Woke up too early this morning. No reason: that perfectly awful combination of not quite tired enough, not quite comfortable enough, not quite relaxed enough. So I guess there is a reason, or rather, several reasons.

I also started thinking about my life. Pretty natural, I think, for the first of the year. Transitions like this, especially ones that get hyped as much as the end of this godawful 2020, always makes us think about our lives: take stock, consider what we’ve accomplished, think about what we still want to do.

But see, when I wake up early, when I don’t get enough sleep, I’m instantly about a millimeter away from depression, and about a nanometer away from anger. I wish that wasn’t true: I wish I was constantly floating on a cloud of equanimity, accepting things as they come, aware of what truly matters and that the small irritations of the day, and even the large suffering of the world, is not it. Buddha-like, Christ-like, Snoop Dogg-like. The fact that I am never that calm always makes me feel like I’m failing. Because I think about this stuff, I read books about it, about philosophy, about the meaning of life, about the purpose of me, and I frequently come to decisions and determinations: this is what I should be doing. Yes. I write blogs about those things, try to weave them into my teaching, write stories or novels that use them as themes.

And then I wake up early and freak out because I have to go back to work next week.

That’s no big deal, understand: I’m good at my job — I have a job that I got to keep all through the pandemic and the quarantine, despite my job being paid for by the government that is so badly broken, funded by the taxpayers who are so badly broke, despite my job’s essential task having been voided by the virus because I can’t watch over (Usually I say “babysit” but I’m feeling magnanimous in my obsolescence; since I can’t do the thing any more, I might as well make it seem important) — and because everything to do with my job is so fucked right now, none of it actually matters. I realize all of that. I’m very grateful that I still have work, still have a paycheck (At the same time I hate that I have to be grateful for the opportunity to beat myself to death with frustration, to slowly flense myself with papercuts, just so I can buy food and shelter from other people without skin, all of us looking enviously over at Scrooge McDuck who’s swimming around in an indoor pool filled with rectangular skin-flaps, skin stripped off of desperate people, turned over to banks and bosses, cleaned and tanned and neatly edged, printed with “In God We Trust.”). I was just thinking the other day: this is why I took this job, why I went into teaching in the first place. I never cared about passing on knowledge or affecting change for the future (though I think about that now, especially when I wake up early), and of course I knew it wouldn’t make me a bucket full of money or make me famous. But I knew that it would always be there, that I would always have a job: and here’s the proof. Even when the school building is closed, and we all know how stupid and useless online instruction is, I’m still doing it, still working and getting paid to work. I can’t afford a new car or a big house (or a swimming pool filled with green-tinged epidermis bills), but I can pay the rent on my 2/1 townhouse and pay the upkeep and insurance on my 2011 Kia.

So what if my job is stressful? So is everyone else’s, and it’s worlds better than the stress of unemployment, grinding poverty, looming homelessness, slow starvation. And I get to have two weeks off for Christmas; a friend of mine just worked a full shift yesterday, on what should be a holiday — but we’ve got to keep peeling that skin. Mr. McDuck just added a hot tub.

I know all this. I know I should be happy and thankful for what I have, feel less bothered by things since there are so many more terrible things that could be bothering me.

I’m still bothered. Which means I’ve failed to actually understand what I supposedly know. I know I shouldn’t be upset, but I am. I know I shouldn’t worry about things I can’t change, but I do. I know things will work out for the best, that I’ll make the most I can of what opportunities I have. I still feel hopeless.

I still feel like it’s all pointless.