I feel a lot of falling back these days. I don’t mean into old habits, but rather the feeling of falling backward the way you do when you’re a little kid and you allow yourself to fall back into a pool or fall back onto a bed you’ve just been jumping on the past 10-minutes. The feeling of fearless abandon when you just let go is something that I’m feeling almost daily. I realize that I’m doing this in order to cope with the quotidian madness that is the work-life I have set up for myself. Seconds and minutes turn into weeks and months so rapidly. Last year felt interminably slow. This is year is a roaring opposite. I can’t believe it’s NOVEMBER already! The amount of work I accomplish each day stuns me and thus the feeling of falling backward. Did I really do all that? And if so, why is there still so much left to do? For every item I scratch off the to-do list, 5 more lines replace it. What is going on? I’m paid a lot less for doing more work since my union accepted a sizeable pay cut to help our college out of a massive budget deficit that hasn’t really helped at all. Ooops, duped. {head in hands} “Yeah, I’m freeeeeeeee, free-fallin’,” crooned Tom Petty. I feel ya, buddy.
Moving on to other thoughts. On Friday, I received my Pfizer booster shot at a Walgreens in my neighborhood. I am a monthly/bi-monthly visitor to such a place to pick up things like tissues, or once-in-a-while, a new toothbrush and toothpaste and the like, but never for any prescriptions because I don’t take any save for Keppra which was prescribed to me back in 2012 for an odd epilepsy episode that reared up suddenly in the middle of my life. That small dosage comes from Kaiser. Other than that, I have never been a prescription pill type of person, thank goodness. (I feel very lucky, believe me.) What I witnessed yesterday as I waited to receive my shot and the 15-minutes after to ensure I was OK was astonishing. The Pharmacist was so kind and attentive, and he worked at top speed. I couldn’t believe how fast he was going while trying to be helpful and careful. He called up one person after another (mostly elderly customers) the entire time with no break. I don’t have enough experience with Pharmacy windows to know whether this is normal. Here is the odd thing (and this has been happening to me a lot lately), I awoke the next morning to a newsletter from a reputable, conservative political blog I follow called “The Bulwark.” In “Consider the Pharmacist–How Big Pharmacy is screwing pharmacists and putting the rest of us in danger,” I found a frightening and worthy read of something I had just personally witnessed the afternoon before! The state of the pharmacists and what Big Pharma has done to force them into the undignified position akin to an Amazon Fulfillment Center worker is astonishing, to say the least, but not surprising in our daily intake of watching capitalism eat itself. Later that afternoon, I received an email from Kaiser with the subject line: Kaiser Strike to Affect All NoCal Outpatient Pharmacies; Patients Recommended to Fill Prescriptions Before November 15.
Um, is there nothing left to do but contemplate my retirement (out of America in the next few years) and consider putting on my headphones to the 3D aural experience of Synctuition until then? There is so much going wrong everywhere. For me, personally, I’m living a good life for now, but I’m one of the lucky ones (albeit working too much). I have friends and family who suffer ill health and must cope with daily pain that I can’t imagine. I read about the treachery of a political party setting up the fall of democracy to prepare for authoritarianism. This is happening in every Republican legislature across more than half of the United States. It’s a seriously fatal coup in the works about to be unleashed in the next election. I don’t want to be here when it happens, but I know I will for a short time after. I’m thinking 2024 may be the perfect time to pack up a trailer and head south, but can I be ready by then?
So, it’s Sunday, November 7th and the clocks fell back. It’s sunny this morning (early for a change) and that’s good because I’m a morning person. I’m putting the headphones on and taking another sip of java…
danajae33 
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