The other morning I had to take a friend to the hospital for surgery. She had to be there at 5am, so I was on the road to her place at 4:15. It felt weird driving at that time of the morning, at least driving completely sober and well rested. In my life experience, driving at that time usually meant that I was on my way home from a long night out. I hadn’t been in that situation for over a decade, so while the feeling was one of some vague familiarity, it also had the weird sensation of being strange and new.
Obviously, you notice that there are less people on the roads. Almost no one is on the road in the residential areas you drive through, but it’s even the same on the highways. It’s always strange in those early hours of the morning when you’re on what’s normally a very busy highway, but there are only a set of tail lights way off in front of you that you can barely make out, and far off headlights behind you that barely register in the rearview mirror. If you get to a bend in the road, you can’t see either, and it’s like you’re alone in a long expanse of deserted road.
The city streets are empty as well. On the way over to her house, I didn’t really pay that much attention to it. It was early, and I was still shaking the sleep off and trying to focus on driving. I am not a morning person, and unless it’s the aforementioned situation of still being up from the night before, I am definitely not a very early morning person. I picked her up, and took her to the hospital, dropped her off, and then headed back home to get a little more sleep and wait for them to call and give me a time when I could pick her back up and take her home.
As I started the drive home, I decided to take the long way, and go directly through the city streets. I didn’t know when I would have the chance again to experience the city while it was still asleep, and see small parts of it just starting to wake up.
The first thing I noticed was that some of the places that used to be open for 24 hours like convenience stores and gas stations, and even the supermarket, are now closed at night. Just one more thing the pandemic has changed.
I got stuck behind a garbage truck. Apparently that never changes. Garbagemen are still working on these cold dark mornings. I was annoyed for a split second that I had to wait to get around them, but I quickly checked myself. It’s funny how you are conditioned in so many ways. Whenever I have to come to a stop for garbage trucks, delivery trucks, school buses, construction, even briefly, I get instantly irate. I often think to myself that they should do that stuff at night, when people aren’t on the roads, and I realized that these garbagemen were doing just that. Besides, I purposely took the long way so I could meander and experience the city at dawn, so what was my hurry? The world has conditioned us to expect instant gratification and view any tiny inconvenience as unacceptable. I did that thing where I had the same minor epiphany where I realized that I had to work on readjusting my head and get some realistic expectations. Then I instantly forgot it when I came to a red light at a completely deserted intersection, and spent my time waiting for the light to change by grousing about how they should have some kind of sensor so the lights would change for the lone person waiting to go.
I didn’t notice any buses running, but it was only a little past five, so it might have been too early. I did see some people here and there walking on the sidewalks. When you see people out at 3am in the city, your first instinct might be to wonder what they are up to. Maybe I just spent too much of my life around drunks and drug addicts and dealers and other seedy characters to have an objective viewpoint, but I always assume something illegal or at least a little shady is going on. Not that I care. That’s one of the things I like about the city. I like that there’s a slightly nefarious underbelly to it.
Thing is, it was 5am, so I realized that most people I saw walking in the early morning winter chill on a Wednesday were probably on their way to work or somewhere normal and above board. I reflected on how privileged my life was that it could take me a moment to comprehend that not everyone has a car or works a regular nine to five job. I should be painfully aware of that, because for 12 years or so in the 80’s and 90’s, I had a job like that. I used to work for a construction company, and I had to start work at 6am, sometimes earlier. I also lived 90 minutes away from where I worked, so I was usually on the road a little after 4am. That’s when I first noticed those long stretches of empty highway. In some ways, it was a very peaceful feeling, but many days it fueled my anxiety. These were the days before everyone had cell phones, and if I broke down or had an accident in the middle of nowhere, I was stuck. It was best not to think about it, but every time the car made a weird noise or the engine stuttered for a second, your mind started racing.
I also got to experience the early morning city thing. I worked in Paterson, NJ, which was not the best neighborhood. You crushed crack vials under your feet as you walked into the yard at work, and I had my car broken into multiple times while it was parked on the street in front of work, even in broad daylight. I was accustomed to seeing people still hanging out on street corners at 5am, dealing drugs, hooking, whatever. There were times I had to go to construction jobs in NYC that started at 6am, so I was driving through the streets in the five boroughs at 4 or 5am.
The difference between Manhattan at 5am and the small Pennsylvania city of Allentown is pretty striking. New York never sleeps, so even at 5am, there was a lot of stuff going on. People were in and out of the bodegas and liquor stores at that time, diners were serving breakfast and late night snacks for drunks, bakeries and bagel shops were opening and flooded the streets with delicious aromas. Taxis were dropping people off and picking people up, or simply tearing up and down the streets faster than they should. Life was generally carrying on. I used to love that time in New York, that mixture of people just starting their day and others just finishing their’s. It was still the city, but it wasn’t as hectic and congested. You rarely saw anyone in a business suit at that hour. You saw some people still dressed up, because they had been out all night, or were making that walk of shame. The thing about the city is that no one seemed ashamed about it anyway. The city takes on a different character at night, and when the sun starts coming up, you see it slowly change back into its daytime skin.
Now, at dawn on a Wednesday in Allentown, that transformation was happening as well. The convenience stores and gas stations were opening, and traffic was starting to pick up. I saw a bus pulling over at its stop to let a sole passenger get on. As I parked in front of my apartment complex, I noticed people getting in their cars to head off to work. I saw a mother bundling her small kids into the car, probably to drop them off at daycare before she went to work. I saw some people walking their dogs, which had probably whined and danced at their sleepy owners because they had to go to the bathroom after a night’s sleep. I heard the birds chirping, and reminisced how that sound usually meant that I had stayed up all night partying, and signaled the beginning of regret.
