A Journal of the Pandemic #5

Last week, no work at all. Finally, at the end, we got word that yes, we’re still being paid, and yes, we’re going to have to do some things. I know a lot of people have been working from home (never mind the people working every day in the ongoing essential services), and a lot of them with kids at home, and those kids being expected to do various permutations of schoolwork, and some of those people are going crazy...For me last week was a really long week, not even like a vacation (I’ve done that, “staycation”), but the longer it went the more I had to remind myself, this was only the first week of this for me! And some people have been doing this far longer. And a lot of them have been a far better job of actually staying inside all day every day...

I went out on shopping errands far more often than it might have seemed. Once was to get another bookcase, even though I started out spending far less time reading than I might have previously thought, or done. But I’ve been getting better at that. I’ve also been getting far better at being productive, writing. Like I’ve been doing for a decade, I decided to tackle the A to Z Challenge again, but unofficially, unlisted on the official site, but at this point I wonder how much that matters. The whole month has gotten progressively less social over the years. Anyway, talking about movies again, at the movie blog. Got some fun subjects lined up for some of the trickier letters. Pat (hi, Pat!) wasn’t amused that on the first day I used “A” for movies that literally began with “A” like A Christmas Carol (though none of the dozens of takes on it were in my selections), because that’s how I categorize my movies, and there are lots of movies with titles like that...

Anyway, tackled a serialized pandemic story, don’t know how long it’ll be. Most chapters are turning out bite-sized, which is about what you’d expect from something being written on a phone. Wrote a few other things. Worked on Falling Toward Oz, and hopefully will finish that this week (though, again, doesn’t seem terribly pressing; work says we won’t reopen for about another month at least).

I kept waffling on doing a pandemic story, but a few days into A to Z it just seemed like a natural blogging companion project. That’s the only reason it happened, plus of course having the time, having time to come up with an idea, having time to get started right away with little excuses in the way, and actually coming up with an idea, although the early material makes it seem like a thinly-veiled pandemic journal (other than this one) (which of course it is).

I bought more things last week because I have financial wiggle room. Part of me has started worrying that what’s wiggle room now will be desperation, should this thing continue to draw out. Definitely. But at the same time, with so few options out there, and so much uncertainty, and no idea how much the world is going to change because of this, I keep thinking of it as bulwark for the world I hope to find on the other side.

Helped suggest another family chat for Easter yesterday, and by this point I’ve gotten over being the grump of a month back, upset at the budding disruptions, and was able to enjoy it. Starting to notice how it’s affecting other members of the family, in the opposite direction, which is unsettling. But realistically, this thing is having and is going to have a massive psychological toll, and that’s going to be something we as a global society will be dealing with for years to come. For every introvert like me, there are extroverts who were not at all prepared for a disaster party. (“Disaster Party” by Magic Giant is one of my pandemic songs, having been coincidentally performed on one of the morning shows a month or so back. “Crazy Train” is another; it’s the song the crazy kid was singing on a loop via karaoke when the cruise ships were being quarantined and I was talking with a coworker about that back in January).

So, yeah. To quote my sister-in-law on Facebook the other day, quoting Dumbledore: “Alas, earwax.”