This morning I woke up in a cold sweat, with my pulse racing and an existential feeling of dread and anxiety. The clock radio alarm, went it went off, was playing “Hot Blooded” from Foreigner, which, I guess, was oddly appropriate. Seems I was having an anxiety-induced panic attack, and wasn’t immediately aware of why. […]

it’s not been a great week. The return-to-office mandate is still unpleasant, loud, and demoralizing, with too few bathrooms, a broken ice machine, and barely functioning network services. It adds a good hour to my “working” time given the commute, traffic on the interstate, lines at the badge check at the gate, and “differently functional” […]

Given the recent news in federal circles regarding potential benefit cuts in the latest budget, as well as the whole < gestures vaguely at everything > in my particular vocation since the end of January, it’s depressingly ironic that this week is recognized as Public Service Recognition Week. Not that I’m really looking for recognition […]

After more than five years of remote work, today I returned to the commuting office life. It was…fine. In the most general of terms, it’s not really *that* much of an inconvenience, though to be honest, it’s kind of a bummer, just because. I likely could have waited until Monday to come in, though I […]

There’s everything and nothing going on all at the same time, and I can’t find motivation or focus for more than two or three hours at a time. Sure, I’ve kind of hit the “acceptance” stage of the whole current American experience and it’s constant threats to my livelihood, but the constant load is a […]

My personal week looked an awful lot like the curve of the stock markets this week. A couple of middling peaks, but mostly trending down and occasionally cratering. Most of the highs involved interactions with media, which…okay. Since my lovely spouse picked up an iPad a couple of weeks ago (she’s swinging her train into […]

Some relatively big events over the past seven days. Cory Booker’s historic, record-breaking (don’t* call it a) Filibuster on Tuesday. Departments dropping DeRP 2.0. Imposing tariffs on penguins. markets falling, along with our retirement accounts. And me, on Wednesday, falling and landing flat on my back. Several of these things hit personally, though one in […]

I’m frankly tired of being angry and afraid. The stress of this whole < gestures widely toward this general overall situation > is certainly still there, and festering, but I suspect I’ve just become inured to the constant pressure of all these stressors. It’s not quite numbness, but it’s getting there. I’d like to think […]

One more week down, and the work slog continues, in part because Schumer indeed did fold (though it remains to be seen if he’s as capable of 4-D chess as the red hats claim TFG is), and the shutdown was put off, at least until at some point in the summer when the debt ceiling […]

Staring down another Friday, another shutdown threat, and this one’s even more loaded than usual. The seven month(!) continuing resolution that passed the House earlier this week is total hot garbage, and calling it “clean” is even more of a fiction than usual, as it cuts all kinds of funding for necessary services, and perhaps […]