A Journal of the Pandemic #23

Well, I don’t know about you, but at this point it’s no longer a question: There are people who talk about COVID-19 numbers being purposely inflated, but at my workplace there has been a consistent, concerted effort to downplay infections.

Is this common? For everything that’s been said about the pandemic, I personally have seen very little chatter about what it’s like to actually experience it. There has certainly been plenty of talk about the effects on the job market, schooling, sports, but not much on what people have experienced in their everyday lives. Maybe glimpses into isolation, but, well, I don’t know. That’s a large part of why I’ve been writing this series. I wanted to document my thoughts along the way. This is as significant a moment in history as I have yet lived through, something that has extended to very close to a year at this point, and of course whatever the effects of vaccine rollout, will linger for probably much of 2021 at least.

The stimulus money, for me, has been a bonus. The second installment I decided to use in part to read comics, DC’s Future State slate, which is a repurposing of what was originally intended to be another line-wide revamp, akin to the Silver Age, a new generation of heroes inhabiting familiar roles. So far I’ve really enjoyed it. One month down, one to go. I’ve been ordering them from Midtown. I panicked this past week because I ran into a roadblock for a release for the first time. I thought speculators had spoiled the second issue of a Teen Titans story featuring the in-continuity debut of Red X, a character previously featured in the cartoons. But then it became available soon enough, and I made Midtown even happier by ordering even more...

I joined the first decade of the new millennium a few weeks back by actually getting a Blu-ray player.  By the end of this decade I might even have a Netflix account! 

My sister just retired from the Air Force after twenty years. The pandemic prevented me from even considering attending the ceremony (which I had been looking forward to ever since my brother-in-law’s). Well. She’s a full-time mom now, about six months into the life of her son (the Burrito’s baby brother). I sent her a card in which I tried to express how proud I am of everything she accomplished in her career.

The Super Bowl is in town! I’m not attending, and won’t really explore the attractions, but obviously this is not a normal Super Bowl and as such the economic and visitor rush is not going to happen, and really, the small sampling of neighborhoods I took this morning does not reveal an abundance of excitement (maybe elsewhere in town the Gasparilla faithful decked themselves out for this, too). At work there were a lot of jerseys. I made a deal with a coworker I can’t possibly lose concerning the outcome (because win or lose Tom Brady already makes further history just by being in the game). 

But it’s been nice to hear about all the healthcare workers getting tickets. Actual tickets were priced to highly discourage attendance, although there will be some of that, and another coworker will be moonlighting, so I will know someone there. As they say round here, “Raise the flag.”

I actually have been writing recently. This year will be a little interesting in at least one regard: I’ve got a project where I will write a new chapter once a month. Thankfully, before last month was over I even figured out how to write the thing. And of course Danab Cycle business, in a variety of ways, including a short story collection. I did a lot of small projects last year. This year the goal is larger scope. One being the first full-length manuscript in about seven years. My work schedule is (probably) changing in a few weeks. It might mean less reading. But if so, then more writing. Or maybe balancing both. 

We’ll see!