news from the underground

I’m not depressed. Not technically. I’m actually in fairly good spirits.

But I am feeling an emotional toll from this fucking weird-ass time in our world.

It’s showing up in my inability to concentrate.

I can sit down to work, and focus for hours…

IF, I am not interrupted.

Alas, once something distracts me from what I am doing, like a wasp buzzing around the living room or the dog barking at the neighbor, I can’t recover.

I have organized every piece of paper, every letter that needs a response, my cases, my files – each file labeled with a to-do list on the front, every item accounted for.

Couldn’t be more organized, more straightforward, more distraction proof, and yet,  when my concentration is broken, I can’t rein it back in.

I try. I re-read what’s in front of me. I tell myself, with my out-loud voice, what I was doing and what needs to happen next, as in, “Pick up the blue pen, sign your name, fold the letter, put it in the envelope, address it, stamp it, take it to the mailbox.”

I pick up the blue pen and next thing I know, I’m creating a grocery list.

I look back at the pile on my desk and it looks like someone else’s Chinese homework to me – nothing I can make sense of.

It is SO hard to keep my brain on track.

My head is so exhausted and overwhelmed and over-fed.

Too much information that is too much to process.

Everything takes extra thought – did I wash my hands? Did the mailperson wash her hands? How can I mail this without having to go to the desk at the post office? How can I hand this file off without touching it? Did I touch my face? Where’s my dog?

Where the fuck is my dog?

He no longer wants to come into the house, particularly at night when I want him to.

He’s gotten all weird and wormy and fearful and anxious and odd.

He’s sitting outside right now, in the dark. The only way that I will get him in tonight is to go outside and drag him in with a leash.

Even he is feeling the emotional toll.

Maybe instead of trying to focus, I should just go lie down with a tennis ball in the driveway.