Perception | When I left the parking lot at the supermarket earlier I saw a middle aged man, dressed informally, pacing, cigarette in one hand, taking sips from a beer bottle he held in the other. Around 9 in the morning. My first thought was: Ugh, what a hobo, drinking this early in public! Then I caught myself and realized I was being judgy for no reason. There could be good reasons why he was out there. Having had bad news he wants to forget. Waiting for good news from relatives fleeing the Ukraine or someone in hospital or anything. Who am I to judge?
Privilege | I’m well aware of the huge privilege that I can turn out of the news cycle anytime I want. At least I make myself to turn it off and just check at regular intervals. To only consume the news whenever I choose. News about the war, the pandemic, all the horrible things going on. I don’t know if that’s the sane thing to do or not? A few days ago I learned that someone in another team in our department is from the Ukraine. I had no idea. We’ve only ever met at the Christmas party or the yearly fun outing. Neither of which took place since 2019. I knew from her accent that she was from Eastern Europe, but never bothered to inquire further. Apparently she’s got three sisters in the Ukraine, who have fled to the border and hopefully will get out and arrive here in Germany soon. Some of our amazing colleagues started a collection to help cover some of the costs that will inevitable occur to get them settled here. This war is so much closer than we all might have thought it could ever be. I think I’m still equal parts in shock and denial.
Work | Another 5 hours of overtime this week. This better not become a habit. It’s exhausting. I will probably also doing a bit of work over the weekend, because otherwise we won’t make the deadline! Ugh! The upside is to see how much extra time off I can take with all the overtime at some other point this year. Two additional days so far and counting…
Outlander | I’ve caught up with my season 5 rewatch before season 6 starts next week. I mostly had it on in the background while I was doing other things as this season didn’t really held my attention like others before. Or maybe I’m just a bit over it all? Back in the early days I hardly missed watched any interview or event footage. There has been so much going on these past few days and I mostly can’t be bothered to watch any of it. Scrolling past all the tweets in my feed.
All back to normal? | While I was scrolling through my social media feeds this morning I came across quite a few photos of people enjoying hockey games or gigs in the US or UK like “in the times before”. I hardly saw anyone wearing a mask. Maybe they had strict entrance controls at the doors. I doubt that though. I saw these photos and saw people enjoying themselves with seemingly no care in the world and I can’t wrap my mind around it. Yet. Did they decide to be okay with the risk? Don’t they think it is a risk anymore? What is going on? I have no idea how I will act at the Frank Turner gigs I plan to attend in mid-April. But to me it feels too soon to just “get on with life”. This vast contrast between what I see or read about other people do and how I feel about doing those things is really messing with my mind today. Am I too worried, too cautious, too anxious? I know I am in general, but even more so? Like I said: messing with my mind.
There was so much more I had thought of writing about, but as I didn’t jot down any prompts, I obviously don’t remember them. Maybe later today for another post.
Random photo… just because 🙂
