Don't believe everything you think. Much easier said than done.

In a lecture today, I heard a woman refer to this as the Third Reconstruction--which I've not yet heard anyone say but feels true. Especially when you begin to consider how much reparations is moving into conversations, across all systemic reform (de-carceration, drug policy, financial policy, budgeting, court fines, fees & costs, tax systems, housing policy, medicare for all). Another woman discussed a case outcome that declared a right to literacy to re-interate the point that infrastructure deficiencies created and maintained along racial lines are the violence in our communities.

I am glad there are smart and capable people doing this work and I am especially glad I realised years ago I am no leader, no revolutionary, no-one dynamic. I'm barely a capable follower, but I try very hard to find and listen to the right voices and share them with others. 

A few weeks ago, my remaining mental block to total decarceration was incidentally dismantled when I realised a small thing. My resistance remained because of evidence that rehabilitation for men who commit family violence is most successful when it's residential. And I was considering "residential rehabilitation" as requiring prison. That's a very limited view of the world.

Even if you believe there are acts which when committed against a community necessitate removal (temporary or permanent) from that community, that does not mean "prison". I was easily able to reject punitive models in favor of rehabilitative/restorative/developmental models, but I was unable to separate that from confinement. Unable to see the inherent punitive philosophy there. 

I had to dig deep into the logical positivism (empiricism) I studied in grad school to get around it. I have twisted myself into some knots, but I think I made some progress.

I recognize the critique here: if by de-carceration, you just mean a different way to lock people up, you're not solving the problem; you're not supporting abolition. But where "abolition" requires investment in people and communities, de-carceration will provide those interventions and that care to those who need it, including those who act in ways that harm their communities. I hadn't seen my own contradiction there, and I'm still working through it, but I see it now.

I don't know whether or not people can be trusted not to harm, if their needs are met, if their humanity and dignity is prioritized, if they are valued. Many smart people say that yes, they can, yet I do have trouble trusting this belief. But I am beginning to understand how we can intervene when they do without incarceration of any kind. Perhaps that's the first step.

In other thoughts, I managed to knock a few things off the personal to-do list in the first half of this week. 

I wonder how much imposter syndrome is just women, internalizing cultural misogyny. We're not mediocre white men; we must be imposters.

I am still cranky and tired but today I'm more disatisfied with small, personal things than with large systemic cruel and hateful failures. I suppose I have only so much capacity for the latter but since joy is impossible, I shift to the former.

I'm also being very ineffective at work. Which may be why my first thought in the morning is about imposter syndrome.

I am trying to get back into American yoga. We've canceled our gym membership--not feeling comfortable going any time soon, among other reasons. So I've been using the DownDog app which is the best at-home yoga I've yet run across. 

The pandemic thing I've been thinking about this week is how sedentary I've become. It's not several half-mile walks to bus stops, or 4 mile bike rides to and from the office, or 1 to 2 mile walks from the house to the bar or store every day. It's not standing around talking in those bars or walking between buildings for meetings. 

It's getting out of bed to move 10 feet to the desk. Maybe walking the 85 feet from the sunroom to the kitchen. Going up and down the stairs to the basement twice a week. Every night, playing the video games, sitting still. 

I am stiff. I am aching. I lose my balance reaching for things. I spent a few hours crawling around on the floor, trying to lay out and cut 5 yards of fabric and I thought I'd die. 

Another backgruond disruption, another way I'm caught on my back foot constantly, the way I'm not using my body at all. I'm never moving through space anymore. I miss the very safe surrounding aloneness of walking along a city street, riding seven miles on a non-express bus route, sitting in a hotel bar. 

I am deeply anxious and because it is rational to be this anxious, I don't know what to do about it. I can't control the pandemic. I can't stop the secret police. I can't prevent the coming wave of evictions, foreclosures, homeslessness and unemployment. I can't protect the polls, the protesters, the people in need. I cannot make anyone who could protect them listen to my voice; I can't make them act.

I call. I write. Although I haven't marched in months, I donate to BLMChicago, Good Kids Mad City, Assata's Daughters. Chicago Service Relief, the Greater Chicago Food Depository. The National Women's Law Center, Planned Parenthood, Medical Students for Choice. The Working Families Party. The Justice Democats. The Hispanic Federation. Other places, when they have a specific call out to meet a need.

I remain anxious. I know what I do is not actually meeting a need or saving a society in collapse. 

I am deeply anxious and because it is rational to be this anxious, I don't know what to do about it. My tricks for naming and defending against disordered anxiety don't work. 

