Often I feel like I’m not doing enough. Enough work, enough connecting, enough good. There isn’t a cure for feeling this way; it’s a cyclical process, to feel content, discontented, angry, desperate, determined, and content again. It’s unrushable and right now, for me, only just bearable.

Because I am so tired. It isn’t burnout – or it is, just not a kind I’m familiar with.

A week ago, I was walking home from Davis Square when I started to notice that the sidewalk was filling with people. It got more packed until the crowd erupted into Tufts Park, along with metal barricades and yelling and two people being cuffed by the Boston Police Department.

All that sounds very dramatic but it wasn’t. The yelling was from bullhorns – “go to Harvard Square!” – and the arresting of protesters seemed like an activity both parties (protester/cop) were submitting to, rather than relishing. A reporter and his cameraman sat on a curb smiling, sharing a cigarette or a sandwich (couldn’t see in the dusk), and I walked into the park and around the barricade without issue.

Not even a sideways glance from a cop.

I was carrying a bouquet of tulips. Someone complimented them (the flowers were gorgeous) and I said thank you, hoping they thought I was carting flowers around for a good cause. Really, the tulips were given to me for five years spent working at the university. A corporate gift.

Part of me wanted to go to Harvard Square with the protesters, but mostly I wanted to go home. I had a long day, so I denied the part of me that wants to do good. I don’t know if I regret it.

Rage is an emotion that exhausts; I feel a lot of it, which is why I’m so tired. It’s making me feel my age for the first time in my life, which is a weird symptom I didn’t expect.

Like most of these entries, I don’t have a conclusion. There’s nothing for it, anyway; our rage is alive and almost creaturelike – autonomous. It’s all I can do to keep it leashed, you know?

Recommendations:

Music: Billie Eilish is growing into her voice. This live session blew me away.

1. Over the weekend I went to the Power of Narrative Conference at Boston University and it was inspiring. Terrifying, but inspiring.
2. Been bringing the books I don’t want in my library to a used bookstore for credit. It’s just a good thing to do! I don’t want them to get pulped, which is what I think happens to a lot of book donation places.
3. A friend of mine started playing regularly at Café Zing in Porter Square! They’re very good and so is the café.