who's labour is it

I had a minor breakdown today over the idea of things going back to normal.

( Precipitated by Mat telling us, it's high time for a hangout, don't you think? )

Even aside from the family stuff, though, I desperately don't want things to go back to normal. I don't want to be in a big warehouse painting in a cold room five days a week, with an hour transit either way full of strangers and through a sketchy part of town. I don't want my weekends to be full of social obligations that eat up all my time.

I don't want that crushing guilt over not being enough to return, but it's already coming back, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.


eta I suppose the upshot here, the tl;dr if you will, is that I have been enjoying my time completely cut off from people outside my household. Whatever horrible things that says about me. Because fuck personal preference, right? You're only good if you can exist in the ways other people want you to.

ours

So we ended up hanging out on Zoom, which was a good compromise, although Mat is clearly chafing really hard to, you know, actually have people around. We're all clearly frazzled right now, though with them it's because it's really tough with two young kids right now, and two jobs.

We did chat for two hours. I love those folks, and it was nice to get some grown-up time -- usually these days when we are with them, it's largely with their kids. But boy am I tired. I'm so tired.