"Avast, me hearties!" or, the Definition of Insanity

Slattern and slovenly housekeeper that I am, I expect to run out of clean laundry at about this time in the count-down to any production.
Make that laundry and strong drink.
But not medication.

When I directed the graduation musical for the parish school last year it almost killed me.
Why am I doing it again this year? and why am I surprised that I feel the way I do?
Yes, some of the effects are simply lack of sleep and of down-time, but a lot of it it the way the Body of someone who refuses to exhibit stress puts her Psyche in its place.

Trying to drag at least a simulacrum of emotion out of an affect-less generation is a lot of work.

Are we beginning to suffer from a sort of societal autism?
I mean that quite seriously.

More and more commonly I am finding that children, and I mean those who volunteer, who actually want to perform, (as opposed to the ones, usually a boy, we have to strong-arm, or bribe with the prospects of sword fights, who have always existed,) when asked to smile and scowl have barely differentiated facial expressions.

And expressive singing is almost a lost art, you can see it in the zombie-like personae of many pop singers.

Anyway, what can, what should be exciting and interesting for me, and always used to be when working with this age, is now drudgery.

Oh, stop complaining and get cracking on stapling those milk jugs together.

(I think if the administration would just let me murder one of the eighth graders, my back pain, headaches, facial tic and atopic dermatitis would go away. I'll ask in the office today...)
(I don't mean that seriously.)