We walk to the park and I am anxious. I try not to mutter. I try not to panic. My voice raises and Spouse asks why I'm angry. But I'm not angry; I'm anxious and I don't know what to do.

No less angry today. Much less confident in my own general competence. Just generally exhausted. Hopeless.

But it was a perfectly pleasant day. I suppose that makes it worse.

I worked in the sewing room today. I'm making this 1970s McCall which really does not look like much on the envelope. The layout and cutting was a pain because it's a maxi, cut on an angle from the selvedge and I had a directional print. I ended up cutting the four main head-to-toe pattern pieces one at a time and could not even pretend to pattern-match.

I did not make a test which was probably foolish. Hopefully, the fit will be good enough. I picked this pattern after watching Caitlin Doughty's brief YouTube on shrouds. I'd like to make myself a burial garment and I think this one, if adapted to open along the front center seam, would be nice. I have a particularly lovely black floral voile which would suit the purpose.

I don't have many wishes, honestly. We've got no kids, and though many of my cousins are 20 or 30 years younger than I am, I don't really expect many mourners, should I die in 30 years of old age (rather than shortly, of the pandemic or fascism or failures of American health care or society in general). Still, while I'm alive, I like to think someone will care for me when I'm dead, if only long enough to put me in the burial dress I made for myself before cremating me.

Read an essay about how usage of the term "LatinX" can lead to erasure of Chicano/Chicana activist history which I saw in a tweet from an historian. Learned some stuff about Mexican history and was introduced to a new perspective about terms for groups of people.

I listened to some Coil and some Skinny Puppy. I fretted about putting my literal house into literal order. I avoided the internet. The world is horrifying and I did not want to face it.

I am not facing today with equanimity.

We're selling the rental. When I called the recommended painter, he asked me to text him the details, so he could send a quote and a schedule. He never replied to my text, so when I followed up, asking for a quote and a schedule his reply was "Sounds good" so I don't know where we are with that. He can't get into the building to work without all sorts of bullshit with the management office. But fuck the management office, honestly. They're a huge reason why we're selling.

I'm also having trouble getting information about a furniture delivery--with a phone tree that kicks you out for any option other than cancel  and an online information system which only accepts inquiries to cancel and an FAQ that does not say anything about how you'll know when your actual delivery is scheduled--just that if you have a freight delivery (I do), it will be contracted with a moving company and per COVID, they won't come inside, even with face coverings (great /sarcasm).  I've hired moving companies many many times in my life--often with half-truck and smaller loads. I know the logistics are complicated. I also know that you should get confirmation sooner than 48 hours out. So I am assuming this means I don't have a delivery coming? But I don't know and can't find out. There is a date on the order, but there's no confirmation and it's a Sunday, so I think it might just be a auto-generated estimate. Don't know--can't find out.

My boss also booked me into a meeting (during a time I already had a meeting scheduled) without giving me documents or a log in or anything that would allow me to actually participate in the meeting. I have meetings today for 7 hours, with brief moments in between. The neighbors, also, have workmen directly under my window. 

Thus, today is . . .  not great. I know that everything is impossible for everyone right now. I'm trying to extend lots of patience and accept that no-one is working at their best quality right now. But it's hard to extend that patience when I have so little reserves.

I took this day off from work. Spouse did not. He got up; made coffee; went to his work desk in the basement. I got up. Ate left-over biscuits and (veggie sausage) gravy, played video games. Watched The Assistant--which was brilliant.

Finished a test-run of Vogue 7759. Looking forward to running it up in the chosen fabric but mostly I was glad I was able finish something in less than 12 times the amount of time it should take. The test is a completely terrible fabric, but the pattern is good and I made the right adjustments to fit it properly. I'm hopeful.

Mostly, I put the sewing room in order. I am supposed to get office furniture from Ikea this weekend, but I've not gotten an actual delivery confirmation, so I'm skeptical. I plan to turn the corner of the room into a work space because I've working in the dressing room, which annoys spouse, because I get grumpy working at the sewing table and I don't want to work in the dining room. 

I should probably work in the dining room. There's lots of room. There's not any more street noise there than there is in the back by the alley. I could even finally do something nice on the front porch and taking meetings out there. I don't know why I'm being stubborn about it. But I am. I think if I got rid of my sister's piano, I'd be more interested in using that corner of the front room, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go there.

It was neither a good day, nor a bad one. We're privileged and our lives have been minimally disrupted, not only by the pandemic, but also by the U.S.'s unchecked slide into tyranny and corruption. I don't know how much longer both will remain true.