As I walked into my apartment, I was thinking about all of this. I had planned to come home and go right back to bed, and wait for the phone call from the hospital to wake me up and tell me to come back and pick up my friend, but now I rethought that strategy. I was up, and wide awake now. Maybe I would go for a walk down at the park, then come home and cook a big breakfast. Maybe I could get a jump on some of the stuff I had to do today.
Maybe I was a morning person after all.
Saturday, January 23, 2021
Monday, January 4, 2021
Morning Walk
Shortly after waking up today, I had one of those rare stretches where I really felt like giving up. It's been a rough year, for all of us, and the last few days have been like one gut punch after another. So I went for another walk in the woods, half thinking that it will either clear my mind or give me a good place for them to find my body (jk; sort of). At any rate, it didn't clear my mind, but I'm still here, so that's something positive, right? Even though it didn't bring me any epiphanies or calming inner peace, it gave me time to think about the thing that always brings me back to who I am: the people I love. I thought about friends and family who are always there for me. I thought about the people who depend on me. I thought about people I know who are dealing with a lot more than I am. I thought about a lot of the good things that are still left in the world, even if some of them are out of my reach right now. Plus, I saw some birds. They were small, and sort of bluish, and they were flitting among the branches of the saplings lining the path as I walked. They were staying a little ahead of me, but still checking me out and pacing me along the trail. I talked to them a little as I walked, and I didn't feel so alone and hopeless anymore. I realized I lived in a world where I could walk among the trees while tiny dinosaurs flitted and chirped all around me, and I decided I still want to keep trying and see how it all plays out…
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Reflections On Turning 56
Reflections on turning 56
First off, I don't feel 56. I don't even feel like a grown up, most of the time. I know people in their 20's who seem more grown up than I do. Some of that might be because I never got married or had kids or owned a house, and some of that might be because I read The Little Prince as a kid, and took it to heart. Either way, I'm okay with it.
This year has been horrendous for most people, myself included. Still, there is always wisdom to glean and gifts if you recognize them. This year has probably been my best year as far as personal growth.
For instance, for the first time in my life, I finally got over the feeling that I am unlovable. I have never been good at being kind to myself, and I think a lot of people can relate to that. I berate myself, and try to find blame in myself for the things other people have done. I thought I would feel that way until the day I died, but I was saved from that fate, thank heavens.
I always talk about how my friend's kindness and determination and generosity inspire me, but this year, many of them turned that beacon on me when I needed it. It not only helped me out immensely in a practical and real world sense, it helped me heal, and it made me understand that I'm not alone in this world, not by a longshot. I actually got my George Bailey moment, and I'm forever indebted to you all for that.
The other thing I learned is that happiness is not just some thing that you get. It's not a commodity or a right, and it's not one all-encompassing thing. I learned that for me, happiness is creating. Happiness is accomplishment and contentment.
I have been a writer all my life, but I wasn't really doing it right. I was lazy about it, and I looked at it as more of an entertainment option than a job or responsibility. I would put the minimum effort into it, and let the rest go. This year, I discovered that you have to push yourself if you want better results. You have to write almost everyday, whether you feel like it or not. Sometimes you have to sacrifice other things for the craft. I discovered that editing and rewrites and touching up things brought its own rewards, and in some ways, they were even more fulfilling than the writing in the first place. It's fun to put up the scaffolding of a story, but it's more fun and more satisfying to hang things on it and build from there. I finished my first novel at 55!
So even the shittiest year can hold treasure and joy. I hope you all find your joy among the ruins that is 2020, and the rest of your lives. One thing I can tell you is that you're not going to do it alone. Isolation might feel safe, and confronting your fears and faults might seem scary, but we humans rarely accomplish anything worthwhile in a bubble or on an island. I learned that this year, and I implore you to learn that as well, if you don't already know it. We are stronger together. Figure out who you can trust, and who really loves you, and let them lift you up.
So thank you for everything you've given me this year, and know that I love you all.
Thursday, April 2, 2020
Selfish And Dumb
There are a lot of people who just don't really give a shit about politics, and it's a huge problem. On one hand, I kind of understand why it happens. There are a lot of people who never had it instilled in them that they actually have a lot of say about who governs them, and how it's not only their civic duty, it's pretty much basic survival. It's probably the single most important aspect of their lives, and the lives of all their fellow human beings, but they just choose to ignore it. Some do because of things like the preceding statement. It makes them feel overwhelmed by it all, or it frightens them to think that they might not make the right choice or they might not understand the issues, so they just get defensive and decide that they're too busy or too cool to care. That's unfortunate, because basic politics is very simple, and voting is as well. Some people were raised by parents who didn't care about politics, so they don't care just to emulate them. Some were raised by parents who really cared about politics, so they don't care just to spite them. There are a bunch of other weird and convoluted reasons, but the crux of the problem is that the majority of people who don't bother with it are just selfish or dumb. These are the people who claim that they are just too busy to worry about politics, while they waste their time on their fragile egos and reality TV, and whatever diversion allows them to excuse their shallow and vapid existence. Whatever the reason, it's a huge problem, and here's why: In the past couple of weeks, even people who don't care about politics were outraged, because this administration really fucked up, and now the whole country is paying for it. Granted, that same selfish and dumb thing entered into it, and a lot of them were more annoyed at having to stay home and how they couldn't get toilet paper, rather than the fact that lots of people were going to die. Still, they took notice that something was really wrong, and they were at least engaged in what was happening and looking for someone to hold accountable. Fast forward a week or so, and I see a bunch of them losing interest again. They've already settled into their new reality, and are returning to their selfish and dumb attitude of "I don't like to think about politics and it doesn't matter who's in charge, both sides are bad." They are already checking out again; willfully ignoring their anger and frustration because it makes them feel uncomfortable and it seems like a bother. Who really cares about all this stuff we can't do anything about anyway? I just want to be happy! Most people confuse happiness with being blissfully ignorant, and will tell themselves anything to achieve it. The problem is, as they once again roll over and accept it, they enable tyrants and corruption to flourish. They are dooming themselves and the rest of us yet again. It has a ripple effect. It is very discouraging to the people who are trying to fix the world. It makes their job so much more difficult because the very people they are trying to protect and make a better world for are basically spitting in their faces. If you're a parent to a petulant teenager, you should understand that feeling. You can't motivate people who are actively working to ignore or spite you. On top of that, even when they do get motivated, it peters out very quickly as they return to their selfish and dumb ways. And I get that repeatedly calling them selfish and dumb isn't going to win us a lot of fans, but what does it really matter anyway? Any of the ways we've tried to engage or inspire them doesn't really work. No matter how much you get them riled up or invested, the selfish and dumb seeps right back in and extinguishes it. People just don't care unless it's directly messing with their lives, and even then, it has a very short shelf life before the apathy returns. So they get tired of having to think about the cause and effect aspect of their life choices, and the people who are trying to fix the world get worn down spinning their wheels in the selfish and dumb swamp that has seeped across America. So I'm laying the blame at their doorstep. If you can't be bothered to care about the very forces destroying our way of life, forces you have a say in controlling, then all the misery and death and corruption lie at your selfish and dumb feet. If you can't stay angry and engaged at a president who lies constantly, who holds you in contempt, whose policies are destroying the environment, putting children in cages, stealing trillions of your dollars, punishing the poor and vulnerable, screwing over veterans, women, minorities, and a whole bunch of other people, who uses his position for personal gain and puts ratings before his country, and is now condemning a huge number of Americans to die horrible deaths with his gross incompetence in this pandemic… well, selfish and dumb barely scratches the surface.
Reality Check
I think the reality of the situation is starting to set in for people. The last couple of days I'm seeing people start to crack. So let's start off with the tough love, then we'll get to the pep talk and positive spin later.
Here's the thing about disaster. You have to get it together and make your peace with it and get on with your life. This is only the beginning. You're going to start seeing escalating death tolls and a lot more bad news. You're not going to get to stop isolating yourselves any time soon. You're going to see it hit closer to home, and you're probably going to know some people who will get really sick or even die from it. It might be a friend of a friend, it might be a neighbor or distant relative, and in very rare cases, it might be your parents or kids or your partner. It's hard to even imagine that, but it's a possibility, although a small one. Chances are, you won't be directly affected by death from covid-19.
The economy is going to actually be the worst part of this whole thing. It will collapse, or at least come as close to a collapse as we've ever seen. The economy is an abstract concept, though. It's numbers and math that don't have much basis in the real world. It will be rough, and hurt a lot of people, but we're all going to be in the same boat, and economies can be rebuilt. Like I said, they aren't even real in many ways. There have been people hurt by it and living on its fringes since civilization began, so it's nothing new.
You're going to see a lot of bad news and very little good news on TV. The news media thrives on bad news, so you're going to get overwhelmed by it if you focus on it too much. Don't watch it if you can't handle it, and if you can handle it, watch it so it desensitizes you a bit. Just realize that it's weighted to the side of hyperbole and worst case scenarios, because that gets people's attention, and in the end, they are trying to compete for your attention and sell their product. Make sure you search out good stories and positive content elsewhere.
There, that's the worst of it. Now we can move on to discussing some of the aspects of the whole thing and our behavior and reactions, and that will morph into the pep talk I promised you.
Most people are having problems adapting to this new reality for a lot of reasons. First off, it's unpleasant, and people are good at ignoring or downplaying unpleasant things until they can't anymore. Then one day, they wake up and realize that wishing it away isn't going to work, and instead of slowly acclimating themselves to it, they are now thrown into it all at once. That's why you should learn to live with your eyes wide open. That's why leaders who inspire trust and confidence are unflinching in their resolve to face problems head on. Most of us are loathe to do that, that's why it seems like a superpower when we see someone else do it. That's why we carve their heads on mountains, or put them on our currency. Our current president is not one of them.
The other thing is that life has just been too good for most of us. As much as we complained about everything, now we feel like we are living in hell because of a bunch of inconveniences. Granted, some aspects of it go beyond mere inconvenience, especially for medical staff and workers still out there doing essential jobs. There are people suffering some pretty big hardships as well, but mostly I just see people complaining about not being able to do what they want, or being bored, or bitching about having to entertain their kids. Yeah, it's annoying, but just grow the fuck up and get over yourselves. If the biggest complaint you have during a deadly pandemic is that you feel like you've streamed all the TV and movies you want to watch, well… That's not exactly the same as living through the Great Depression, or the Civil War, or the Blitz in London, or the Holocaust. Ironically, you don't really hear the doctors or the workers still out there doing essential jobs or the people who are really getting hit hard griping and complaining, just the selfish or entitled ones sitting at home.
Then there are the people I mentioned at the beginning of this essay that's already going on too long. The ones who are afraid, whose anxiety is gripping them tighter, who are uncertain and in disarray. Chaos has a way of making you feel untethered, but your tether is sort of an illusion anyway, like security at the airport. You know that if a terrorist really wanted to do something on your plane, the TSA isn't likely to stop them. You still get on the plane, though. Life is simply controlled chaos, and most of the control part of that equation isn't real. So the feeling of losing control of everything isn't actually reality, it's just your perception. It's just you being able to see the chaos instead of regulating it to that steady background hum where it usually lives.
The thing to remember is that on a base level, all this is nothing new. Life has always been full of inconveniences and misery, and disaster was always waiting right outside the door, it was all just easier to put out of your mind before this. Really, your survival odds have only gotten a couple of percentage points worse at the most. People have trouble living in the moment on their best day. Now we're all longing for the past and dreading the future. We're incapable of finding anything good in the present, but that's not reality either. There's plenty of good things to cling to, and plenty of distractions to engage in.
It will take some work and adjustment, but just lower some of your unrealistic expectations, make peace with the fact that you're going to have to give up some things, and don't let fear make you irrational. Realize that you're going to be exposed to the virus at some point, and the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor that it's going to be a quick and relatively painless illness. You might not even get any symptoms. It's already much different than you think it is, because there's no real testing being done here. That means while you're busy being frightened by the numbers you're seeing, those numbers are most likely only a small part of what's really going on. That means that a lot more people have already had it than you think, so we're probably doing a lot better than the current numbers tell us on survival and mortality rates.
Speaking of mortality rates, you have been living in a world where thousands of people die every single day. They are murdered, they die in accidents and wars and genocides, babies die in their cribs, old people die in their beds, disease and addiction cause us to waste away, cancer eats us alive, and heart attacks and blood clots cut us down in an instant. We have lived hand in hand with death our whole lives, and most of us do it without thinking. Now we are suddenly aware of it, and we can't shake our fear.
Same with poverty and societal collapse. It's happened before. Again, it's been happening all around you every day of your life. There are plenty of nations and regions who have been living in abject poverty and misery everyday for decades. There are so many in this nation of plenty who live on the streets, or don't know where their next meal is coming from, or if they will have clean water or electricity. No matter how bad things get, most of us will never have it as bad as a lot of people who currently live everyday in conditions that would destroy you if you were in their place. Most of us can leave our house and find people living like that within a five minute drive, but we've learned to put it out of our minds. We don't see what we don't want to see.
And that's what a lot of the fear and dread is. We are now forced to imagine ourselves in situations we felt far enough removed from that they would never actually affect us. We are learning how fragile and tenuous our hold is on so many things we simply took for granted. But again, the thing to remember is that it's always been that way. The fact that you see it now doesn't make it any more real, it's always been there and it's always been real, and still, you've made it this far. You'll get through this, and driving yourself crazy and obsessing over every aspect of it is not a good way to do it. What's going to happen is going to happen, whether you torture yourself or not. That's just more of your brain trying to trick you into believing you have control.
So focus on positive stuff instead. The normal that people are so nostalgic for was pretty fucked up. It was full of injustice and cruelty and compound misery. If the world is going to be torn apart, instead of lamenting it and freaking out, let's work at figuring out ways to put it back together the right way when we get the chance. Any businessperson or politician or predator will tell you that chaos means opportunity, so let's take that opportunity to get back some of the control we've lost over the decades. Maybe we won't be at the mercy of a corrupt and narcissistic imbecile next time a preventable nightmare like this comes along. Maybe there will be a fair playing field, and no one will have to live everyday in squalor and misery. You might scoff, and say such a vision is impossible, but did you ever imagine that the situation we're in now could ever exist?
Because that's the real takeaway here. Nothing is guaranteed, nothing is safe or written in stone. That works both ways. It means that things might get worse, but with a little bit of effort, they might get so much better. It goes to figure that if something this huge and unimaginable was this close to us, maybe that utopia we're told is a fairytale is at hand as well. Even disasters are a gift, and we almost always ignore them, and we marvel about how the disasters keep repeating themselves.
This is a crisis, no doubt. It is horrific and monstrous and terrible, that's true. But it's also a wake up call and an opportunity, all that remains to be seen is how we react to it.
Here's the thing about disaster. You have to get it together and make your peace with it and get on with your life. This is only the beginning. You're going to start seeing escalating death tolls and a lot more bad news. You're not going to get to stop isolating yourselves any time soon. You're going to see it hit closer to home, and you're probably going to know some people who will get really sick or even die from it. It might be a friend of a friend, it might be a neighbor or distant relative, and in very rare cases, it might be your parents or kids or your partner. It's hard to even imagine that, but it's a possibility, although a small one. Chances are, you won't be directly affected by death from covid-19.
The economy is going to actually be the worst part of this whole thing. It will collapse, or at least come as close to a collapse as we've ever seen. The economy is an abstract concept, though. It's numbers and math that don't have much basis in the real world. It will be rough, and hurt a lot of people, but we're all going to be in the same boat, and economies can be rebuilt. Like I said, they aren't even real in many ways. There have been people hurt by it and living on its fringes since civilization began, so it's nothing new.
