…for now, anyway.
It was the best of shutdowns. It was the worst of shutdowns.
It was the most meaningless of shutdowns?
Take your pick.
After we are paid and time has passed, I’m sure I will look back on the shutdown with nostalgia. I have often joked about wanting to take another maternity leave, but without having to take care of a baby, and in a way, the last 5 weeks were like a bizarro world version of that. At times, I felt more relaxed than I have been in many, many months.
But it was stressful too. Missing paychecks. Wondering if we would get backpay. Way too much cable news. Wondering if it might end tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after THAT.
Being a pawn in the madness, and having zero power to actually do anything about it.
It was nice to see all of my coworkers again, and get caught up on what’s been happening with the space station over the last 5 weeks. But of course I was never totally out of the loop, which helps. There is a lot for me to catch up on, but so far I haven’t been able to identify any major balls that were dropped. That speaks pretty highly of the people I work with, I believe. We have a pretty top-notch team.
We’ll see what happens in 3 weeks when this short-term funding bill expires and we get to watch the powers that be argue over “the wall” again. I really, really hope we can avoid another shutdown, but I’m not feeling too optimistic at the moment.
Wait and see, I guess.
Wait and see.
