Saturday, Jun. 24, 2023 - 5:40 pm.
I'm exhausted. I blame work. It worries me thinking that we'll have a kid when I feel this way. Andrew's also exhausted, we both are. This has never been a reason to make us go "let's just be childless for the rest of our lives", because we do want to raise a child, we just worry about our energy levels as the semester progresses.
I'm still going through feelings of failure and frustration about things not going my way, but two things happened this week: we pulled through a screening of "Pride" on Tuesday, and yesterday I was a speaker at a panel called "Pride and well-being: research on sexual and gender diversity" along two other academics, one of which is the queer elder I mentioned a few weeks ago.
Three things: my current research project has a large budget and this week I got a new chair, a standing desk and a printer. I should be getting a new computer and an iPad next week. I was lucky I was put in an office with a desk and chair when I was brought into the Psych department, but that office did not even have a computer. I'm also lucky my colleague and former boss B got me a laptop with money from her research project at the start of the pandemic. That's been my work computer to this day.
Anyway! I'm not sure how the screening went because I had to run to attend the start of my second sign language course. My students/members of my lab could not attend in the end either, nor the student who's our connection to the uni film club. That afternoon seemed a bit disastrous as one person kept excusing after the other, but when I left the screening there was a good crowd (10 people? good enough!) and the film was well on its way.
Wednesday was the celebration of the Indigenous New Year, though the proper word is cycle. The shortest day of the year for us, the start of the winter and a new return of Antü, the sun. I know very little of Mapuche worldvision, but what I know it's just beautiful, humbling and heartwarming. Nature will start waking up again to welcome spring.
I get to watch the sunset from a 4th floor (without other buildings around) every day, and it's just amazing to see how the sunset moves an inch every day until six months later it starts to make its way back, little by little. The sunset is one of the reasons why I don't get so impatient about moving out of here.
(though I do wish we found a house already)
The Pride panel yesteday was great. I didn't quite come out but I said "we" instead of "them" a few times. The audience was made up of uni students, all of them queer looking. I was so, so pleased with the event, both my intervention and as a whole, and I'm trying not to look back on what I said because I'll start second-guessing my own words.
The Pride march is on Wednesday at 5:30 pm. Not a great time for us queers working full-time, but Andrew already informed a colleague of us through email that he and I couldn't attend a meeting (Andrew and I are also colleagues) because "we're going to the Pride march".
I'm lucky he turned out to be more militant than me, because otherwise I'd be dragging my feet to attend. Not only because it scares me a bit, for fear that conservative groups or the local neonazi punks show up, it also makes me feel a bit lonely. Andrew and I have queer friends, but we're all in our late 30s with job and family responsibilities, and they're not out of the closet or they're working at that time or they feel this is a youth event, or a combination of these options.
So I'm glad we have each other to go march waving the rainbow and the bi flags.
Some Pride marches were scheduled for today in this and in my home country, and I resented the local march wasn't scheduled for today. But it's been raining a lot, and the march in the capital city here was postponed for tomorrow. I expected it was going to rain here today and it didn't. It's not supposed to rain on Wednesday, but here you just never know. You gotta keep checking the weather app.
Nevertheless, we're going, Andrew and I. Today we went to do some shopping for my trip to my home country (still haven't received my passport back from the UK visa application centre, though, I'm getting nervous!). We found a huge rainbow umbrella in a store so we bought it, and we're ready if it rains during the march.
It was my sister's birthday this week. I called her. I'm happy I called her, and I'm happy I get to see her in a month (give! me! back! my! passport! Goddamit).