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Crying On My Way to Target
Oct. 1st, 2024 10:10 pmWhen I come across a Reel on Instagram about the fall and how it’s October as if the whole world has been waiting all year for this moment, I feel like it’s a mockery of my existence. My world has been turned upside down. Left is right, and right is wrong. It was 102 degrees today and the wrongness that I feel is palpable. The sun is at a lower angle, but the temperature is hot like a fever. There is an undercurrent of a cool chill, like the onset of the flu. We are sick here in the central valley with a virus and the fever will not break no matter how long we wait. There is a promise of 80-degree weather next Thursday, but I have been burned with that kind of wishful thinking before.
So i cried on my way to Target today. I was listening to Depeche Mode’s Never Let Me Down Again because I was watching Jake Gyllenhaal dance to it on a Reel, and I liked the harmonies. He was listening to the song on a Walkman dancing through the streets of New York and it reminded me of an old depression feeling. That feeling when you are so depressed that life becomes surreal and you all of the sudden remember that you have free will and you can do anything. Surreality becomes a comfort in that moment. I was there, in an adult Donnie Darko limerence, nostalgic for past depressions in a Mad World.
But I had to get home because Caleb was home from school. I took him to the dentist today because he had two cavities that needed fillings. I left him at home to play Wobbly World, which he bought with his tooth fairy money. I needed pads and shampoo and was having a hard time believing that this was my reality. 102 on October first in Fresno with a child at home in suburbia. This life. I’m about to go Talking Heads on this place. How did I get here?
I am worried. I am not confident about my lecture tomorrow. I never am when I am starting a new unit. I don’t know how long things take. Am I under or over my minutes? I won’t find out until I’m in it and get into the routine of the textbook. I am second guessing showing V for Vendetta instead of a Frankenstein movie, but a real true to the book Frankenstein movie does not exist, so I opted for a man seeking revenge in a dystopian setting. The problem is the movie is long. I need that time for my lecture tomorrow.
When I started teaching again after the pandemic, there was a real sense that “all of it is made up and the points don’t matter.” I took comfort in that, but for some reason, all of it matters now. That evaluator hurt this free-flowing idea, ripped it up and stepped on it, more like. I miss that feeling that it doesn’t matter. I don’t want the pressure anymore. I want to care less. I am kinder when I care less.
So i cried on my way to Target today. I was listening to Depeche Mode’s Never Let Me Down Again because I was watching Jake Gyllenhaal dance to it on a Reel, and I liked the harmonies. He was listening to the song on a Walkman dancing through the streets of New York and it reminded me of an old depression feeling. That feeling when you are so depressed that life becomes surreal and you all of the sudden remember that you have free will and you can do anything. Surreality becomes a comfort in that moment. I was there, in an adult Donnie Darko limerence, nostalgic for past depressions in a Mad World.
But I had to get home because Caleb was home from school. I took him to the dentist today because he had two cavities that needed fillings. I left him at home to play Wobbly World, which he bought with his tooth fairy money. I needed pads and shampoo and was having a hard time believing that this was my reality. 102 on October first in Fresno with a child at home in suburbia. This life. I’m about to go Talking Heads on this place. How did I get here?
I am worried. I am not confident about my lecture tomorrow. I never am when I am starting a new unit. I don’t know how long things take. Am I under or over my minutes? I won’t find out until I’m in it and get into the routine of the textbook. I am second guessing showing V for Vendetta instead of a Frankenstein movie, but a real true to the book Frankenstein movie does not exist, so I opted for a man seeking revenge in a dystopian setting. The problem is the movie is long. I need that time for my lecture tomorrow.
When I started teaching again after the pandemic, there was a real sense that “all of it is made up and the points don’t matter.” I took comfort in that, but for some reason, all of it matters now. That evaluator hurt this free-flowing idea, ripped it up and stepped on it, more like. I miss that feeling that it doesn’t matter. I don’t want the pressure anymore. I want to care less. I am kinder when I care less.