You're going to see a lot of bad news and very little good news on TV. The news media thrives on bad news, so you're going to get overwhelmed by it if you focus on it too much. Don't watch it if you can't handle it, and if you can handle it, watch it so it desensitizes you a bit. Just realize that it's weighted to the side of hyperbole and worst case scenarios, because that gets people's attention, and in the end, they are trying to compete for your attention and sell their product. Make sure you search out good stories and positive content elsewhere.
There, that's the worst of it. Now we can move on to discussing some of the aspects of the whole thing and our behavior and reactions, and that will morph into the pep talk I promised you.
Most people are having problems adapting to this new reality for a lot of reasons. First off, it's unpleasant, and people are good at ignoring or downplaying unpleasant things until they can't anymore. Then one day, they wake up and realize that wishing it away isn't going to work, and instead of slowly acclimating themselves to it, they are now thrown into it all at once. That's why you should learn to live with your eyes wide open. That's why leaders who inspire trust and confidence are unflinching in their resolve to face problems head on. Most of us are loathe to do that, that's why it seems like a superpower when we see someone else do it. That's why we carve their heads on mountains, or put them on our currency. Our current president is not one of them.
The other thing is that life has just been too good for most of us. As much as we complained about everything, now we feel like we are living in hell because of a bunch of inconveniences. Granted, some aspects of it go beyond mere inconvenience, especially for medical staff and workers still out there doing essential jobs. There are people suffering some pretty big hardships as well, but mostly I just see people complaining about not being able to do what they want, or being bored, or bitching about having to entertain their kids. Yeah, it's annoying, but just grow the fuck up and get over yourselves. If the biggest complaint you have during a deadly pandemic is that you feel like you've streamed all the TV and movies you want to watch, well… That's not exactly the same as living through the Great Depression, or the Civil War, or the Blitz in London, or the Holocaust. Ironically, you don't really hear the doctors or the workers still out there doing essential jobs or the people who are really getting hit hard griping and complaining, just the selfish or entitled ones sitting at home.
Then there are the people I mentioned at the beginning of this essay that's already going on too long. The ones who are afraid, whose anxiety is gripping them tighter, who are uncertain and in disarray. Chaos has a way of making you feel untethered, but your tether is sort of an illusion anyway, like security at the airport. You know that if a terrorist really wanted to do something on your plane, the TSA isn't likely to stop them. You still get on the plane, though. Life is simply controlled chaos, and most of the control part of that equation isn't real. So the feeling of losing control of everything isn't actually reality, it's just your perception. It's just you being able to see the chaos instead of regulating it to that steady background hum where it usually lives.
The thing to remember is that on a base level, all this is nothing new. Life has always been full of inconveniences and misery, and disaster was always waiting right outside the door, it was all just easier to put out of your mind before this. Really, your survival odds have only gotten a couple of percentage points worse at the most. People have trouble living in the moment on their best day. Now we're all longing for the past and dreading the future. We're incapable of finding anything good in the present, but that's not reality either. There's plenty of good things to cling to, and plenty of distractions to engage in.
It will take some work and adjustment, but just lower some of your unrealistic expectations, make peace with the fact that you're going to have to give up some things, and don't let fear make you irrational. Realize that you're going to be exposed to the virus at some point, and the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor that it's going to be a quick and relatively painless illness. You might not even get any symptoms. It's already much different than you think it is, because there's no real testing being done here. That means while you're busy being frightened by the numbers you're seeing, those numbers are most likely only a small part of what's really going on. That means that a lot more people have already had it than you think, so we're probably doing a lot better than the current numbers tell us on survival and mortality rates.
Speaking of mortality rates, you have been living in a world where thousands of people die every single day. They are murdered, they die in accidents and wars and genocides, babies die in their cribs, old people die in their beds, disease and addiction cause us to waste away, cancer eats us alive, and heart attacks and blood clots cut us down in an instant. We have lived hand in hand with death our whole lives, and most of us do it without thinking. Now we are suddenly aware of it, and we can't shake our fear.
Same with poverty and societal collapse. It's happened before. Again, it's been happening all around you every day of your life. There are plenty of nations and regions who have been living in abject poverty and misery everyday for decades. There are so many in this nation of plenty who live on the streets, or don't know where their next meal is coming from, or if they will have clean water or electricity. No matter how bad things get, most of us will never have it as bad as a lot of people who currently live everyday in conditions that would destroy you if you were in their place. Most of us can leave our house and find people living like that within a five minute drive, but we've learned to put it out of our minds. We don't see what we don't want to see.
And that's what a lot of the fear and dread is. We are now forced to imagine ourselves in situations we felt far enough removed from that they would never actually affect us. We are learning how fragile and tenuous our hold is on so many things we simply took for granted. But again, the thing to remember is that it's always been that way. The fact that you see it now doesn't make it any more real, it's always been there and it's always been real, and still, you've made it this far. You'll get through this, and driving yourself crazy and obsessing over every aspect of it is not a good way to do it. What's going to happen is going to happen, whether you torture yourself or not. That's just more of your brain trying to trick you into believing you have control.
So focus on positive stuff instead. The normal that people are so nostalgic for was pretty fucked up. It was full of injustice and cruelty and compound misery. If the world is going to be torn apart, instead of lamenting it and freaking out, let's work at figuring out ways to put it back together the right way when we get the chance. Any businessperson or politician or predator will tell you that chaos means opportunity, so let's take that opportunity to get back some of the control we've lost over the decades. Maybe we won't be at the mercy of a corrupt and narcissistic imbecile next time a preventable nightmare like this comes along. Maybe there will be a fair playing field, and no one will have to live everyday in squalor and misery. You might scoff, and say such a vision is impossible, but did you ever imagine that the situation we're in now could ever exist?
