Definition of triage

1a: the sorting of and allocation of treatment to patients and especially battle and disaster victims according to a system of priorities designed to maximize the number of survivors

b: the sorting of patients (as in an emergency room) according to the urgency of their need for care

2: the assigning of priority order to projects on the basis of where funds and other resources can be best used, are most needed, or are most likely to achieve success

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2021 will be harder than 2020, I think. I've had so many friends making earnest plans for the spring, even more with the vaccine approvals. And it's been easy to understand the desire, but I've not been able to wrap my head around the belief that we can have schools, and bars, and museums, and parties, and shops, and social lives again, given the people in charge and the systems in place.

I have a handful of relationships which will be okay, but I don't expect anything else. I don't expect to ever ski again. Or travel again. Or find a new job. Or make a new friend. Or throw a party. Or eat in a fancy new restaurant.

I expect to miss all the celebrations and funerals. I expect to wake up in 2022 older than my mother was at my age.

Bought myself a new Kindle (I know) because the old one won't hold a charge anymore. I still can't concentrate enough to read, but I have a reading list from a colleague (a heavy terrible reading list, but there it is). Of course, those mostly won't be available from the library for e-readers.

Otherwise. It's a new year. 304 days since I've been in a bar or restaurant or museum. I've managed to see friends and family in the park. We've done take out and I've ordered online and picked up in local shops. But otherwise, I've been to the grocery store and the park.

I miss the CTA. I miss my friends. I miss my parents. 

Spent time online last nightwith my Dummies. Spouses (surviving--hi! Grim joke!) hopped on and off, but mostly it was me and these two wonderful friends. 

Today, Spouse and I did very little. Some laundry. Some video games. Food. TV. I signed up for the #MakeDontBreak mailing list, but did not notice it until I was too far into the Glogg to make today. 

Like many, I'm trying not to place too much weight on the new year--nothing, after all, has changed. I'm not putting any pressue on myself, honestly. I've made it this far; that's good enough.

I'll try to do more yoga. Try to walk more. Get back on my bike (even without replacement fenders). Get back into making sure my budget numbers are reconciled each month. Be more kind. Be more patient. Get my vaccine as soon as I can.

I've been sad today. Finding everything stressful. 

Our 25-year-old car finally needs a repair that costs more than it's worth. We can afford to replace it, but it also does not feel worth the cost. We had not planned to replace it, knowing it was going to be beyond repair sooner or later. We really only use it to drive to my parents' (and then when it's only us, my sister and her family) and for heavy errands. But pandemic--and going to the grocery once a month or less--has made all errands heavy.

It seemed more cost effective to take cabs or Lyft back from the store or do carshare or rentals for the holiday trips to my parents. But cabs are a no-go right now and the pandemic has already caused a major decline in train service to my parents' house from the city.

And this is all making me cry constantly, which is ridiculous. And so over the top. Seriously. We're fine without a car. We're fine if we decide to buy one. We're fine. We're so much more fine than hundreds of thousands of families.

I am just exhuasted. And sad.

I did not see it coming, but the pandemic has forced me to learn how to use Instagram. I was already using it--posting pictures, tagging people, following people, liking things. But the stories? The messaging? The hows of all the ways you're supposed to use it were non-intuitive to me. Even off-putting. You know, in the making me feel Old and like technology is a demon, hey you kids get off my lawn way.

I'm not enchanted. And I'm still not making my own stories. but at least I know how to communicate with people there. And it's good because I miss people.

I haven't donated blood since February. I stopped because my doctor told me because of some iron deficiency issues. I'd always just sort of dealt with it through supplements, but she wanted me to stop, or at least only go half as often. Then COVID, i haven't donated in almost a year, which is the longest I've gone in a long time.

I feel guilty about it. Donating blood has always been such an easy thing for me. My office is right next door to a hospital which is always having a blood drive. If I remember to drink enough water, I fill the bag very quickly. My veins are uncooperative, but the folks at the Red Cross where I donate are very good at getting the needle in easily. I had even managed to work out my supplements and diet that I was only getting rejected for iron every couple of tries, instead of every other try. I was generally managing four donations or more a year.

I did it because it was so easy for me and because it's meaningful to the community. High impact, low effort. It always made me laugh as a vaguely gruesome application of my basic maxim: that our duty in society is to share our excess (time, talent, resources) with others.

