February 23, 2022: Anita Tutu (Actually, It's in the Basement) -

Alaska Airlines sent me a promo for a credit card, including a fake card made out to one ANITA HOLIDAY. Cute. I don’t know what Anita needs, but I left town last week, and, nice as that was, I Still Nita.

After we’d both retired, I said something to Rick about going on vacation, and he said we could never go on vacation again, vacations being the province of working folks. At most, we could take a trip.

I think Alaska’s being somewhat un-American with Anita Holiday.  If they want her to get on a plane, she should be Anita Vacation. (The Venn diagram of vacation, trip, and holiday would differ for Americans and Brits, with Brits subbing “holiday” for “vacation” entirely, and some Americans limiting “holiday” to things like Christmas. Most of the Americans I know would not say they were going  “on holiday to Costa Rica.” Or to anywhere. ANITA GETT OUTTA TOWNE either has cabin fever or is running from the police, or both.)

See, I’m quibbling, and being mildly tiresome. I know. I didn’t even wear a tutu on Tuesday, 2/22/2022, and I OWN A TUTU , so I have no excuse. Instead, I wore my ugliest sweater, because it was really cold, and I was in a blah mood. This wasn’t the artsy sweater sporting a cartoon dog, but a sweater so ugly that I try not to let it get further than the back yard. Imagine a bulky, quasi-Elizabethan fleece, gloomy blue, strangely puffed sleeves, little fleece pills and dog hairs all over, randomly dotted with pale lint.

It just isn’t tutu time. Russia invaded Ukraine, the prosecutors in the NYC criminal case against Trump resigned, and there were awful shootings in Portland last weekend, one in the park across from where I used to work, an angry man taking it out on some middle-aged women, killing one.  I’ve got some friends down with mild COVID, and another friend’s kid has cancer.   

I listened to a bunch of back-to-back podcasts on my out of town trip, and now they are all jumbled together – inflation and Romeo and Juliet and nerve regeneration and stories of Valentine’s Day disasters. I checked in on The Happiness Lab, hosted by Professor Laurie Santos of Yale. Dr. Santos is looking at the research on negative emotions this season – anxiety, anger, sadness, languishing, burnout. And she was recently interviewed in the New York Times,where this exchange caught my eye:

Interviewer: I was just Googling you to find out some minor fact, and I saw a story in the Yale student paper that said you’re taking a leave of absence for burnout. So first, I’m sorry that things were feeling difficult. And second, if the happiness professor is feeling burned out, what hope is there for the rest of us? 

Santos: Back up, back up. I took a leave of absence because I’m trying not to burn out. I know the signs of burnout. It’s not like one morning you wake up, and you’re burnt. You’re noticing more emotional exhaustion. You’re noticing what researchers call depersonalization. You get annoyed with people more quickly. You immediately assume someone’s intentions are bad. You start feeling ineffective. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t noticing those things in myself. I can’t be telling my students, “Oh, take time off if you’re overwhelmed” if I’m ignoring those signals. You can’t just power through and wish things weren’t happening. From learning about the science of happiness, I treat it like any other health issue: If my blood pressure was soaring — you need to take action. So it’s not a story of Even the happiness professor isn’t happy. This is a story of, I’m making these changes now so I don’t get to that point of being burned out. I see it as a positive.

I assume we retirees can’t suffer burnout any more than we can go on vacation. Burnout belongs to the healthcare folks and essential workers who’ve been battling this pandemic. Still, I recognize some of those signs she’s listing. (And boy, getting grief for not being an ebullient happiness professor would be aggravating.)  

I don’t like the trendy term, “languishing,” which makes me picture a lovestruck, or maybe tubercular, Victorian maiden. There’s been enough written about “languishing” in recent months to make anyone retire to her fainting couch. My hardworking parents would not approve of languishing. “LANGUISHING?!?! Maybe you could languish while you do some laundry!”

But am I somewhat  Aimless? Check. Low on Oomph? Check. What I mainly feel is …suspended. As if I’m between things.  Which we all are, always, right? I’m just not usually aware of the feeling.

I did achieve two grins today. One was over the news that we’ll soon have a women’s sports bar in Portland called Sports Bra. 

The other was after I pulled over to let an annoying driver pass, and then, a few minutes later, we both ended up waiting for a road crew to spin their signs from STOP to SLOW. That’s what his little beep-beep honking bought HIM.

Ha. It’s not much, schadenfreude, but it’s not nothing.