Today’s post is more stream of conscience-y than usual, mostly because I need it for therapeutic reasons. Hopefully, it’s not entirely useless to read, but either way, I have to process this.
We live in a shitty time, all the shittier for how unclear everyone is on how much we are actually supposed to panic, and on what axis. Is our health in danger? Certainly, though not all that much, unless you are old or immunocompromised. Is society in danger? Definitely, because of said old or immunocompromised people who you would put in grave danger with your healthy ass walking outside and potentially spreading a virus you don’t know you are carrying.
Is the economy in danger? Uh, yes. Very much so. Duh. Especially with this incompetent mobster in charge of government.
All of the separate factors add up to this weird miasmic feeling of disquiet, where one feels both kind of safe, and really seriously threatened. Simultaneously overreacting and underreacting in a time that is both a complete emergency, and somehow totally normal.
Or maybe that’s just me. Either way, I have been reading and listening to the professionals, I have not stocked up panic-level amounts of toilet paper, and I am overall fine. I have the luxury of a nice home, human contact, and not risking bankruptcy just yet. My situation is on the privileged end of the spectrum.
But that doesn’t mean I am immune to the oppressive feeling of doom and gloom. Self-isolation is still isolation. It doesn’t matter if you normally work from home, or that you might be anti-social or introverted. Even with company, the awareness that you can’t (or at least shouldn’t ) leave the house, and if you did, there is nowhere for you to go, can tear you down.
So what I am doing about it is, I wake up at normal times. I don’t sleep in late, just because I have nowhere to be. I dress up in adult human camo, even though no one is likely to see me. I have me super gay iced coffee (from concentrate, organic). Then I sit down and I try to do some work, be it editing my novel, scheduling a new post for the blog, writing book/movie reviews for other places, or setting up violin lessons on Zoom.
Before videogames or reading yells at me that adulting is too hard (which inevitably happens). Because then, once I log onto Destiny or puddle myself into bed with a book, I know I did something with my day.
I think it is of profound importance to act like life goes on, like you can still work, or find other ways to be productive. To me this is the best way I can think of to stave off feelings of depression, panic, or plain old apathy. Not terribly novel, I know. But it is what I can do.