Low Pressure System

I like winter because there's no pressure to enjoy it. And I'm sort of a survivalist at heart, I think.

Endure is my motto.

But it's tough when the weather is news and not just weather. And how I'm faring as an able-bodied Ottawan who doesn't suffer mentally or emotionally from winter - because S.A.D. is real - is, quite frankly, not very well.

After all, I can't pretend that I don't know how hard it must be for other Ottawans when I can barely navigate the outdoors myself, can I.

It's depressing. We don't live on islands of independence. We live in communities. Communities where some members don't have to worry about anything while other members have to worry about everything.

I guess I'm in-between the people who don't have to worry about anything and the people who have to worry about everything.

How do people who don't have to worry about anything deal with the guilt? I mean, I feel guilty and I have to worry about...well.. the polar bears showing up in that Russian town, for starters.

Because that's just it, isn't it. If you have decent accommodation, a way to pay for it, and no worries about where your next meal is coming from, how different are you from the 1%?

My friend believes it all goes 'round but that now is actually better than ever for more people than it isn't. And that's great, I guess.

For people who can afford a little privacy in comfort.

But tell it to the people who can't.

Then tell it to the polar bears who've migrated into that little Russian town because their normal habitat is disappearing under their paws.

I had a job recently where it felt like I was the only employee who had to show up to work to be paid. Because I was. Everybody else was on salary, I was by the hour. Those were my favourite days, too, when everybody else worked from home, because I had nothing to do, the job was a nothing burger, and if no one else was there, I didn't have to pretend that it wasn't.

I went to the CBC website and that was pretty much it, though.

I learned something on those days, too, aside from how boring the CBC website is, and it was that boredom is stressful, and there's nothing more boring than not being able to do ANYTHING because nobody wants to admit that there's no work for you to do. The job I'd had before it? I was so crazy busy I worked for free - in spite of my marxist leninism.

But it was so much better, being challenged like that. Terrifyingly fun.

It paid less per hour and was much higher level than the job that followed it, too.

But nothing in the world of work really makes sense, does it. I mean, unless you're trying to get rid of the world of work, you're just feeding the beast in one way or another.

I used to think doctors and nurses were the exception to that, doing good by keeping us alive. But all you have to do is spend time in a nursing home to realize that they're actually the worst. It's terrible, really, what the medical profession mostly does, which is keep people alive who want to die.

The ego of the medical professional is like no other ego on earth, I've decided.

Oh, and Gord forbid marijuana pudding should be dessert because, "Oh no then why did we go to medical school to learn to prescribe all these horrible drugs that interact with other horrible drugs and keep people who want to die alive and having no fun at all?!"

There isn't actually a dementia crisis, you know. They're all hallucinating, nursing home residents, because the drugs they're on do nothing to prevent the urinary tract infections they all end up getting.

Why?

Because diapers are even cheaper than labour. It would be very expensive to actually look after older people in nursing homes.

Cripes, we don't even clear the sidewalks of ice and snow for middle-age people just trying to get to work, we're apparently so broke now.

By the way, tomorrow is Snowmeggedon (again) in Ottawa so be careful out there.