I'm not entirely sure why, but I've been feeling a bit melancholy this holiday season. I keep trying to figure out what's at the heart of it, but there are a lot of things that are bothering me of late that it would be easy to let overwhelm me. It doesn't help that I live alone and have no sounding board to speak of but this blog and other electronic outlets, but it's not the same as sitting down and having a face to face conversation with someone and getting immediate feedback. I guess a part of what's got me sort of down is the deaths this year of a childhood friend and one of my younger cousins, both from cancer, a disease I find I totally do not understand. And part of it is also thinking about this time last year, how upbeat and hopeful we were about the approaching Obama inauguration and what it represented for us. I think we all built up sort of unrealistic expectations of what he and the newly elected Democratic Houses of Congress could accomplish this year. I suppose we all figured that the things we'd fought the Bush administration over would finally come to fruition now that we had the White House and both Houses of Congress firmly in our control. Instead, it's been a year of crashing disappointments, the escalation of an increasingly unpopular war, bitter fights in Congress over health care reform that displayed the worst of what politicking is all about and an economy still souring with increasing unemployment numbers that will all but assure that the Republicans will retake both Houses of Congress in midterm elections this next year, making Obama's last two years in office to be a miserable experience as they work toward defeating every one of his initiatives in order to recapture the White House in 2012. Any semblance of cooperation in Washington is gone, period, as both sides entrench against each other and refuse to work together to help the American people. It's just gotten so damned ugly in Washington that it will be a small wonder if anything gets done for the remainder of Obama's administration due to the seething Republican hatred of him and the hardening of conservative Democrats against him as well. Is it any wonder I just feel a sense of melancholy right now? I worry whether I will still have a job this time next year if the operating levy that our library will put on the spring ballot does not pass. It will mean a 50% cut in our funding which is already tight due to declining state funding. And for senior employees like me who are higher up the pay scale and close to retirement, it could mean the end of our careers as we are older and more expendable because we're expensive to keep on the payroll. So there is a lot weighing on me right now. Add to that the fact that I am just plain worn out from fighting a respiratory infection for the past three weeks and am still coughing and hacking, although not as badly as before, and the fact that this one short week of holiday vacation has been anything but restful, and it just all sort of makes me feel tired, worn out, melancholy, and wondering what to do about it. I wish I could take next week off and just relax - no frantic Christmas shopping, no having to worry about bathroom construction as it will be done by the middle of next week....but no, we're very short handed at work next week because the majority of our staff took next week off for their holiday break. I am beginning to wish I had asked that week off instead of this week, but oh, well. I'll hopefully get my usual "spring break" that I take the week of my birthday, if our staffing situation at work allows, of course. It just seems that the weeks that I want off for vacation are being heavily requested by everyone else, so the competition for time off is getting downright fierce, and preference seems to be given to families with young children over us single and unmarried employees. Never mind that I am the most senior member of our department, I am unmarried, no kids, so it seems to be deemed less important for me to have time off than those with traditional families. I have "family", just no husband, no kids, but siblings and my mom with whom I do enjoy spending time. So oh, well...the price I pay for being a single gal can some times exact a heavy cost in more ways than one.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Melancholy at Christmas
I'm not entirely sure why, but I've been feeling a bit melancholy this holiday season. I keep trying to figure out what's at the heart of it, but there are a lot of things that are bothering me of late that it would be easy to let overwhelm me. It doesn't help that I live alone and have no sounding board to speak of but this blog and other electronic outlets, but it's not the same as sitting down and having a face to face conversation with someone and getting immediate feedback. I guess a part of what's got me sort of down is the deaths this year of a childhood friend and one of my younger cousins, both from cancer, a disease I find I totally do not understand. And part of it is also thinking about this time last year, how upbeat and hopeful we were about the approaching Obama inauguration and what it represented for us. I think we all built up sort of unrealistic expectations of what he and the newly elected Democratic Houses of Congress could accomplish this year. I suppose we all figured that the things we'd fought the Bush administration over would finally come to fruition now that we had the White House and both Houses of Congress firmly in our control. Instead, it's been a year of crashing disappointments, the escalation of an increasingly unpopular war, bitter fights in Congress over health care reform that displayed the worst of what politicking is all about and an economy still souring with increasing unemployment numbers that will all but assure that the Republicans will retake both Houses of Congress in midterm elections this next year, making Obama's last two years in office to be a miserable experience as they work toward defeating every one of his initiatives in order to recapture the White House in 2012. Any semblance of cooperation in Washington is gone, period, as both sides entrench against each other and refuse to work together to help the American people. It's just gotten so damned ugly in Washington that it will be a small wonder if anything gets done for the remainder of Obama's administration due to the seething Republican hatred of him and the hardening of conservative Democrats against him as well. Is it any wonder I just feel a sense of melancholy right now? I worry whether I will still have a job this time next year if the operating levy that our library will put on the spring ballot does not pass. It will mean a 50% cut in our funding which is already tight due to declining state funding. And for senior employees like me who are higher up the pay scale and close to retirement, it could mean the end of our careers as we are older and more expendable because we're expensive to keep on the payroll. So there is a lot weighing on me right now. Add to that the fact that I am just plain worn out from fighting a respiratory infection for the past three weeks and am still coughing and hacking, although not as badly as before, and the fact that this one short week of holiday vacation has been anything but restful, and it just all sort of makes me feel tired, worn out, melancholy, and wondering what to do about it. I wish I could take next week off and just relax - no frantic Christmas shopping, no having to worry about bathroom construction as it will be done by the middle of next week....but no, we're very short handed at work next week because the majority of our staff took next week off for their holiday break. I am beginning to wish I had asked that week off instead of this week, but oh, well. I'll hopefully get my usual "spring break" that I take the week of my birthday, if our staffing situation at work allows, of course. It just seems that the weeks that I want off for vacation are being heavily requested by everyone else, so the competition for time off is getting downright fierce, and preference seems to be given to families with young children over us single and unmarried employees. Never mind that I am the most senior member of our department, I am unmarried, no kids, so it seems to be deemed less important for me to have time off than those with traditional families. I have "family", just no husband, no kids, but siblings and my mom with whom I do enjoy spending time. So oh, well...the price I pay for being a single gal can some times exact a heavy cost in more ways than one.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment