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.

Still haven't started writing again, but that's okay.

A few weeks back I finally spent time with the Burrito (my niece) again, and the whole experience was wonderful.  I ended up with material for the next Christmas chapbook, just not as I wildly imagined it (actively collaborating with the Burrito, who recently won an award for a poem she wrote, by the way).  The Burrito has a younger brother and sister these days.  Liz & Pepe, as I'm currently imagining the title (and see no reason to consider changing it), is named after my youngest niece (and goddaughter!) and her grandfather, my dad (Pepe is French for grandfather).  

I also cooked up another potential novel-length concept, Whitman.  Haven't yet started writing again, but I keep reminding myself that only a few months ago I finished In the Leviathan, and until the Vella era I typically took much longer breaks between long projects.  I also have Don't Throw Baby Out with the Bathwater, technically a professional development project, that I'll be writing, hoping to publish it via Kindle for a particularly professional result (these tend to end up being three-ring binders when they're done by others).  

I kept telling myself, before the trip, wait on the trip to begin working on Children's Crusade.  And here we are weeks later and I still haven't.  Yesterday was the start of a four-day weekend for Memorial Day, so I certainly have plenty of time to work on writing (which I count these trips to the library, when I do the bulk of my blogging efforts these days, as part of, hoping next, as in right after this, to tackle a sequel to Dead Butlers, the scripting exercise that led to Nine Panel Grid).  (As I write this, I'm seriously considering making it a prose effort and not another script.)  (Anyway, just a relatively minor writing effort, keeping the juices flowing.)

All this and gamely plugging Event Fatigue on Twitter occasionally, hoping some schmo will help spark interest in it.  When I think about how far I am from even a figment of someone's imagination of the traditional publishing life, I sometimes regret that.  But getting to write exactly what I want ain't so bad, either.  It led to Leviathan, which could conceivably change all this.  Who knows?  Stranger things have happened.

EDIT: Wrote the "Man in the Box" thing, in comic book script format.  You can read it here.  

Not-the-Tonys 2022

Ha! So obviously this isn't quite yet an annual tradition (the first and only previous edition was in 2020), but I figured it was worth revisiting, since everyone loves an end of the year wrap-up.

Favorite Writing Project:

Obviously this would be Event Fatigue, which I've chronicled here as extensively as anything else on the blog in the past decade (and hey! 2022 was also the decade anniversary of the blog!), tackled over at Kindle Vella throughout the year and eventually my final self-published book of the year (there were many!).  Basically it was my only project in the past year, but it was quite an interesting one, and as I've stated, the longest work I've written in about the same timespan as this blog's existence.

Favorite Family Memory:

This one actually has a few options.  My niece, the Burrito, although our conversations via FaceTime have dwindled in the past year (she's just so busy!!!), we had some good ones, including at the start of the year (the inspiration for key elements in Uncle Toby), and on her birthday (in which she confessed a vulnerability).  But I made a trip to Alabama to attend my oldest nephew's high school graduation, and that was not only my first trip since the start of the pandemic, but also a rare trip to that particular leg of the family.  Lots of good food was had, and a lot more interesting things happened than I am going to get into here (but not in any of the ways you're probably currently imagining!), so with apologies to the Burrito, it has to take the spot here.

Favorite Work Memory:

I finally got to switch room assignments (not really going to get into that, either), which led to a whole odyssey of my second real miracle at this job, the second time I have definitely helped a child in my care.  Nothing can possibly top that!  Also notable was the time off due to Hurricane Ian, and then the day off due to Hurricane Nicole!  Sometimes work memories don't necessarily involve work.  Everything worked out both times, at least in my neck of the woods, thankfully.

Favorite Book (New):

The Ink Black Heart, the latest Robert Galbraith mystery featuring Strike & Ellacott.  I know the author has become controversial, but any rational person wouldn't possibly let that get in the way of a great book.

Favorite Book (Old):

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, which I finally got around to reading, and thank goodness, because I obviously loved it.  Kya is the American Lisbeth Salander.  The movie adaptation is great, one of the best movies of the year, too.

Favorite Book (Comic):

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King & Bilquis Evely, a combination of King explaining as no creator before him has what makes Supergirl great (and distinct from her cousin), and an original story that he weaves around her, the first time he's told an almost wholly original story since his debut novel, The Once Crowded Sky.

Favorite TV Show (New):

For a Star Trek fan, it's kind of impossible to go with any other answer than Strange New Worlds, which reimagines Pike's Enterprise, and in the brilliant season finale revisit the classic "Balance of Terror" (while simultaneously introducing the third-ever actor to play Kirk).

Favorite TV Show (Old): 

I'm enjoying Ghosts (the American version) more than ever as it plunges into its second season.  It's such a little miracle of a show, an ensemble with a rich cast it rotates through but is at its best when playing everyone off each other (as all the best shows do).  I've been trying to watch the original British version, too, and recently realized one of my favorite episodes was from it (there's only so much actual overlap between them).

Favorite Music:

I finally, finally got a copy of Brian Wilson's Smile, an album he originally set out to make with the Beach Boys, but a project that eventually led to his departure from the group and hibernation as a creator for some thirty years, until he completed and released it in 2004.  It's so good!  It's such a complete pop composition, the sessions "Good Vibrations" came from, so in the same creative vein, an extension of his vision for Pet Sounds (all of this pushing the Beatles to their own creative heights at the time).

Writing Projects 2023:

The big one, and what I intend to begin literally after wrapping this up, is tackling In the Leviathan, which I've been talking about here for a number of years at this point.  This will be purely literary fiction, an interpretation of my grandfather's life.  And should I succeed and in good time, I'll then finally tackle Collider, the second full-length Danab Cycle adventure.

A Journal of the Pandemic #31

I originally began composing this back in February.  Part of why I paused it was because I've been getting back into the swing of things, going out a lot more, and that's in large part because the pandemic is receding ever more gradually into the past.  I think there's little doubt about that at this point.  There are new surges happening, of course, and time will only tell how those develop, but the pandemic as it was for its first two years is effectively over.

Yeah!

At work, as of a few weeks ago, masks are no longer mandatory.  When the pandemic began I ended up working at a new building with a lot of new people who didn't know what my face looked like under the mask (I had a bunch I cycled through, although I had a whole set of ones with various fancy mustaches on them; I don't remember if I mentioned them here previously), and so it has been a different kind of introduction.  As it turns out, it's not easy to interpret what people actually look like just by their eyes!  I think all those superheroes have it backwards.  Keep the eyes!  Hide the mouth!  And I think everyone is getting used to this now.  Probably! 

I'm booking trips!  I've already booked one to attend my oldest nephew's high school graduation.  His birth back in 2004 was kind of the beginning of a whole journey for me, the first major event to occur post-college graduation for me, the first time I flew on a plane, the first time I visited the South (the first time I had Krispy Kreme! White Castle!), sort of the beginning of an extended new association with my other sister.  Whom I intend to visit a little later, after she's given birth to her third child.  And I will get to meet her second one, in person, for the first time!  And reunite with the Burrito. Just waiting for approval of the days off, then book the flights...

It's still astonishing that the pandemic swallowed two whole years.  Two years!  And of course there are people who will continue to argue that we shouldn't believe it's over, and it's not, but it is.  I'm plotting out what will probably be the last of the pandemic money, in conjunction with these trips.  Some people have talked about money for the high gas prices, but that's not gonna happen.  Yeah, Russia is busy trying desperately to start another world war, just as everyone else is trying desperately to avoid it, and that's caused gas prices to soar.  When I began this in February the invasion of Ukraine had just begun, and I worried about how it would proceed, and of course that's yet another thing to monitor, and nobody can really guess about that.

Two years ago I had a month off of work, was greatly irritated that my previous plans to visit family had been cancelled, and here on the other side, during two years of watching other people continue to travel, and enduring a previous surge at the end of 2021 that made it look like 2022 would be exactly like the previous two years, and now this, booking trips, and these are definitely going to happen, I really believe that.  I mean, Spider-Man: No Way Home made crazy money at the box office.  It's still making money, and here it's April, and movies are being blockbusters again, not just in China, but around the world, and right here in the US.  Those pesky gas prices have been making packages take longer than usual, but on the whole, things're lookin' pretty gooood.

I want to believe this is the last time I write about the pandemic while it's an active thing here.  Is that reasonable?  I think it's reasonable.  I hope things are looking good for you, too.

T-Shirt Guy

That’s a picture from a year and a half ago, or maybe a lifetime ago, I don’t know. Anyway, it’s also a picture of me, and it’s also a picture of my niece (the Burrito). 

It’s also a picture of one of the many t-shirts my sister (the Burrito’s mom) has gotten me for Christmas over the years.

I feel like an idiot for realizing that this has in fact been a tradition of hers, and having only just realized it a few minutes ago. Yesterday I got her somewhat belated Christmas present in the mail. It was of course another t-shirt (Chateau Picard!). And a few minutes ago I think I also finally realized why my sister has had this tradition:

I’m a t-shirt guy. I mean, it’s not unusual to wear t-shirts. It’s not even unusual to have t-shirts with pop culture references. 

It may be unusual to keep restocking the wardrobe with new ones, year after year, decade after decade. And to have a sizable, rotating collection worn daily. Again, I am not wholly unique in this regard. I get that. But I think in my family this is one of the many things I pursue differently than the rest of us.

And my sister noticed.

And so pretty much without fail, she’s been helping me add to the collection at Christmas. Hey, I added to it last year myself, quite happily, with a Buccaneers Tom Brady t-shirt. I sent a picture of it around to the family. We’re New England folk. Everyone else might think the past twenty years were a fluke stoked by cheating, but for us (okay, some of us are traitors) Tom Grady is unquestionably great, and yeah, I was pretty pleased that when he finally left the Patriots, he ended up here in Tampa.

So yeah, I’ve got a lot of t-shirts, celebrating various things. I’ve got one I just wore the other day, from a party I attended in 2007 the same day the last Harry Potter was released, the same day I got copies of my first book. I’ve got a t-shirt celebrating Moxie, which is an old timey soft drink my hometown adopted. I’ve got one featuring Gasparilla, the Tampa pirate festival. Some people wear the same treasured t-shirt memory endlessly. Me, I’ve got dozens of those.

Sometimes, sadly, the collar frays. I have to concede to stop wearing it. I keep those, too, of course, add them to my “archives.”

What can I say? I’m a t-shirt guy. And thank you, Burrito’s mom, for being a part of that.

A Fruitful Day for Ideas

 Today turned out to be a good day to get back on the horse, or at least the beginning of getting back on it.

Since the death of my previous computer, I’ve kind of slowly gotten back to work. Looking back over everything I’ve already done this year, I see that I was busier than I sometimes allow myself to think, a lot of projects (some since lost, including the big revision project for a contest I’m reasonably sure I won’t be winning because Submittable wasn’t letting me attach the file but still somehow let me “submit,” and at the time I convinced myself it had somehow worked out despite the issues the site was having...) that were all in themselves well worth tackling, and all of which in some ways built on each other.

Anyway, one of the things that was eaten was a new vision of Collider, a long-term project a quarter century in the making that’s the first Space Corps story I ever began working on. Today I did a fresh take of the outline as I recently radically reconsidered it, building on elements I developed during Terrestrial Affairs, the novella from a few years back. It’s strange how much can change but still the basic shape remains as first begun in the mid-90s. Realizing this was possible was part of the reason I didn’t completely freak out over my computer dying and erasing the last version.

I also tackled an outline for George & Gracie, the novella I’ll be including in my Christmas poems collection this year (which is another project being revisited, with the novella being a substitute for two shorter works I lost and don’t want to rewrite). These collections are for my niece, the Burrito, although this year I plan to send the results around to family, in the hopes they might actually begin to see me as a legitimate writer (and not as “gee wiz that dude who keeps trying to make that happen,” which is the recent impression I kind of got from my dad). Anyway, it’s something I’m really excited to tackle, and will be the first thing I work on actually writing.

I also came up two other ideas today, “Kingslayer” and “Old Brown’s Daughter,” though I won’t really talk about what exactly they are here, although they reminded me about an idea I had earlier in the year, “Old Wizards,” and how much that would be fun to get back to. (“Old” being in a title twice is probably a coincidence.) These are ideas that practically told themselves when I conceived them. You don’t take such ideas lightly.

Plus today was the second day of my latest comic book scripting project, Catman/Batwoman, which nominally is a riff on Tom King’s real comic, Batman/Catwoman. It’s going to be the shortest to date, twelve script pages. But nine panel grids every page! (For those who don’t know, “Catman” is an actual DC character. The “Batwoman” indicated is actually Barbara Gordon, the original and most famous Batgirl, who has never actually been referred to as Batwoman. Except in this project. Because: symmetry.)

Not-the-Tonys 2020

 My blogging buddy Squid does this every year, and I thought, why not? Why not do a best-of yearly stamp, this of all years? Very slowly I’ve been rethinking the idea of having multiple blogs but only talking about my writing (mostly) on this one, especially as I’ve slowed my blogging in general, and it gets a little depressing talking only about the pandemic here (which is what I’ve done for months here). So here are some highlights of 2020 so far, and what lies ahead the rest of the year:

Favorite Writing Project:

Let’s start with a writing thought on a writers blog! On Monday I submitted a story to the IWSG anthology, and it involved my Space Corps saga, and, regardless of how it fares with the judges, I think I did something really good with it. I’ve been taking a lot of creative risks this year, and I think it’s starting to pay off with my work. (Monday it also rained on me and potentially wrecked my computer and lost me a lot of material...but I think I could actually be okay with it. Mostly. I can rebuild Bionic Man style.)

Favorite Family Memory:

A few months back it was a year ago I stopped actively participating in my niece’s life when she moved on to Texas. I had a meltdown over that but was able to recover. As of earlier this month she’s a big sister! So another adventure is just beginning. I’m happy that she has new experiences to look forward to as she continues to grow up. It was always her life anyway, and I was always privileged to play any part in it, and now I can more clearly see where it’s her journey and I am a privileged observer. (But yeah, I write yearly Christmas poem chapbooks for her. I already wrote this year’s. Or will get to write it again, depending.)

Favorite Work Memory:

Like everyone, work has taken some interesting turns this year for me. (And I never forget how privileged I’ve been to be relatively unaffected.) Early in the year I was given pre-pandemic curveballs that created a lot of stress. I took it as an opportunity to grow and to put money where my mouth was, looking at challenge babies as a challenge worth taking. I saw real progress as a result! Similarly, during the pandemic I was given another curveball, and can honestly say the last day of the particular challenge I ended with a real victory. Every moment isn’t a victory. There are defeats. The reward of victories makes them worth it.

