Summertime Sadness

I've been in something of a funk at work these past two or three weeks—not quite busy enough to feel the pressure to succeed. None of the work feels big enough to be worth doing—or else it's too big, but unimportant, and not something I can completely do on my own. I don't like that.

Last week, part of it was PMS, and then yesterday my cramps were bad enough that I let myself stay home sick after lunch. But it's mainly the lingering feeling of worthlessness from the previous weeks, at this point. It seems to me that I've been doing a bad job, so I am a bad worker, so I will do a bad job, can I go home now?

I know that every day is a new day, every day I can start fresh and I can do a great job and cross off a lot of things, even in fewer than eight hours. But if I can fix it any day, why do it today? Why not wait until tomorrow? Self discipline is hard. Fewer hours day after day, and then you try to work long and diligently and it just feels neverending.

Instead I want to read about the Greek island of Milos, where Emma is right now, and maybe chronicle a little of last year's travels in Turkey. Emma wants to take a boat to Turkey, and make her way to Odessa from there. I want to find podcasts to listen to while I work. I want to read Testament of Youth—we saw the movie on Monday night and it was so good!—and also read about nature and cultivation and wilderness, like Cooper's always trying to get me to do for him. Even though it's not like we share a brain, and I'm not going to take notes for him.

I want to leave early so I can rent a kayak before they stop allowing the river journey for the evening, so we can practice for our trip to the UP. I want to watch old Daily Show episodes because we watched it last night, Amy Schumer and Ta-Nehisi Coates with possibly my favorite television person in the world, Jon Stewart, whose show I've barely ever watched between boyfriend number one and now. I'm sad that the era is ended (Jon Stewart, not bf#1), and I didn't even take part in most of it. And the same for Colbert, but that was already over.

When I sit in my new office at the NCRC (right now I'm three days at the old office, two days at the new one), I think of ways to decorate it, to make it welcoming, truly mine. The big window is great; I love it. But it's not enough, especially knowing that for half the year, the trees will be naked and the ground and sky grey. I have an entire shelf above my new desk there, that I'd like to fill with books and maybe a small lamp and other pretty things. But my job requires zero books. There is no reason for me to surround myself with any. What a sad reality. All I need to do my job is an internet connection and this horrible window into bureaucracy and email. Nothing real like a book. And yet I have to sit here every day.