"Thank You, Thank You, Silence"

It's been a month this week, hasn't it?

This will not, I fear, be a well-crafted or particularly deep post, but I feel like I have to decompress from this week somewhere and my personal FB circle (most of whom are truly lovely people in real life) has turned into a whirlwind of political rhetoric and knee-jerking, and I just don't feel like I can write freely there right now.

In R.E.M. terms, the week started out very "Shiny Happy People," didn't it?  

It did for me.  I was coming off the first real rest that I've had in a year (thank you Christmas break), and for the first time, I felt like I was truly past the weeks upon weeks of post-COVID fatigue.  I stepped back into a critical work week with energy and vision and joy.  For a couple days, anyway. 

And then Wednesday's sh*tshow at the Capitol happened. 

And suddenly we devolved into "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)."

I try not to write about political things, particularly in a public forum, because it never ends well.  So, I'm not going to say all of the things I'm thinking.  You can guess or read between the lines.  (Or search for memes about the recent departure of the Secretary of Education.)

But I hate being right when what I'm right about is a bad thing, and boy, was I right about this one.  Everything that happened on Wednesday....  How did more people not see that coming?  It's been stirring for months.  Of course it was going to happen.  (My mom and I, who deeply disagree on the topic of our current leader of the free world, had this conversation while I was home for the holidays.  I tried with everything in me to convince her that he was stirring this up and it was coming, and she was so sure I was wrong.  But I digress.)

I'm grateful the mob's attempts were ultimately unsuccessful.  Though I still fear for our country.

Wednesday night, all I could do was watch the news.  (I hate the news.)  When it was clear that we hadn't even made progress on Arizona by midnight, I went to bed.  But my brain wouldn't stop.  So, I did what any self-respecting over-thinker might do and started creating new Spotify playlists.  Because that's an important use of time.  I actually really like the two playlists I put together, too.  They give me joy.  (They did not, however, give me much sleep.)

Thursday and Friday were a storm of online term launch activity and student petitions.  Nonstop.  The decision fatigue is real.  Seriously, don't ask me anything right now.  The answer is "no."

But the true bright spot in my week occurred Thursday night when a dear friend introduced me to Netflix's new series, "History of Swear Words."  You guys.  If you are the sort of person who is not offended by profanity, you simply must watch it because the catharsis is real.   Especially this week.  It's the perfect combination of etymological education and comedy, and I found myself laughing deep, full-body laughs.  As well as saying lots of...well...words that I'm not writing here. 

And those words make me think of free speech, and free speech makes me think of the fact that today, a couple of prominent social media platforms finally suspended a certain political figure's accounts--an action I have been longing for over the past four years.  

In the words of one particular non-R.E.M. song that, yes, did end up on one of the new playlists: "thank you, thank you, silence."