(L)Anguishing

Turns out there's an official clinical term for "Meh": Languishing.  The condition of being neither clinically depressed nor satisfactorily chipper, but somewhere in between.  It's what a lot of people have been suffering, constantly or intermittently, since around St. Patrick's Day 2020, when the world shut down. Nice to have a name. Personally, I think I've been languishing since around 1993, but I'll choose to blame things on the pandemic!

I think the most prominent symptom--or at least the most prominent NEW symptom--that I've noticed is, for want of a better term, utter and complete hatred of everything and everybody.  It's a subtle symptom, but it's there.  I can attest that, for the last six months or so, I experience days where I have these powerful, visceral reactions every time I get a notification of a new email.  Seriously!  Like, no matter who it's from or how innocuous the message may turn out to be, I find myself wishing death on whoever had the temerity to, you know, communicate with me.

I'm hoping that, as we start to drift back towards normalcy, I see a reduction in this particular symptom, at least.  As an educator, I can see that rank misanthropy will probably not serve me well in the workplace.