A Journal of the Pandemic #6

Finished writing “Falling Toward Oz” last week. It happened on another day when I thought I was again going to not work on it at all, stuck in a pandemic rut, and then that evening just went to work on it and buckled down. It ended up clocking in at 8,000 words, exactly, which had become my target, but it felt weird, typing the last few and seeing the total. I reached the climax and thought maybe I’d rushed toward it too quickly, but kept on writing and, I think, ended up with something better than I had previously been thinking. Anyway, it’s always a nice feeling, as a writer, to finish something and feel pleasantly surprised at the results. I posted about it on Facebook. Some people were like, Oh, you’re still writing? This, despite the fact that I’ve literally linked four flash fictions I’ve done this year alone. Well, what can you say? My Colorado writing buddy was among them, and suggested we collaborate on one last anthology. I told him I’d think about it. Thinking, at the moment, the results of the serialized story I’m currently blogging (the one about the pandemic), which doesn’t currently have enough vampire for Pat (hi, Pat!) but will circle back to them in a few days.

Still at home. Starting to feel weird. Again, I’ve spent long periods of time more or less in this mode before, but never with so few options outside the home. As noted above, began to feel stuck in a rut, but then began to challenge that. Late last week I finally went out and sat in a park (my oldest sister has been sending pictures of her family at a lake they just discovered in their backyard) to do some reading. The book I’m reading now, it had a bad start (more common than you’d think) so I was concerned it was actually a bad read overall, but the park proved otherwise, so I’ll be diving back in eagerly after I finish up blogging this morning. Anyone who knows me knows I read a lot, and probably most people just assume I’ve been doing a lot of reading during this time, but they’d be slightly less right than they’d guess.

This is more or less the point I’m starting to wonder how little others think about me. I’ve had to initiate every communication during the lockdown (except this one lady who periodically contacts me so she can vent about personal problems, though I think perhaps I may have put a dent in that last week talking about pandemic things). I know I’m ordinarily a fairly private person anyway, an introvert who spends his free time alone by choice anyway, never developed routine relationships with regular conversation, but...Am I really so disposable? Does everyone really just assume I will happily continue like this? I realize I began my pandemic journals lamenting about family, but it’s...not even just that. It’s everyone. If I’m rattled by anything in this whole thing, it’s that. And yeah, it increasingly sucks that everyone else, in just family terms, has other people living with them, and so when they want to, for instance, initiate a family game night over the internet, they have that instant leverage. I usually do best in those circumstances playing off of someone else. Well, I don’t have someone else, and so I can’t participate. This is partially a complaint of my own making, I understand. But it also emphasizes what I lost last year above and beyond my niece...

Of course I used up a little more of my financial wiggle room last week, and panicked a little, because again, I’m also increasingly worried about what follows this lockdown, if I’m setting myself up for another financial hole, which I’m lucky enough to not be experiencing now, but many others are, and it’s still weird to think, that for many people the pandemic isn’t minor complaints but real ones, and I have no practical experience with that side of it, and that’s a large part of why it doesn’t seem real to me, despite the pandemic being a worldwide experience. Knowing, and even having a small fraction of the impact on my life, that this is happening, it’s tough to reconcile. It feels very much like the kinds of privileges and disparities I didn’t previously apply to my life, and that’s kind of inexplicable and humbling at the same time.

We’re at the point where arguments are being made to lift restrictions, but realizing that even when we reach that point things will still be different. The workplace sent a memo detailing what that might look like there, and it actually feels more intimidating in that sense than it did when we were merely consolidating for lack of children. Then, at least, it was still business as usual if limited and altered by scope. Now there looks to be entire procedures, and perhaps even those mandated masks people keep arguing over, which are increasingly common as I poke my head out every now and again...

To top it off, there was a network TV special on the weekend. Lady Gaga, at least, seemed to have totally forgotten the recent context of the song “Smile” (as employed by the film Joker). Maybe she’s right. Maybe this is all a hard reboot. If so, I hope we use it wisely.

Oh, and hey! Here’s some fun trivia for you! I have always, always eaten breakfast. For the first time in nearly forty years, lockdown life had changed that. For at least the past week (see? I can’t even remember when it started now) I have been skipping it, and just headed straight through the morning to a noon lunch. I know this’ll revert back once I’m working again, but it’s tangible proof that I have fundamentally altered at least one aspect of my ordinary life because of the pandemic. No breakfast! Not even brunch! Madness.