Death By A Thousand Paper Cuts
It feels like everyone I know is going through some stuff right now and I'm right there with them. Setbacks at work. Roadblocks in my activism. Illness and injury in my family. Impotent frustrations at our government. It feels like the hits just keep coming. To pile metaphor on metaphor: every time I feel like I put out one fire, two more spring up.
In any normal year (WTAF is a “normal year” at this point?) I'd be scrambling for any new from Phillies Spring Training; eagerly devouring stories about the new starter, thought pieces on lineup construction, musings on the potential of highly-prized minor league prospects. Can't do it. Brings me no joy.
I'm deep in the weeds on a couple new TTRPG games that I'm interested in. But they're not motivating me like a new game usually does.
I'm getting beaten down. And I don't post this farming for sympathy – everyone's got their own stuff beating them down. I say this to say that if it can happen to me, if I can see this “Everything Sucks” train coming down the tracks about to hit me, that I need to keep in mind that it can happen to anyone. Is happening to all kinds of people, in all kinds of places.
Life is hard, and is getting harder, and no one has a monopoly on grief or hardship. I have to keep this in mind.