Today

Found a free workshop to make nocino, so went to that and made some.  Instructor gave me a pile of black walnuts, so made some with those, as well.  I opened them to add more vodka (next time I'll use everclear, will keep longer), and they smell really good.  She suggested letting them sit for three months.  She had one she forgot about that sat for a year.  So, that's done.

Tended bar at the Seafood Fest, again.  Ended up working with almost the exact same crew as last year, though it took me a while to figure that out.  Went home and fell asleep and then came back to see Mudhoney.  Looking around at the crowd, people my age and older (mostly) around me, people that were in college during the Grunge era.  People dancing.  And easily as many women my age, as men in the area around the stage.  It was what I needed.  I found it cathartic (as it all was back in the day) with the state of the world being what it was/is.

And then yesterday, really just done with humanity.  Partially, it's our lack of big-picture thinking; our inability to take responsibility for our actions, and to admit that we are wrong (when we've made a mistake), or the unwillingness to even make a mistake...so, we get stuck, dig into camps, rather than look at how things could be better.  How everything is moving toward a "corporate" model, where the only outcomes that matter are money, and watching the joy and life being sucked out from places where they used to exist.  And how I just wanted to say "screw it" and sell everything, and leave town without letting anyone know (my self-destructive tendencies kicking in) and start over and re-invent myself.

And there is a growing lack of nuance (which might be in part, due to our need for immediate answers, and instant gratification, and high levels of distraction from technology), and the ability to see one another as fully human, embracing both heroic, and not so heroic traits, we put people on pedestals thinking they must have all the answers, and then knock them down when they don't (an impossible ask, we are not gods, afterall), instead of taking what is useful and learning from it, so we are always re-inventing the wheel (or as they say, "throwing the baby out with the bath water.")  Most things aren't all or nothing, and people are complicated.  And from headlines and news stories, you'd think we are all "amazed" "astonished!" when someone we deem "bad" does something heroic, or someone we deem "good" does something bad or detestable in our (greater society's, or whomever claims to speak for that) eyes.  All of those possibilities dwell within all of us, just a matter of choice, or a series of choices over time.

I've dealt with some of it, and feel different today, as if I were a different person.  Maybe one better fed, and away from social (and other) media, and not feeling singled out (as I was yesterday.)  One who can see and trust the good in others (as opposed to the fear, which says some frightening and repugnant things; or an unwillingness to question things, a lack of engagement in critical thinking, which is important for a functioning society), and that there are other people with hope, and curiosity, and creativity, and openness, and the willingness to listen, who are willing to be wrong, and willing to change, because the new information allows that to happen.  Still fatigued, and carrying too much, but better some days.

Oh, god, and still need to quit some of these things.  It saddens me, but the joy that I found there once has been sucked out.  Not worth continuing as is...and since it was where I got energy to do other things, not gonna fight this one.