Favorite Book (New):

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu, his second book, published a decade after his first (How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe). Yu is a brilliant writer capable of viewing his topics in truly unusual ways, which here means exploring the Chinese-American experience in ways we don’t tend to consider. In a year where BLM once again surged in the public consciousness, Yu’s work is a great reminder that all minorities face challenges.

Favorite Book (Old):

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, another great Russian novel, exploring the idea of social change in surprisingly relevant ways.

Favorite Book (Comic):

Folklords by Matt Kindt, a miniseries I randomly sampled and then felt compelled to finish, about a fantasy world where the youth take on an adventure as a rite of passage. The lead character dresses in a suit like our real world and wants to prove it (our real world) exists. Kindt is a more than reliable talent, and so this was a nice new project to discover.

Favorite Movie:

Obviously the release of new movies has been compromised this year so far. Early on I got to indulge in the fact that Colin Farrell is my favorite actor when he appeared in Guy Ritchie’s new movie, The Gentlemen, a gangster ensemble flick with a fun conversational framework. Farrell ended up acclaimed for his supporting role as a surprisingly fierce ordinary neighborhood coach. The same day, the first and only visit to a theater so far this year (though I’ve caught up with a few more 2020 movies via the archaic DVD technology), I was able to catch my previous favorite actor’s cinematic comeback, Jim Carrey in Sonic the Hedgehog. Obviously he’s great in it, absolute classic form.

Favorite TV Show (New):

Star Trek: Picard (I’m a Star Trek guy, okay?), an elegiac, ambitious reprise for a beloved character (or two or three or four or five) last seen nearly twenty years ago.

Favorite TV Show (Old):

Folks, I discovered Letterkenny. And folks, I absolutely adore Letterkenny. Honestly, I was interested in it at all because Pat Dilloway saw it and hated it, and I was naturally curious. Sorry, Pat. It’s brilliant.

Favorite Music:

Honestly, my music consumption has deteriorated over the years. I don’t blame the new music. At the start of the pandemic I saw the Strokes had a new album called The New Abnormal. Still working my way into it. Seemed eminently relevant even though it was a total coincidence. Otherwise I cycle through older stuff. 

So what does the rest of the year have going for it?

Writing Projects:

 I don’t want to jinx them talking about them here. I’m starting to feel like Grant Morrison, who talks about some of his projects maybe too ridiculously early sometimes. There’s one that probably will never happen now I still check in on hoping in vain for updates. At times I’ve written about projects here that I’m really excited about...but don’t exactly get actually working on. So I’m going to be more cautious about that. But I will be working on things!

Books:

This is easy to project. For most of the year I’ve been ignoring my reading shelves by skipping ahead to more recent acquisitions. But I’m finally working on those shelves again! I’m going to be reading a lot of Thomas Pynchon soon. I love Pynchon, so this is quite exciting for me.

And...the rest will play out. Hopefully happily! But I have to be okay when it doesn’t. Always a process.

A Journal of the Pandemic #14

Well, the numbers started spiking in Florida...

So we are probably going to be sliding back to previous restrictions. They mandated masks inside public buildings Friday evening. Assuming it holds, at work they’re going to revert to the lowest level of numbers by midweek. Today was the first of what was supposed to be at least a week of helping out with the further expansion from previous levels. Guess that’s going to change...Again, if what I heard was accurate, and I understood it properly, none of these kids will be here by Wednesday. But I guess we’ll see.

Strange to be a part of the surge. Again, everyone expected Florida to be a hotspot early on, which never happened, until three months in. So I guess this COVID-19 business will just keep being interesting...

As I talked about last week, it’s now been a year since my niece, the Burrito, went to live in Texas. By midpoint last week I was having a hard time with it, and once again vowed to myself that I was just going to go cold turkey and put her behind me. But I got to talk to her a few times later in the week. I didn’t give up. Sometimes when you’re absolutely convinced about something, you can still end up changing your mind, even if it seems impossible. 

I mailed her a box for her birthday, which like my two-year anniversary at work and the year-mark with Texas, is a reminder that time is still passing. I’d been piling things up for months, for her, her coming baby brother, and my nephews in Maine, most of which, for them, had been waiting since last December, when I was supposed to see them, or maybe March, when again I was supposed to see them. Shipping those boxes was a good feeling. I don’t ship boxes very often. I do most of my Christmas shopping on Amazon (it’s convenient, okay???). I’ve sometimes felt, during this, that I haven’t done nearly enough for family, not that any of us are doing badly, but that staying connected, keeping spirits up, feels like what everyone ought to be doing. For a guy, even with family, who hates to initiate conversation, I hope I’ve at least done okay. Sending the box to my nephews felt especially necessary, because I really haven’t been able to do much with them since 2017, when I left Maine with my niece, and I cherish them greatly.