Because that's the real takeaway here. Nothing is guaranteed, nothing is safe or written in stone. That works both ways. It means that things might get worse, but with a little bit of effort, they might get so much better. It goes to figure that if something this huge and unimaginable was this close to us, maybe that utopia we're told is a fairytale is at hand as well. Even disasters are a gift, and we almost always ignore them, and we marvel about how the disasters keep repeating themselves.
This is a crisis, no doubt. It is horrific and monstrous and terrible, that's true. But it's also a wake up call and an opportunity, all that remains to be seen is how we react to it.
Friday, March 20, 2020
Actual serious PSA
******Actual serious PSA*******
I've spent at least the last five years or so basically home alone, doing nothing and pretty broke. I see some of you struggling with being home and worried about money, so here are some things I've learned.
There are plenty of distractions like TV and reading, video games, social media, etc, but none of them are satisfying if you find yourself in the wrong frame of mind doing them. Don't think of it as something you're forced to do while you'd rather be doing something else. You have to train yourself to live in the moment, even if what you're doing in that moment isn't your first choice. A lot of things are free or cheap, so you don't have to spend money that you don't have.
In that regard, learn to enjoy things you look on as a chore. Cooking is a prime example. We tend to tell ourselves that we don't have time to cook, but now you're going to have lots of time. Cooking is fun and satisfying. Deep clean your place. Don't just run a vacuum over the floor for a minute, clean and organize. Fix the little things you've been putting off or propping up. Go through that closet full of stuff you haven't looked at in years and get rid of what you don't want.
Keep in touch. There are going to be a bunch of people you know in the same boat. Reach out, and connect. You can still be social while social distancing. Join or make a secret group on Facebook, where you and your friends or family can stay in touch and be more open and at ease with each other. When you spend too much time alone, you live in your own head, and that's no place you want to spend too much of your time. Keeping in contact with people keeps you sane. More on that later…
Get some exercise. If you have any home exercise equipment currently acting as a coat rack, start using it. You can do aerobics or yoga in your living room(close the drapes, no one needs to see that!), and there are plenty of exercise routines online to follow along with. Go for a walk or bike ride. You can practice social distancing and still be outside.
Find new hobbies and activities. Take up knitting, learn to sew and patch your old clothes. Try drawing or writing, or learn to play that guitar you bought five years ago and gave up on when you found out about f chords. Organize your old photos and make a scrapbook or album. Learn to meditate. Go online and learn something like a language or photoshop or a million other online courses. There are millions of things to do to pass the time, and improve some areas of your life along the way, and millions of sites to tell you about them and instruct you.
Find some apps and games on your phones. I know that a lot of people don't care about video games and such, but there are so many different kinds of games out there to pass the time. First off, any stuff you used to do in newspapers and magazines and real life is on your phone. Crossword puzzles, Sudoku, jumbles, cryptograms, trivia quizzes, jigsaw puzzles, slot machines, poker and card games, you name it. There are games where you build civilizations, simulate evolution, role playing games, racing games, action games, and versions of a lot of the older arcade and console games that you loved. They don't require much from you, and they really help pass the time.
Make meal plans and stick to them. Eat your perishables first. We all joke about how we buy food, and wind up throwing it away because we just order take out. You might not have that option soon, so start now.
Also, when you're bored, you eat, so be careful not to snack yourself into a coma. Put your snack foods away in a cabinet so you're not seeing them every time you walk into the kitchen. Out of sight, out of mind.
Regarding TV, there are more viewing options than ever out there. If you look, there are probably a bunch of shows and movies you forgot about or just missed. We are living in a golden age of television, where TV shows are better than most theatrical releases. Streaming has lots of free or cheap optims. A lot of people feel guilty about watching too much TV because they think it's wasting time when they should be doing other things, but now you'll have all the time in the world. So watch to your heart's content. Discover new stuff and expand your horizons, indulge in your guilty pleasures, or just watch comfort TV to take your mind off of things. Same thing with music. Take this time to discover bands and music you haven't had time to discover when your life was so busy.
Keep a routine. You can find yourself quickly letting things slide. You find yourself putting off taking showers. You eat at all times of the day or night. Your sleep schedule goes to hell. Figure out a routine, and stick with it, no matter how pointless it seems at times.
As far as money goes, there are going to be lots of relief efforts for people, and public pressure will force things like mortgage payments and rent and utilities to be put on hold. If you get behind in your bills, talk to the companies you owe money to. They will work with you, and you can make arrangements to pay what you can, and it won't affect your credit score. Even if it does, credit scores can be fixed fairly easily once you're doing well again. Don't just ignore it!
You might think that since I wrote this, I must be in great shape, my place must be impeccably clean, and my life in perfect order, but we all know it's not. I can write about the pitfalls you might encounter because I've fallen into just about every one of them along the way. A big part of that is because depression can grab hold of you pretty quickly when you're isolated. Humans are social animals, and that's hard wired into us and not about to change.
