I get frustrated when things don’t work. Increasingly I have been getting especially frustrated when things that are fancy don’t work, because I feel bamboozled. The other day, I went to wash my hands in the bathroom at work, and the automated soap dispenser/foamer didn’t work. I was awkwardly placing and retracting my hands under the sensor repeatedly like please sir… just a bit of soap to wash my bathroom hands… and nothing....
In addition to my attention span, another pandemic-related loss not immediately obvious to me (probably because I was too worried about all the other losses, like the human lives, and the general erosion of mental health, and the ability to pretend that the institutions holding up our society would be able to take care of our most vulnerable), which I am only now realizing, has been the in-between moments. The 30 minutes between leaving work and meeting up with a friend for drinks is an in-between moment....