I expect I'll start again, post-pandemic. But in the post-commute world, I wonder how frictionless it will be.

More than 40 million people in this country are facing eviction when the CDC moratorium expires at the end of this month. That’s roughly 12% of the entire population. In winter. In a pandemic.

That does not include the defaults and foreclosures on homes.

I "sat in a meeting" today about the re-opening of our eviction and foreclosure courts. Talking about details of court operations, intended to protect the rights of people defending eviction and foreclosure actions. That's well and good. We need to fix court operations to secure those rights.

But right now, we need to forbid eviction and foreclosure. Because our government did not gve people money, did not give restaurants & bars & local shops money to pay employees who could not safely work at businesees people could not safely patronize. Because our government did not cancel rent, cancel mortgages, people will be homeless, in winter, in a pandemic. 

This is the most immoral of nations.

In Chicago, 19 deaths and 1,757 confirmed cases were reported since Thursday. The city is seeing an average of 14 deaths per day, down from an average of 18 people dying per day the week prior. An average of 1,339 confirmed cases are being reported per day, a 31 percent decrease from the prior week. But testing has also fallen 31 percent in the past week.

I'm starting to hear from more friends with COVID or with COVID in their immediate families. We haven't left the house since before Thanksgiving (except a couple masked walks in the park), but my parents each leave a couple times a week; and my sister is in a pod with another only-child familiy. I am starting to have moments of pure terror on a regular basis.

But I've mostly finished my Christmas shopping. That's odd. I have to mail some cookies around.

On top of all the other things, I am completely burned out at my job. I had been fairly burned out already last year, but now I am a pile of cold ash. Completely charred and burned down to nothing. I'm professional cremains.

What's burned me out at work--prior to *gestures vaguely* everything--is just the basic dysfunction of the nonprofit workspace, tiny type. And some small failures. And some stagnation. And a lack of novelty. And some complicated reflection on the path that led me here, the mistakes I made, the right choices I made, and the realization along the way that I was never ambitious. That I only ever wanted a job I was good at, at an organization I was not embarassed by, that left me emotional and mental space to be a person in my off hours.

Which I have, in spades, and am exhausted with.

So I'm frequently angry with myself for being burned out. And also because I believe in the work and the general work environment is very good: work-life balance, dominon over projects, good-for-non-profit-salary. But I am. I am tired and ready to be somewhere else, doing something else, for someone else. 

But I don't feel at all marketable. I've also known too many people my age & education level & comparable job title who just gave up trying to find new jobs, as their searches stretched from a few months to a few years. So I should just get over being burned out.

I'm less than two years away from "being eligible for public service loan forgiveness". My org has given up our office space and transitioned to a permanent "work from whereever is conveniet" model, no matter what the new year brings. This is a situation that says "ride it out. find a way to reconnect with it. be better."

However, I suspect I just don't want to work as a professional anymore. That if, through some divine intervention, I actually get my public service loan forgiveness, I'll try to get hired at the sort of hourly wage job that does not really exist any more: file clerk, receptionist, coat room clerk at the local museum. That's a total pipe dream--and I know it--a woman in her 50's with a minimal social network, getting a non-exploitaitive, non-back-breaking job for just a little pin money. 

Maybe one of the local legal aid agencies would have a part-time job that I could get hired to do and then get fired from because I wouldn't work more than my hours? 

Or maybe I could retire. Would that not be amazing?

What to do? You can’t argue people out of paranoia. If you try to point out factual errors, you only entrench false belief. The only solution is to reduce the distrust and anxiety that is the seedbed of this thinking. That can only be done first by contact, reducing the social chasm between the members of the epistemic regime and those who feel so alienated from it. And second, it can be done by policy, by making life more secure for those without a college degree.

"They" like to remind people that when you design for the person with a disability or who needs assistance, you make things easier for everyone.

Designing a social safety net that works does not just feed the destitute and aid homeless drug addicts. It gives dignity to all wage earners and a margin of error for anyone.

There are a lot of things I don't understand about people. One is the fear that a thing which may help you may help someone else more.  Another is the belief that help you will never need has no value in your community.

 I understand anxiety and I understand feeling you have not control. I just don't understand how it leads to the belief that no-one at all should have aid of any kind.