When you become even a little bit isolated, you can feel like you have nothing to look forward to, and that there's no point in doing a lot of the things you know you should, because who's going to notice? That's a bad road to go down. There are a lot of different types of depression, and one of the most insidious is just getting worn down and you stop trying. It usually gets you because it's not a chemical thing. It's not something you've ever dealt with or experienced before, so you have no frame of reference. It happens gradually, and you don't see it and you deny it's happening. There's no magic pill or real convenient treatment plan for when you just let your life get away from you. It just becomes your new normal. You can crawl out of it with some herculean effort, but it's much easier to just not let yourself get to that point in the first place. Trust me. You want to guard against it.
Just as bad as depression is the anxiety and neurosis that comes along with isolation. Especially if you're not working and your life loses structure and routine. I mentioned about living in your own head, but that's what can happen as the hours and days start to blur. When you start thinking too much, it can multiply every worry or fear that pops into your mind. You have to guard against it. You need to talk to other people, you need to have distractions, otherwise you can eat yourself up from the inside.
If you're having trouble, reach out to friends and family. Keep in mind that there are a lot of people who aren't very good at offering advice or being comforting, or even just being good listeners. You might have to talk to a few people to figure out who is capable of truly being there for you. Work to be good at it too, because people are going to need you as well. Being judgemental or defensive or dismissive isn't going to help anyone, so try to be understanding and patient.
If we all work together, we'll get through this, so don't give up and don't give in.
I've spent at least the last five years or so basically home alone, doing nothing and pretty broke. I see some of you struggling with being home and worried about money, so here are some things I've learned.
There are plenty of distractions like TV and reading, video games, social media, etc, but none of them are satisfying if you find yourself in the wrong frame of mind doing them. Don't think of it as something you're forced to do while you'd rather be doing something else. You have to train yourself to live in the moment, even if what you're doing in that moment isn't your first choice. A lot of things are free or cheap, so you don't have to spend money that you don't have.
In that regard, learn to enjoy things you look on as a chore. Cooking is a prime example. We tend to tell ourselves that we don't have time to cook, but now you're going to have lots of time. Cooking is fun and satisfying. Deep clean your place. Don't just run a vacuum over the floor for a minute, clean and organize. Fix the little things you've been putting off or propping up. Go through that closet full of stuff you haven't looked at in years and get rid of what you don't want.
Keep in touch. There are going to be a bunch of people you know in the same boat. Reach out, and connect. You can still be social while social distancing. Join or make a secret group on Facebook, where you and your friends or family can stay in touch and be more open and at ease with each other. When you spend too much time alone, you live in your own head, and that's no place you want to spend too much of your time. Keeping in contact with people keeps you sane. More on that later…
Get some exercise. If you have any home exercise equipment currently acting as a coat rack, start using it. You can do aerobics or yoga in your living room(close the drapes, no one needs to see that!), and there are plenty of exercise routines online to follow along with. Go for a walk or bike ride. You can practice social distancing and still be outside.
Find new hobbies and activities. Take up knitting, learn to sew and patch your old clothes. Try drawing or writing, or learn to play that guitar you bought five years ago and gave up on when you found out about f chords. Organize your old photos and make a scrapbook or album. Learn to meditate. Go online and learn something like a language or photoshop or a million other online courses. There are millions of things to do to pass the time, and improve some areas of your life along the way, and millions of sites to tell you about them and instruct you.
Find some apps and games on your phones. I know that a lot of people don't care about video games and such, but there are so many different kinds of games out there to pass the time. First off, any stuff you used to do in newspapers and magazines and real life is on your phone. Crossword puzzles, Sudoku, jumbles, cryptograms, trivia quizzes, jigsaw puzzles, slot machines, poker and card games, you name it. There are games where you build civilizations, simulate evolution, role playing games, racing games, action games, and versions of a lot of the older arcade and console games that you loved. They don't require much from you, and they really help pass the time.
Make meal plans and stick to them. Eat your perishables first. We all joke about how we buy food, and wind up throwing it away because we just order take out. You might not have that option soon, so start now.
Also, when you're bored, you eat, so be careful not to snack yourself into a coma. Put your snack foods away in a cabinet so you're not seeing them every time you walk into the kitchen. Out of sight, out of mind.
Regarding TV, there are more viewing options than ever out there. If you look, there are probably a bunch of shows and movies you forgot about or just missed. We are living in a golden age of television, where TV shows are better than most theatrical releases. Streaming has lots of free or cheap optims. A lot of people feel guilty about watching too much TV because they think it's wasting time when they should be doing other things, but now you'll have all the time in the world. So watch to your heart's content. Discover new stuff and expand your horizons, indulge in your guilty pleasures, or just watch comfort TV to take your mind off of things. Same thing with music. Take this time to discover bands and music you haven't had time to discover when your life was so busy.
Keep a routine. You can find yourself quickly letting things slide. You find yourself putting off taking showers. You eat at all times of the day or night. Your sleep schedule goes to hell. Figure out a routine, and stick with it, no matter how pointless it seems at times.
As far as money goes, there are going to be lots of relief efforts for people, and public pressure will force things like mortgage payments and rent and utilities to be put on hold. If you get behind in your bills, talk to the companies you owe money to. They will work with you, and you can make arrangements to pay what you can, and it won't affect your credit score. Even if it does, credit scores can be fixed fairly easily once you're doing well again. Don't just ignore it!
You might think that since I wrote this, I must be in great shape, my place must be impeccably clean, and my life in perfect order, but we all know it's not. I can write about the pitfalls you might encounter because I've fallen into just about every one of them along the way. A big part of that is because depression can grab hold of you pretty quickly when you're isolated. Humans are social animals, and that's hard wired into us and not about to change.
