A Journal of the Pandemic #35

Somehow, since the last time I wrote an entry in this series, the pandemic has kind of begun to rear its ugly head again.  As expected, its place in common conversation has vastly diminished, even as there are efforts to bring back things like mask mandates.  Hey!  I've literally been walking around every day with a mask in my back pocket since the original mandates were lifted last year.  It remains common for those who are infected to put masks back on at least for a little while, and I still have one coworker who never stopped wearing hers at all.

COVID still makes its periodic rounds.  Infections happen, and they ripple along, and there's still the newer urge to hide them as best as possible, and it's becoming ordinary to not even know if you do have it, since testing has greatly diminished as a response.  It does seem, if anything, this latest round is marked by a relatively brief lifespan, if that makes it seem any better.

This year I've gotten to spend time with my niece, the Burrito, and family, not once but twice, the first (and second!) time since the pandemic began, and neither time came with any infection entanglements (I was a tad under the weather the first one, but even that posed no difficulties).  The first was a trip to see them and the second my second-ever trip to DisneyWorld, and second trip to Hollywood Studios, which given the five year gap between visits gave the park ample opportunity to settle nicely into its Star Wars environment (there are other features, including the classic Tower of Terror, which I rode before they arrived, and is officially the only drop ride I will probably ever enjoy).  I snapped about a million pictures of the Millennium Falcon alone.  I cannot believe this thing exists in the real world (but flies in reality about as well as it did just before the events of The Force Awakens, although the flight simulator is somehow even better than Star Tours, which of course I enjoyed again).  It seemed like there were ordinary levels of park attendance.  

It's been a month since the second visit, and I can't believe it's already happened, much less that both visits happened, within a span of months.  I'm beyond grateful.  I opted to pause an opportunity that came up last year, even though I visited my other sister, my first post-pandemic adventure, so to have gotten both scheduled and to have already occurred is a huge relief and a significant step back forward.  I never want to take for granted having experienced so much of this relatively unscathed, since many, many people can't say the same, but I felt a considerable resentment about how it played out, initially, how it disrupted things, and while it's only been a few years, just back in March I was still disgruntled over it, and now I've had a few experiences that for really only a brief moment were impossible.  Sometimes you have to let a little perspective sink in.  Forget everything else.  The important things, as long as you hold onto them, aren't so easy to shake loose.  

For three years I've wondered when these little entries were going to stop, and I guess now they're a part of my story.  Originally I would try to include my writing journey, since this is a writing blog, and yet, now, I've begun to integrate this time into the regular workings of my life.  It's not quite background yet.  But it's getting there.

Did not throw baby out with the bathwater, thank you...

I had my observation for the CDA process a few weeks back, and as such turned in Don't Throw Baby Out with the Bathwater, the professional portfolio I had to put together and previously considered compiling as an actual book (with inserts).  It probably wouldn't have mattered a whole lot how I did it, since the observer (it was a good experience, all considering, don't get me wrong) didn't spend too much time looking at it.  I ended up putting the portfolio in the same fashion as I did the collection I submitted as my thesis for college, a three-holepunch-folder.  Anyway, it was certainly interesting to work on the thing, and I have the CDA test coming up in two weeks, and that will conclude the process, and I will be a slightly more official caregiver as a result.

I have a bunch of projects I am definitely going to probably tackle in the near future.  Before we dig into that let's just acknowledge the pause I've entered in self-publishing.  This is because I submitted In the Leviathan for publication and it feels weird having that floating around at the moment and continuing the slightly less legitimate business that has sold single digits of copies of all the books I've put out in the past decade.  This means a pause for the poetry collections I don't tend to advertise here, and republication of Cloak of Shrouded Men as The Man Comes Around, and A Guide to 52, a project I tackled and abandoned previously but dug back into earlier this summer.  

Not included in that embargo would be the Christmas collections I've been doing for family.  This year's is entitled Liz & Pepe, and I've got all the elements sketched out and will probably begin writing it either in the next few days or when I'm on vacation in another week's time.  Actually, I've more or less been on vacation for most of the past week with Idalia having made its way through town.  I once again got lucky with the hurricane business, although the uncertainty of the experience this time as compared to Ian last year apparently settled my nerves only a little without having to be evacuated this time.  So I sat around waiting to see how things would turn out without really spending the time overly wisely.  Got some reading done.  That's the extent of my achievements, there.

Anyway, as I pretend I'm going to be writing Collider any minute, it occurred to me that I really ought to have the next book in the Danab Cycle in fighting shape, only to discover it absolutely wasn't, and so some of my recent writing escapades was spent revising the outline for The Fateful Lightning.  Surprisingly, I not only figured out how to do so, but a better way to do so not very long later.

All that and The Children's Crusade, which part of me really wants to tackle sooner rather than later, and maybe I really will.  Maybe I'll tackle Liz & Pepe, Collider, and Crusade all before the end of the year.  I've certainly worked on multiple projects simultaneously before!

Sometimes I've dumped a lot of projects into blog posts like this and I Grant Morrisoned them later, but it is absolutely not the intention for any of these.  Writing the Bathwater portfolio was a small but notable task in itself, after Leviathan in the early months of the year, and usually I haven't just launched directly into continuous projects (although I have on occasion, with shorter works, which is what was consuming me the last few years).  I've been pushing upward with wordcounts, getting back into full-length shape, and while there was certainly a period where I tackled that on a yearly basis, the last one remains the messiest thing I've ever written, and even the lost manuscript from the midsection I wouldn't really be happy with today.  So it's good to be at a pause.  I'm okay with it.  Wanting to plunge back in.  But this is not a writer who believes writing regularly means what some think.  Just knowing I have these major projects imminently in the pipeline is exhilarating.

Then there's the business of actually being read...