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On Watching the World Burn From My Home Office
It’s just plain weird, y’all.
It feels like the U.S. is heating up to American Civil War 2 right now, and at the rate we’re headed I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re full on Hunger Games by this time next year.
Meanwhile, Monday morning I stepped into my home office, still working from home under the looming pandemic, and sipped a lukewarm cup of coffee. “Everything is fine,” I consoled my wandering mind, pulling on my noise cancelling headphones to block out the sirens and helicopter that has made its home above my apartment. Totally fine.
The following 8 hours felt awkward. All of the motions were familiar. Truth be told, I got a decent amount of work done. But I left work feeling numb.
Nothing is quite like leaving a place where you tune out the rest of the world only to move into another where you have to explain to your mom or kids why they can’t go outside tonight.
I admit I feel particularly disconcerted as the spawn of my half-black, half-native dad and my white mom. I pass as “just white enough” in the office, and “not black enough” out of it.
On the daily, I am yanked between normalcy and revolution. I am saturated in the juxtaposition of cathartic tedium and watching my communities burn. As I watch my code compile, dark questions…
