Every morning when I wake up, I feel a little disoriented. Then nervous. The low-level anxiety sets in. I have suffered with anxiety before. I have taken medication for it in the past, but for the past 15 years, I’ve been able to manage it without medication. The current state of affairs with my job and the government exacerbates it. You know how you feel when you’re nervous about something? Maybe you have given a speech and felt nervous before it or you have played a recital and felt nervous about it. This is how anxiety feels, but you feel it most of the time. Exercise helps me a lot, which is why I will definitely take my dog on a long walk today.
But, of course, everyone from shuttered agencies is feeling anxious. We just want to go back to work so we can pay our bills and feed our families.
Imagine being one of those IRS workers being called back in today with no pay in order to process your tax returns and send out your refund checks. Imagine what a slap in your face that would be. "Please come in to work for free so that you can send out money to other people." Crimeny.
And, by the way, if you are deemed essential and told to come in, and then you refuse to go in because you’re not being paid, you can be disciplined and, possibly, lose your job. You’re being asked to incur the costs of a commute and daycare, maybe, to do this job, but you aren’t getting any money to actually pay for that commute or the daycare. Honestly.
So after my walk with my dog today, then what? I think I will get on Shutterfly and work on my family’s 2018 year in review photo album. I can’t actually buy the album once completed, until we are back to work (and there’s a 50% off coupon, of course, because I’m not crazy), but I can work on it.
Oh, I also started an online class on Coursera, Paleontology: Theropod Dinosaurs and the Origin of Birds, out of the University of Alberta. (Theropods = T Rexes and similar.) So l’ll work on the next lesson on that. Takes about 2 hours to do one module. If you like dinosaurs and have the time, I highly recommend the University of Alberta paleontology classes on Coursera. They’re great.
I’ll probably also look into what we need to do to collect unemployment. With both of us furloughed, and it now pushing toward a month with no pay, looks like we need it.
I went to Wal-Mart this morning and bought a few groceries. Stuff really is cheaper there. But the lines to check out can be frustrating. Not at 9:30 am on a Wednesday, though. We should shop there more often. They even have lots of organic stuff. So you can avoid chemicals in your food and save money too. Maybe not save time. But money.
And...well, because I can’t figure out how to close this entry, I’ll just share a picture of my dog. Isn’t he cute?