When you become even a little bit isolated, you can feel like you have nothing to look forward to, and that there's no point in doing a lot of the things you know you should, because who's going to notice? That's a bad road to go down. There are a lot of different types of depression, and one of the most insidious is just getting worn down and you stop trying. It usually gets you because it's not a chemical thing. It's not something you've ever dealt with or experienced before, so you have no frame of reference. It happens gradually, and you don't see it and you deny it's happening. There's no magic pill or real convenient treatment plan for when you just let your life get away from you. It just becomes your new normal. You can crawl out of it with some herculean effort, but it's much easier to just not let yourself get to that point in the first place. Trust me. You want to guard against it.
Just as bad as depression is the anxiety and neurosis that comes along with isolation. Especially if you're not working and your life loses structure and routine. I mentioned about living in your own head, but that's what can happen as the hours and days start to blur. When you start thinking too much, it can multiply every worry or fear that pops into your mind. You have to guard against it. You need to talk to other people, you need to have distractions, otherwise you can eat yourself up from the inside.
If you're having trouble, reach out to friends and family. Keep in mind that there are a lot of people who aren't very good at offering advice or being comforting, or even just being good listeners. You might have to talk to a few people to figure out who is capable of truly being there for you. Work to be good at it too, because people are going to need you as well. Being judgemental or defensive or dismissive isn't going to help anyone, so try to be understanding and patient.
If we all work together, we'll get through this, so don't give up and don't give in.
Sunday, March 15, 2020
Things To Do During The Coronavirus Crisis
Things you can do to maximize the time we are impacted by the Coronavirus:
Not much food available? The perfect time to go on a diet! As a bonus, if you can't get much toilet paper, go on a low carb diet and load up on meat and cheese. You'll hardly poop at all!
Go to rehab. If you've been putting it off, now is the perfect time. You won't feel like you're missing out on much, and it will be like you're in quarantine with all the funnest people!
Stockpile weapons and prepare yourself for Mad Max times. You'll also need some weird bondage gear and assless chaps, if the movies are to be believed. You'll still probably die ten minutes after you enter the apocalyptic wasteland, just like you did the first time you played Fallout.
Learn how to cook creatively with all the weird things you've bought over the past year after finding some recipe online, but never looked at them again once you put them in your freezer or cabinet. Make a nice quinoa and jackfruit with tahini and coconut flour casserole. Delve into history, and learn how to make soup out of your shoes when the food runs out, like they did in the Great Depression.
Watch The Office or Friends for the 600th time. It will seem like nothing's changed! If things get bad for longer than two weeks, you might actually have to watch all that crap you put in your streaming queue because you felt like you should watch it, even though you'd rather watch My 600 Pound Life.
Take virtual tours of museums online, or online courses. Just kidding! Watch porn until your genitals are raw and blistered.
Quietly reflect on all your bad choices, and vow to get your life in order once the danger is passed and use the second chance you get to live right. Don't worry, you're not actually going to change your life once we emerge from our hovels, constipated and with the aforementioned blistered genitals.
Drink! For the first time in your life, you have a legitimate excuse to stay home and day drink alone. As an added plus, you're already home, so you won't have to drive home drunk from the club!
Curl up in a ball, sob uncontrollably, and wait to die. You probably do that on a fairly regular basis anyway, at least this time it will seem reasonable.
Don't just waste this gift of time we've been given, get creative and use it wisely. You might as well spend the end of days living joylessly and improving yourself so Jesus isn't disgusted with you on Armageddon day, which by most estimates is next Tuesday.
Not much food available? The perfect time to go on a diet! As a bonus, if you can't get much toilet paper, go on a low carb diet and load up on meat and cheese. You'll hardly poop at all!
Go to rehab. If you've been putting it off, now is the perfect time. You won't feel like you're missing out on much, and it will be like you're in quarantine with all the funnest people!
Stockpile weapons and prepare yourself for Mad Max times. You'll also need some weird bondage gear and assless chaps, if the movies are to be believed. You'll still probably die ten minutes after you enter the apocalyptic wasteland, just like you did the first time you played Fallout.
Learn how to cook creatively with all the weird things you've bought over the past year after finding some recipe online, but never looked at them again once you put them in your freezer or cabinet. Make a nice quinoa and jackfruit with tahini and coconut flour casserole. Delve into history, and learn how to make soup out of your shoes when the food runs out, like they did in the Great Depression.
Watch The Office or Friends for the 600th time. It will seem like nothing's changed! If things get bad for longer than two weeks, you might actually have to watch all that crap you put in your streaming queue because you felt like you should watch it, even though you'd rather watch My 600 Pound Life.
Take virtual tours of museums online, or online courses. Just kidding! Watch porn until your genitals are raw and blistered.
Quietly reflect on all your bad choices, and vow to get your life in order once the danger is passed and use the second chance you get to live right. Don't worry, you're not actually going to change your life once we emerge from our hovels, constipated and with the aforementioned blistered genitals.
Drink! For the first time in your life, you have a legitimate excuse to stay home and day drink alone. As an added plus, you're already home, so you won't have to drive home drunk from the club!
Curl up in a ball, sob uncontrollably, and wait to die. You probably do that on a fairly regular basis anyway, at least this time it will seem reasonable.
Don't just waste this gift of time we've been given, get creative and use it wisely. You might as well spend the end of days living joylessly and improving yourself so Jesus isn't disgusted with you on Armageddon day, which by most estimates is next Tuesday.
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