Disempowerment

Lately I've become quite disempowered.

I used to have a zest for fighting against injustice and trying to make the world a better place.

But with everything that 2020 has brought, the chaos, the injustices, the suffering, I have just felt disempowered. It just seems that greedy, inept people fall upwards whilst everyone else suffers. 

Add into that the fact that under lockdown my responsibilities have gone up exponentially. I am trying to work, homeschool my kids, maintain my health, look out for my community, keep up with other people's expectations of me that I have no time for thinking, no time for me. 

(After this experience I will never complain about being short on time ever again!)

Issues which I read about I know that I should feel compassion for, and normally I would, but right now, under lockdown, I look inside and I have nothing left to give. 

I have had to turn down extra hours at work which I have waited over a year for because I am struggling to do the hours that I do. And so they are recruiting for another person. Which is the right thing to do. I work for a homelessness charity, it is absolutely the right thing to do to get as many people off the streets as soon as possible. But lockdown has forced me into a role which I never chose. I am good at supporting vulnerable adults. I am not good at getting my kids to stop playing Minecraft  and instead be excited to learn how to calculate a perimeter. 

And I know that this is a priveledged position. Many people do roles that they haven't chosen. But lockdown has made it hard to see beyond me. 

I know as well that at some point lockdown will end. The government are saying schools will reopen in September. 

Unless we are in lockdown. 

Which is quite a big caveat.

And I will probably continue to feel disempowered until that release. 

Im sure there is a way to figure out how not to be within my current limitations.

But I just don't have the time, the energy or the headspace to work out how.