Anyway, so the transcription project with the second act of In the Land of Pangaea has been going well. When I reached the longest chapter I kind of hit the pause button, because transcribing is hard! Especially if you want to get a whole chapter done in one sitting! It doesn’t take much time, in the grand scheme, but it’s like writing longhand for a long time. It takes a toll. So when I finally tackled it this morning, I got about halfway, started feeling really good about it....and of course I was called in early at work! But I had gotten over the hump, and that’s what mattered. I’m almost done. I just have a little more to transcribe, a little new stuff to write, and then...!

I’m a troglodyte when it comes to entertainment platforms. I still buy DVDs. This weekend someone placed a box stuffed with old DVDs in the laundry shack.  The one movie I absolutely wanted (Burn After Reading), which I’ve sort of been obsessing over since talking about it with the Armchair Squid a few years back...the case was empty. But there were a few others that looked good. That was a pleasant surprise. I get that other people live in the modern age, but I don’t mind benefiting from their moving on. No movie in the box was particularly recent. For some reason there were two copies of Troy (I already have it, and the director’s cut). I just hope the box was there for good reasons, just making space. 

Oh, and got a Tom Brady Buccaneers t-shirt. Just a small reminder that good things have actually happened in the recent past...

A Journal of the Pandemic #13

It actually feels wrong to continue this journal, as the pandemic seems to be fading almost completely into the background, somehow, except in matters of slowly reopening things, and flare-ups. A quick thought on the recent flare-ups, though: One of the regions facing this is Florida, where I currently live. Back when all this started a lot of observers expected Florida to be hit heavily, which never really happened. Now that we’re ticking back up, I wonder if it has less to do with reopening measures and more the pandemic reaching here in numbers that just hadn’t happened previously, sort of the way the pandemic hit South America hard & heavy in recent weeks after having previously been virtually nonexistent. All of this suggests, to me anyway, that our response never really took a measured approach, that we went straight to panic, denounced anyone who contradicted this approach, and...But I guess this is the era we live in. I desperately wish there was a mainstream voice of reason, because all we seem to get is kneejerk rubbernecking that doesn’t stop for a moment to consider whether or not it’s remotely helpful. 

Anyway.

At work last week was easy. Two days of light duty at the center that’s closed, cleaning things up a little (there remains the possibility that if we return to full numbers and need to, we will...not actually keep the center closed until it can be renovated). My third and final work day was spending the day with a one-year-old I hadn’t previously had a lot of interaction with. But she was great! It was a good day. This week today was supposed to be my first day of work, but more busywork, but that was called off, and so I’m writing this. 

I’ve been immersed in the transcription process from the second act of In the Land of Pangaea. Honestly, this has been some of the best revision experience I’ve ever had. I know there are writers who do this all the time, but most of my writing has been directly to computer, except in instances where I’ve written passages in a notebook. This is material I really haven’t even looked at in five or so years. I knew this act was the strongest, but didn’t have active memory for most of what I’d actually written, and so I’ve been surprising myself. There’s been some of the material I’ve completely rewritten, and some I’ve tweaked considerably. And again, this is the sort of thing a lot of writers do anyway, as a matter of course. I’ve been getting into legitimate revision with some of my projects in recent years, but this feels like a whole different level. If I had this kind of time previously, and printed works-in-progress, probably this is what I would have been doing all along, especially seeing how it plays out. Always looking to grow.

On Sunday it will be one year since my niece, the Burrito, moved to Texas. It’s weird living a life where I’m not actively devastated by this, because I know intellectually I absolutely am. It helps to be working with kids, even in these current conditions. Losing my niece is second only to gaining her in the first place in terms of significant life developments for me. That’s how important she is, the void she left behind, how much I wish she were still an everyday part of my life, how much I want to be there for her, to help in any manner I can. One year, and this is still only the beginning. What’s it going to be like in five years? Ten years? Will I still be considered important to her? 

The effects of the pandemic are still only in their infant stages. We don’t know, for instance, just how dramatically this will have affected movie theaters. For people like me, who if I had the money would probably see every movie, just...every movie, released in theaters, this is cause for considerable concern. But my niece is a more significant question. That’s where I am, in terms of the pandemic.

COVID-19 Updates

Now that you've read my initial thoughts on COVID-19, a week (or so) later it's time for updates!

Everything's weird.  There have been times in my life where COVID-19 would've been pretty disastrous, or would've affected me personally a lot more.  I'm not in school, which I can't even imagine.  These kids will be talking about this the rest of their lives!  I've had jobs that might very well have left me stranded under these circumstances.  To my mind the absolute worst thing, in the US, about COVID-19 is the economic havoc being caused, and as always I'm not as concerned about the big guys as I am the little guys.  When I was on unemployment in Colorado I found it surprisingly easy.  It was even easy to obtain, later, food assistance funding.  Reports here in Florida are indicating that such smooth sailing may not have existed before, and the response now is only going to get worse. 

