My life had devolved into working on days when there are lessons, cycling when there aren’t, and doing other work while sitting in a Starbucks the rest of the time. As the weather cools down and work warms up, I have less time to cycle, which sucks. So now I go to Starbucks – almost always the same location – and drink hot chocolate or decaf lattes, get spicy chicken strips from a nearby grocery store that sometimes sells spicy chicken strips, and walk home via the same three or four routes to eat, watch movies, and slowly ease my existence away. My life is made of patterns that I scarcely have the wherewithal to control.
And podcasts – I listen to all the podcasts.
–––
In the last few weeks, my depression has increased, which is, for the most part inexplicable. Barely being able to cycle surely causes some of it. As does the financial insecurity that, to some degree, basically everyone is experiencing; the general uncertainty about my visa, which is currently being processed; the deep worthlessness I feel basically always; the ceaseless repetition; the lack of anything like a change of scenery. Work sucks, too, but that’s hardly novel. (It sucks and there’s too little of it….) But none of this explains its increase of late – except perhaps in the aggregate.
This all made the recent, nearly-week-old now, victory of Joe Biden in the never-ending election, even more gratifying. For a bit more than a day, it felt like I was walking around on a cloud. We all live with some base level of unease – the background radiation of worry and disconntentedness. I hadn’t realized how much more intense mine had been for a bit more than the last four years. Being able to relax, exhale, and contemplate a better future was a nice break. But all happiness is fleeting. This happiness has also fleeted – even tho the relief remains.
I write this on a break, in another Starbucks, having corrected available English and taught some lessons. Soon I’ll go back to work for a bit, then walk home the same direction. Life drones on and I drone with it, unhappily and ill-at-ease.
Somewhere men are happy. Somewhere children shout. But there is no joy in Me-ville. For I have struck the fuck right out.
終
