Donald Trump is eroding my will.
I don't mean will as in will to live. It's not active despair. It's just that his presence in the Oval Office, and the continued cheerleading of people who seem to think that the S&P index is the only performance index that matters, and the smaller but nonetheless noisy numbers of people who actually support evils like family separation at the border -- it's grinding me down. There's a limit to the number of times that I am willing to call my reps and talk back to the radio, to say, "Hey, truth matters. Science matters. Manners matter."
Remember when presidents didn't call people "horseface," or at least not in public? I miss those days.
I keep thinking that I am going to GET BACK in the exercise groove and GET EXCITED about the beautiful fall vegetables in my crisper (and, simultaneously, GET RID of the 12 or 15 surplus pounds I have been hauling around since the election). I resubscribed to FlyLady because I was feeling the need for MORE ORDER. (It turns out that the Rubba Scrubba ads are no less annoying in 2018 than they were in 2010. It also turns out that if you filter the FlyLady messages to their own folder because the useful bits are all jumbled up with Rubba Scrubba ads, your house does not get any cleaner.)
You know the thing in my brain that used to make me say "Let's read a Dickens novel! It will only take 3 weeks!"? That thing is only limping along these days. I've got impulse power instead of warp speed. It took me three months to reread Pickwick Papers, and I didn't enjoy it very much. I rely pretty heavily on my ability to say "Let's DO THE THING!" with enthusiasm and a measure of efficiency, and the discovery that it has become less reliable is troubling me.
Neurologists have a label for the condition in which patients seem to lose their will: aboulia (sometimes spelled abulia). When patients have aboulia they don't want to start anything, and they can't follow through even if someone else helps them to get the ball rolling. I don't actually have a case of aboulia; I know that. Even so, it's troubling to see the shift in my thinking. I know I would be happier if I got the weeds out of the peony bed...but I don't want to get out there with the spade. I might really enjoy casting on that new shawl...but brioche stitch is hard and sometimes frustrating, so why bother?
My will is not totally MIA, but it feels kind of fractured. Ergo, dysboulia. It is clearly connected to the shenanigans in DC, so I am calling it archogenic, or leader-induced. The temptation to self-medicate keeps growing. Anybody else feeling the same way?
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