My job has been relatively unaffected.  "Relatively," but insofar as I've continued working, so far it is for all intents and purposes business as usual.  I work in a childcare center at a military instillation.  One of the moms works at the medical clinic, and her babies were the most consistent charges I had last week, and I've been talking with mom about COVID-19 for weeks.  The biggest complaint she's had is mass access to testing.  Obviously that's become the obsession for all those curve-flatteners.  Everything we've seen happen in the US over the past week (and the things that were happening before that) has been an effort to flatten that curve, curb the spread of COVID-19. 

I've been slow to accept the seriousness of the situation in large part because as far as I can tell, the US has been affected, by far, more by the curve-flattening measures than by COVID-19 itself.  The response you'll no doubt have encountered in your own lives is the reaction to toilet paper hoarders.  To a certain extent, some of this hoarding is because some people really don't spend that much time at home, usually, and thus don't really know how much they use, when they're the ones supplying it, rather than, say, the facilities at work or a restaurant (or, you callous moochers, your friend's house).  And all those kids suddenly at home are requiring far more bread than normal (we now have a generation used to school lunches rather than packing their own; my own childhood was a mix of both, but I still vividly remember "bubble & squeak" in the cafeteria).

The libraries closed last week, and so I didn't get to hang out there this weekend.  I more or less blew the last two days watching movies and reading comic books.  I've been reading a really good book, but didn't want to spend too much time reading it (when you're reading a really good book, there are two ways of doing so: slowly, to savor it, or quickly, because you're insatiable).  I didn't tackle my writing projects.  I'm still waiting to see if we're going to get a "tactical pause," which will give me plenty of time.  But then I also start different hours (again) this week, which translates to an additional hour in the morning (which I'm taking advantage of right now to do some blogging), and I intend to use that for as long as I have it to get back to writing.

I did spend time frantically tracking down old notes, which I'm happy to report I found, plus others I hadn't really been thinking of, and some I'd plum forgotten about.  Some notes have faded from their original vivid visions, but that's an opportunity to discover them all over again.  I'm always the optimist, even when I'm feeling cynical.  Some day these ideas will bloom!  Some day they will sit on a bookshelf, and not just mine!

The family put together a group call to our dad on his birthday.  Grumpy as I've been, I decided to participate.  But I receded into the background, because I was still grumpy, and I've never been good at asserting myself in groups, and less so when I'm even less in the mood.  I called him, separately, yesterday, and had a good conversation.  I talked with the Burrito the day before, and she's apparently begun to notice how women's lips look.  I thought she was doing Fish Face, but she made herself clear later.  Don't grow up too quickly, Burrito!  (That's my beloved niece, remember.)

I've been posting a lot of nonsense on Facebook, and I'm not sure everyone's understood it as nonsense.  For instance, I called Knives Out "fun for the whole family," which is ironic, if you’ve seen the movie.  But if anyone actually watched it, based on my recommendation, I hope they ended up enjoying it.  Good movie.  COVID-19 is kind of like the hole in the donut for all of us at the moment, right? 

Life goes on...

Some thoughts as 2020 begins...

This is a joke I have to make, given my abysmal vision (going all the way back to first grade! I'm the proverbial "coke bottle glasses" guy, but I've been wearing contacts for twenty years, so don't feel too bad for me, and quit reading this parenthetical digression, already), but 2020!  At last I have perfect eyesight!

Wasn't this supposed to be the magical far future?  How did we get here?  (Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.)

(Reference to a message board I don't visit anymore and/or has relocated and is bizarrely much harder to access, a switch that happened last year.)

(Anyway.)

A week ago I was severely depressed.  I should explain.  A week ago, counting from when I'm writing this, 5 PM EST, I was in New Jersey.  My sister's wedding had taken place late that morning and I had just spent a glorious afternoon with my niece, the Burrito.  I hadn't seen her (not counting video chats) for six months, and we picked up right where we had left off.  I cried at the wedding, not because of the wedding, but because it was now official, that my niece was part of someone else's family, and I wasn't a part of it.  She was upset while pictures were being taken just after the ceremony, insisting I was part of the family, and all I could do was cherish that she still believed. 

Getting to the wedding was adventurous.  I have rarely traveled on my own.  On the few occasions I have, I've been able to successfully make the connections (whether on a train, a plane, or a bus, or John Candy & Steve Martin's automobiles) (a movie I've never seen).  But it's one of those nightmare scenarios that usually only manifest in my actual nightmares (I have a recurring one where I can't find the buildings for any of my classes in college, which for the record was never actually a problem).  This time I had to get to the airport, catch a connecting flight, and then find my way to the hotel.  The return trip would be easier, just one flight, but I think I was actually more nervous that morning, because I needed to stick the landing, as it were.  Of course I did all that.  Mostly flawless victory.  (TSA really doesn't like sweat, for whatever reason.  Weirdos.) 

