A coworker I don't know well or even like messaged me in a side chat today during our video call team meeting. She said "hey, are you ok? You look so sad today - sad in a very beautiful way, of course (to this part, she placed an angry and eye-rolling emoji) but so sad." 

It's true that I was - sad, not beautiful. Right before the meeting, I had found out a dog I really liked got killed in a nasty accident today, slipped under the wheel of a farm truck, and even though it wasn't my dog, and just the dog of a distant friend, I did feel sorrowful, and couldn't stop thinking about it. I don't know if that's really the reason why my colleague thought I looked so bad, but after the meeting, my boss texted and told me to just take tomorrow off without using any of my leave.

I did read this very good part during a Rooney book I'm enjoying to run to today that made me feel better about some of the disconnect with friends and hard things and recent world events and life that I was writing about last night. It's a bit of a passage, but I'm pasting it here so I remember exactly what I was talking about last night, and why it made me feel better today: 

“Maybe we're just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn't it in a way a nice reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganizing the distribution of the world's resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it's the very reason I root for us to survive - because we are so stupid about each other.”

I love that. Because we found each other too interesting. Because we are so stupid about each other. Those are good lines. 

Anyway. Tonight I'm thinking of that beautiful little dog that used to run her cattle while I was running beside my friend's farm on Bell lane - the way she was so bright and fast and elegant at her job, perfect slipping between those huge animals that she could move around so effortlessly. And when the gate opened, when she was done, how she'd come over and dissolve into friendliness at the sight of me.