn't even being taught in public schools, certainly not at the elementary level. 

My own school district has people who tried to recall the school board during a worldwide emergency because they didn't like the way the pandemic was being handled. While the courts threw that out for lack of factual evidence, the same group is still spreading the same crap in a bid to challenge the school board in the next election. They keep getting called out and they keep ignoring the call-outs or inverting them.

I don't like being this cynical. I don't like disliking people. I don't like getting sick for the first time since January of 2020 (news flash, masks work, y'all) through a combination of stress and allergies.

But here we are.