I had to book the flights to accommodate what I thought at the time was a fairly small window of opportunity, a Friday-to-Sunday deal.  Long story short, but originally I thought I wouldn't get vacation approval, because the wedding was in the Bermuda triangle of holidays.  Later, I got more time off than I could've dreamed, so I had plenty of time off.  But if I'd been able to leave sooner, I would've had more time with my niece.

I always tend to begin preparations with the best possible results in mind (I packed copies of some of my books in case anyone at the wedding, or even a great seatmate on the plane! was interested, for instance; every copy came back with me, alas).  I thought I might still get more time with the Burrito, either later Saturday night or even Sunday morning, but that didn't happen.  I spent Sunday waiting and waiting and waiting.  And that was the whole day, until the flight, and getting home, and the day still had plenty of hours left, and that was kind of weird, like the whole day was a vacuum that never really switched on.

The vacation time, I would've spent a lot more of it writing, at pretty much any other point in my life.  I have written a few things, here and there, recently, but haven't tackled anything major.  A year ago I was in one of those big projects.  I've done editing recently.  I almost quit one of the editing projects in the fear that the thing wasn't actually salvagable, but then I realized, at the time, that was exactly what I meant to write.  Even with some needed editing, this wasn't really a case of a young writer not knowing any better.  Even if I were to write it differently today, that's what I wanted to say back then.  That's the kind of writer I am.  There was a reason for that approach.  So I gave myself permission to breathe.

And I've written and submitted a few things.  One was a short story for a comic book company, and the other for one of those contests.  Of course it'd be nice to get one or both accepted.  One of my goals for the new year is to write more, regardless, and to keep submitting.  I've gotten really horrible about that in recent years.  I just stopped trying.  

I've talked here about some of the big projects I want to tackle, and I do want to tackle one or all of them within the next year.  My schedule at work is changing at the end of the month, and suddenly it feels like the break I only thought I got with a different change-up last year, which never really worked out the way I thought it would.  I tend to react better with a more limited window than a wider one, and that's what I'm going to have, and hopefully I react accordingly.  As always, we'll see.

I don't know where the year will take me.  I'd love to move, to find myself once again in the vicinity of my niece, but again, I don't want to be selfish.  Her new family is her new family, and I don't want to get in the way.  That's just how things stand.  I could pursue other changes.  Things could change.  Things could stay the same.  The future, as always, is wide open.

At the moment, I'm okay with that.  I got new glasses at the end of the year, the first time in a very long time, and these things tend to go, at first it was hugely disorienting, and whatever technology they're using these days, I noticed things I'd never noticed before, not because my vision was suddenly so much better, with glasses, than it had been, but because the technology was making colors pop out, like 3D glasses, and that made things quite interesting.  Now it's weird noticing how my vision is different from glasses to contacts, in a totally different way.

Something like 2020.  Something like that.

The Burrito & Boo

I haven't actually written about the Burrito, or Boo, too much here, but a few weeks back they both moved to San Antonio, and here I am...without them.

Burrito is my niece.  I wasn't there when she was born, but three months into her life I entered it in a big way.  I agreed to watch her during the day, for two months, while my sister attended leadership school.  It was a wild crash course in babysitting for a guy who had never really babysat before.  My one experience was with a brood of young children that somewhat almost completely spiraled out of control, until they finally, finally went to bed, and the only real disaster was my inability to figure out where exactly the milk went in the fridge, which ended up in a milk jug that fell out of the fridge, and...Well, I never babysat again, until Burrito.

And even though it was occasionally frustrating (she wouldn't stop crying sometimes, until I took her for stroller rides, or carrying walks), it was also completely magical.  I had no idea I loved babies, and then I fell in love with Burrito.

And I stuck around for nearly another year, in a supporting capacity, and then my sister asked me to watch her again...for a year.  She was headed out for a tour in a delightful Asian land, and once again needed someone to look after Burrito.  Burrito and I headed off to Maine, and my dad's house (the one I had lived in while my mom took on her last few years battling cancer), and...my dad was not especially inclined to spend too much time helping out directly, so...I went into another crash course in babysitting. 

This was life as an uncle raising a toddler: Wow.  I mean, wow.  It was beautiful.  Taxing, certainly, trying to do it all day every day with occasional breaks (and learning to yearn for that illusory hope of a three hour nap, a three hour nap).  But beautiful.

Some will say that the man who emerged on the other side spent too much time merely being Burrito's friend, and that my subsequent, previously unfathomable career as a program assistant in a child development center is flawed for that same reason.  But I've taken to the idea that being a child's, especially a young child's, chief advocate is perhaps the best thing you can be if you find yourself in positions like this.  Constant encouragement.  Endless fun.  And always, always worrying when things don't seem to be working right.

All I can say is, if you look at small children and your first thought is how much of a nuisance they are, you are not among my first choices for shining examples of humanity.  Maybe you have good reasons to think that, but for me, small children especially are my favorite people.  They're the only ones who get to truly just enjoy being people. 

