I'm wondering:
Is it me or do other people notice that the humans around them are starting to lose their collective minds even more than usual?
We saw an initial wave of distress during the quarantine phase of COVID, and then in the aftermath of rejoining society phase.
Now it seems we've reached a new phase where everyone is a little bit worried that the seams are coming apart, and the seams within the individual people are likewise unraveling.
I have never encountered so many disgruntled and confused and distressed and angry people in normal workaday life as I have in the last couple months. People are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, but they aren't necessarily targeting their rage on a sensible and effective object. It's more like an inchoate, dysfunctional grumpiness affecting everything.
Many of the people I'm acquainted with also seemed to be operating under a general assumption that society is under great strain and the whole thing could blow it any moment. I think some of them are afraid that the maga neighbors are going to go full violent. Others are convinced likewise that Biden is taking us down into the drain, and a crisis point is being reached. I don't feel like there is a crisis point being reached other than perhaps via climate change. Maybe climate change is motivating some people toward this frayed edge.
I also notice people who seem to be frantically rowing upstream against this tendency... For every couple of grumpers and erratically behaved fools there seems to be a person trying to pour sunshine on everything, but to no avail. The sunshine efforts seem a little bit forced - as if through pressing the happiness button they can somehow solve the behavioral issues with people around them. Or it's like they're clinging on to the vestiges of courtesy and pleasantness they remember from the before times and insisting that they be carried through. I am grateful for people who are doing this but it seems like they are swimming against the tides.
I don't know - maybe it's just me? I was so functional and feeling so cheerful that my doctor took me right off the antidepressants and now that I've been off for a while, I'm grateful to be off, but it's like I'm noticing behaviors I didn't register before in the daze of contented extra serotonin. A few percent less serotonin and suddenly I realize people seem to be on a hair trigger. It's concerning.