I have repeatedly stated that covid has been good for me. The financial assistance for effected employees was better than my usual income, I enjoy working in a quiet building and starting late. I kept the job I was going to be made redundant from.......
Lately though, people irritate me. Is it the changed dynamic of the pandemic that I am not coping with? I'm not sure.
The fatal flaws of the few colleagues I still engage with are so well known to me and they probably think the same of me. There's noboy around to dilute the annoyances.....
There's the guy who won't pay a cent for anything at all and the one who keeps repeating the same complaints he has been talking about for the past two years, conflating stories to make the protagonist look as bad as possible every time.
I feel as though I'm finally recovering from the closure of the church I belonged to all my life (yes, that happened three years ago, I guess I'm slow) and now they are closing the site I work at which I have grown to love. I'll have a job on the new site but it won't be close to home, quiet, leafy and pleasant. It will be just a job working from a mostly empty office because the rest of the team have decided to work from home. The commute will be horrendous.
We had a "community morning tea" this week. I spent a generous amount on figs and blue cheese and cake and grapes.....
Only a handful of people showed up and they ate like sparrows. I am disappointed in the lack of community spirit and effort. It's a bit unreasonable of me, it's not like they were obliged.....
My birthday is only a couple of weeks away. It's a Friday, which is the perfect day and my party is Saturday. I booked myself a night in a plush hotel, in an ocean view room a couple of weeks later.
Maybe this current grumpiness will dissipate with all of that to look forward to.
TGIF indeed - and a very happy birthday when it swings around. Your birthday treat sounds lovely and I hope it sets the tone for the coming year(s).
ReplyDeleteSadly I am becoming a poster child for Grumpy Old Women. I am addressing it by remaining silent when I can. This had got up some noses. If I opened my mouth I would get further up their noses, and probably upset some who haven't noticed my silence.
I love people but sometimes I also really, really don't.
DeleteYou're entitled some grumpiness but it doesn't achieve much 🙄
Kylie I think there is something about COVID that has forced people to see things a bit more as they are. It's also in the astrology. I remember reading something earlier in the year that this is the time to discard things that don't serve you. Maybe these together are exposing the faultlines and making it harder to maintain the 'facade' that everything is OK.
ReplyDeleteI think we have reached a time in history when we need to make some fundamental changes - as individuals and as a society. Maybe it's just time to be more honest, because we are running out of time and need to change if we are to survive. COVID really brought us face to face with our mortality. The spectre of 'death' makes us focus on what's really important.
Michelle, for a long time I've had what I might call a quiet panic about climate, I feel like I see things with a pretty good level of reality. It could be in the stars, it's as good an explanation as any. It feels like burnout but there's no reason to burn out.....well, maybe a pandemic and grief and relentless change 😊
DeleteI hear you Kylie, this pandemic has changed us immeasurably. The fact we can all be taken down by a virus we can't see is part of it. How unimportant we all are. How unfathomable our presence on this planet and how, seriously, we need each other and must depend on each other.
ReplyDeleteSome days there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
XO
WWW
The lack of interest in the morning tea really bugged me and it's a strange thing to be bugged by. It was a symbolic moment.
DeleteI'm glad you hear me cos I don't really know what I'm saying
Ahead of time, let me wish you a great birthday as you have planned. About the guy who won't pay a cent--what is he not paying for?
ReplyDeleteThank you! I think I'll have a good birthday and I have got a lot about my 50 years to celebrate.
DeleteThe miser just won't pay for anything at all.
You are in a state of grief not grumpiness.
ReplyDeleteThe loss of your old office in the leafy neighbourhood.
The prospect of a long commute to a mostly untenanted building.
The long look back at the life you miss in your former church.
We need to make fundamental changes as Dr Frantom said.
Time Magazine (12-19 April) has a report from Spain's trial of a 4 day week.
*How we work now is not biologically or socially sustainable,* says Inigo Errejon,* of the Mas Pais Party.
We need tough legislation, giving workers new employment rights and humane working conditions. That will mean mass social action, challenging current business practice.
Jack Haggerty
Jack, not John 😂😊
DeleteI do think we are in a time (like most times in history) when the few are profiting massively from the unrecognised efforts of many and it needs to change but I suspect things will get worse before any uprising.
Thanks for naming grief as the culprit, I think you're right. None of the changes I've seen recently are huge bereavements but they still compound
As you know, for me it is TGIT everyday. I too enjoy the peace that the pandemic has brought into our lives, particularly the reduced traffic and the return of birds and butterflies into our garden. There are inconveniences but, not much different from those that existed pre covid.
ReplyDeleteI was reading that Pune is experiencing a huge number of infections so I think you're doing well to maintain your equilibrium.
DeleteBirds and butterflies are a wonderful result of the pandemic
I do like the sound of your birthday treat! But don't like the sound of the horrendous commute to your new place of work - I hope you work out a good way of dealing with it.
ReplyDeleteYep - so many changes brought about because of the pandemic. In some ways I got lucky, and I am grateful - but I still sometimes feel like a bewildered bunny caught in the headlights waiting to be squished.
Sx
I think this thing has got us all like rabbits in headlights! so long as I get squished after my night by the sea :)
DeleteI can't say that covid has made me grumpy or easily irritated by others. But then I don't have much to do with others at the moment since so many of my usual haunts are closed. I suspect Jack has hit the nail on the head, that you're mildly grieving for things you've lost.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say you'll have an awful commute to your new office and that everyone else will be working from home, I wonder if this isn't a devious way of encouraging you to resign? Or maybe I'm just being paranoid?
I have been working in an empty office for the last year: when everyone went home to work, I stayed on to do the things that are site based so nothing changes with that, I just do it from a different location.
DeleteI think there was a loose plan to move to smaller premises and when covid hit they realised that everything could function quite well with a WFH staff and allowing people to keep working from home meant they could get an even smaller property.
You've been right about impending redundancy before, though