Now, my experiences are with babies and kids just up to the age of five.  My nephews in Maine are my closest working experiences outside of that range.  Funny enough, but at the moment I have two babies with their exact names.  Let's call them Bert and Ernie.  Bert is the older one, Ernie the younger.  The baby version of them is actually the reverse (Ernie's older).  Bert was my best friend in those years while my mom was dying.  I got to spend additional time with him during the Burrito year in Maine.  Ernie is probably more like me when I was a kid, which has been difficult to appreciate practically, since Bert always tries to monopolize my time.  I haven't gotten to spend time with either of them since I followed Burrito to Florida in the fall of 2017.

And now Burrito is gone.  My sister has a new family in San Antonio now, and so the makeshift one that was in place for the past near-four years has come to an end.  I struggled a great deal with this initially.  I wanted to remain an active part of Burrito's life.  But eventually, it seemed more rational to let the new family exist on its own terms.  A reboot.

Yeah, reboot.  Boo is my sister's cat.  I've had her in and out of my life since December 2004.  For whatever reason, she warmed to me immediately.  My happiest memories with her are from the 2005-2007 period where my sister and I shared an apartment in Massachusetts, and every day I returned home from work Boo would warmly swash back and forth across my legs in greeting.  That's where she became a botanist, "pruning" plants meant to decorate the dinner table.  That's where she stole Lando's blaster, to defend her food from ants.  That's where she was exposed as a gravy vampire.  That's where she became obsessed with the common laundry room across the hall, dashing out of the apartment at every opportunity to sneak her way in, if she didn't sabotage herself by liberally helping her claws to the stiff carpeting along the way...

Recently she'd taken to relaxing next to me, spent most of her time in my room, and joined me at night.  And I find myself missing her, actively, in these recent memories, most of all.  I keep expecting to see her amble into view. 

And I miss Burrito's penchant for constant possibilities, her endless inventiveness, her restless repackaging of reality, and yes, even the goofy winter hat and mittens right in the middle of sunny Florida...

But they're a part of some other narrative.  Maybe mine will find a family, one day.  We'll see.

The Burrito, the Night Circus, and a cat named Boo!

I've been fairly quiet the last few weeks, across my fleet of blogs.  I mean, more quiet, because there's no denying I'm no longer posting near as much as I did in years past, for a variety of reasons.  But recently it's because I've moved again, and taken on an awesome new responsibility.

A little over a year ago, Burrito was born.  Obviously, that's not her real name.  Anyway, Burrito is my sister's daughter, the sister I've lived with and/or near for most of the past decade.  Starting last October, we renewed the tradition when she went down to Florida for some training, so someone would be available to watch Burrito, and then we all went back to Virginia.  When we left Colorado, I saw Virginia for the first time, a fleeting glimpse, really, before heading back up to Maine so I could help make my mother comfortable in the little over a year she had left from a hellacious battle with cancer.  So I got to spend ten months in Virginia, get a sense of how my sister was living while I was away, and watch Burrito grow.

Now I'm a full-time caretaker of Burrito, since my sister has shipped out overseas, and couldn't take her daughter along.  I consider this a huge privilege.  I'm one of those people who never imagined they'd have such an awesome responsibility.  I've watched two nephews grow into early boyhood in Maine, but it's different seeing (nearly) the whole process firsthand.  I've seen a lot of behavior George Lucas stole for Star Wars (Luke Skywalker's reactions in The Empire Strikes Back, for example).

Anyway, that's just a little peek behind the curtain.  I'm don't tend to get too personal in my blogging.  You may be wondering why I'm talking about this on a writers blog.  The last month, I slogged through Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, which I picked up earlier this year at an airport, fully expecting it to be a magical experience.  If I had extremely limited literary experience, it would have been.  It was anything but.  I have no idea why a major publisher would have touted this as a viable adult read.  It was about as good as a young adult book would be.  In my Goodreads review, I called it Suzanne Collins' version of Lost, which was still being generous, because Collins would've included a nonsensical third act, like in Marvel movies.

What I decided about Morgenstern is that she embodies what has become an unfortunate trend in books, and perhaps the culture in general: personality before talent.  As far as I can tell, it used to be that you had to have talent before anyone cared what kind of personality was behind it.  But now you're supposed to have the personality, which kind of ends up overriding the talent.  Talent is meaningless and unnecessary in this equation.  It's a nightmare!

I'll now mention the other family member I'll be watching for my sister: Boo.  Boo is a white furball of a cat, whom I've known since 2004.  My decade+ tagalong with my sister has included many great experiences with Boo, who single-handedly (paw-edly?) made me into a cat person.  But as anyone knows, cats aren't dogs.  They don't just, usually, let you get close to them.  I wish we treated writers like cats treat humans.  You have to get to know their work before a relationship is possible.

Before Burrito, there was a lot of things I didn't understand about babies, and I think it benefited my relationship with her.  That's what I'm talking about.  Be more like Boo, be more like Burrito.  Be less like Erin Morgenstern.