A Journal of the Pandemic #8

It occurred to me that a decade ago, my life was headed toward, what is to this point, its darkest point.  My mom was diagnosed with cancer, and the flight I booked in the fall was the first time I felt the financial tremors that were to spiral downward for the next few years after that.  It seemed as if everything was conspiring to destroy me, everything that could go was in fact going wrong.  I had a lifeline, though, one that I didn't appreciate enough at the time, because most of the time I could only concentrate on what was going wrong.  I had my sister.  We had been and would continue to be close, and were living close enough together that I could shelter from the storm.  At one point I was living with her, and at others the ability to visit her became a beacon in troubled waters.  Things began to turn around.  Things I never expected in a million years began to happen.  Then ten years later, I am in a position to wonder why I am so fortunate when so many others are not.  One of the things I can offer is the perspective that things at their worst don't always mean they'll stay that way, that fortune is fickle, perhaps, and in time you will find yourself level again.  I don't know if anyone reading this now is concerned in the ways I was concerned a decade ago, or are handling matters quite different but equally alarming.  The pandemic itself, for instance.  I need to keep saying this because I'm not sure it's getting through the thick wall of media coverage, but the pandemic itself isn't the only thing happening right now, that the effects of it go beyond mere measures of health and even death.  Life itself.

I started having breakfast again last week.  I realized that I had to impose some sense of normality back into my routines, and even as last week began a process of losing any real sense of what normal is, losing track of just how long I had been doing this self-isolation, how long I had been away from work, how long it had been since I had seen the childcare center's babies, worrying about how they're developing, wondering at how much they're progressing...Listen, I was getting stuck in a rut.  It was getting weird.  I got heavily involved in Twitter, for god's sake!  That's a whole phenomenon right there, like any social experience something you have to be doing a lot for a long time in order for anyone to care, to mean anything at all.  Otherwise you're just another random user in the vast anonymous sea, and nobody really cares.  It's different from, say, Facebook, because on Facebook it's people you know, or have known, that you're going to be spending the bulk of your time interacting with (unless you're a troll dropping trash on news items, or worse, sharing every meme that comes your way).  Twitter is mostly impersonal, and it's everything everyone wants desperately to be true, which leaves a lot of room for warping to happen, without anyone realizing it...

Anyway, so I opened submissions for Mouldwarp Press Presents: Not In Kansas.  You can find the details in the tab above.  Even if you don't want to participate yourself, consider telling others about it. 

Today I went onto the base where I (normally) work for the first time in a month.  I got really tired of staying at home.  Still distancing!  It feels weird.  Last week some of my colleagues had a parade thru base housing.  Kind of forgot about it until after they shared photos. 

Still bought way too much stuff online, still waiting for things to be delivered.  Ironically, the things that are scheduled to take the longest to arrive are the masks.  I guess it figures, all the way around...