Ermagersh. I had Tuesday off work for a family funeral (anticipated, though still sad), and spent all day yesterday thinking it was Thursday for reasons undiscernible. Further compounding my confusion is that it’s spring break here in Aus next week for two weeks, and there’s a long weekend for the non-school folk in the middle, and it’s the time of year where I’m so deep into planning for next year that I keep having to stop and consciously ascertain whether it’s 2021 yet or if it’s still 2020.
I mean obviously, look at the disasters: it’s clearly still 2020.
A friend told me yesterday about a joke they’d seen online, with an angel reporting back for duty to their supervisor. The supervisor was surprised to see them back so soon: “What, you’ve dealt out all the history I gave you for the 2020s already?”
Says the angel, “Uh, 2020s…? Like, the whole decade? Um… oops?”
A decade’s worth of history in a year? Sure feels that way. Though I have to wonder what life has felt like around previous Major Historical Events, and whether or not it felt equally tumultuous. We like to think of the time we live in as distinct and different and special, and sure, it is… But also, humans gonna human.
So is this a particularly unusual year in its conflation of Historical Events? Or is this just That Year/Time Period for our generation(/s)?
IDK.
And I have nothing particularly insightful to contribute, either. It’s just something I’m musing on as we approach the end of the western calendar year, with elections and natural disasters and of course the on-going pandemic.
(One or two of the stories in April Showers, the collection of stories I wrote back in this April which will be released next April, references the pandemic. One of them even has a character noting how difficult it’s been for the family of two parents two children to have been housebound for three weeks. I reread it this week and nearly laughed: three weeks? You’re getting stressed out about three housebound weeks? Oh, you charming, naive little person, you.)
I’m also neck-deep in deadlines: final week of school means I’ve just finished reports and marking and what not; I have to finish edits on an Inkprint novella quite urgently; I have other edits in the queue that need attention; I have an article for Aurealis due next week for which I’ve only done about 1/4 of the prereading I wanted to do; I’m only 1/3 of the way through rereading the novel I’m teaching for one of my classes; I needed to bake a cake earlier this week and Didn’t; the Reaper Kickstarter is still running and needs to be managed; the 2021 Inklets are WAY behind schedule and need some love and care; and, and, and, and, and.
It feels like too much to get done before the end of the year, which feels scarily close, but when I stop and actually objectively consider what I’ve finished so far this term, it’s probably actually manageable.
I suppose if there is any take-away to be had here, it’s that my sense of chronology is, was, and always presumably will be skewy at best, and that probably in ten years’ time this strange, strange year will be a blip on the memory radar.
At least here in Australia it’s getting warmer, which means my asthma is playing up less frequently (I can actually go half a day without coughing!), the days are getting longer (hi, happy sunshine!), and although I have the usual number of deadlines to juggle (i.e. Not A Sane Amount), this time it’s not making me fall in a heap.
Actually there, that’s a better take-away:
Once, a teacher friend colleague person was giving advice to another teacher friend colleague person who was a first-year teacher who’d come from another career. The first TFCP told the second one when she was particularly floundering one day, “Just keep doing what you’re doing, but without the panic.”
Maybe, finally, I am learning just that: keep doing what I’m doing, just without the panic.
After all, everything does somehow magically get done.