Having to learn to work from home with software most people have never heard of and the mishaps associated with that? Everything nonessential being closed and us having to figure out how to amuse ourselves without the normal distractions? Hoarding toilet paper? Being relegated to your house and maybe one or two other specific locations? I mean, it sounds like bad reality television! HOUSE ARREST! This fall on NBC!
But right now I’m not feeling so silly. I hate when I don’t feel silly, you guys, because then I get THOUGHTS. Thoughts lead to seriousness, and seriousness leads to stress eating potato chips.
Ya know, in some ways, I don’t think it’s a bad thing, the quarantine stuff. In fact, I think maybe society might have needed it. We all spend so much time making so much noise. Work this, work that, school stuff, we gotta be at church this many days a week, oooh, let’s go to the movies, or shop, or play sports, or violin lessons, or whatever keeps us from sitting still for too long. Maybe the human race needed a reason to step back a bit and rest from the usual distractions. A relatively misunderstood, rapidly infectious disease is a shitty catalyst for that, but it is what it is, and that seems to be the only thing that could get us to slow down like we have. Kind of a crappy deal, but here we are.
There are some very terrible things about all of this, of course. The sickness and people dying of COVID-19, the healthcare system being overwhelmed, the people who are going to lose their livelihoods, the business that will fail. Relationships that will be damaged, either from too much time together or not enough time together. The not being able to be with people when they need you.
Right now my best friend is in a hospital, alone, being operated on somewhere. Maybe Tennessee. We don’t know for certain how she is or what is happening because no one at the hospital can tell her father, who can’t be with her, WTF is going on. It’s not their fault, really, because of everything that’s happening, but that doesn’t make it easier on the people who care about her. She is not doing well, and I mean that in the sense you think I mean. That is just one of the things on my mind right now.
On a personal note, and I don’t really like to admit this, it’s also so damn lonely! I never realized just how much I distract myself from that feeling. I’ve spent the last two weeks checking on people and making sure that they have what they need, and reaching out to make dumb conversations to make sure people are ok, and making sure the church can have their services online, and that people are getting paid, and doing busy work at my other job so that I will have it to go back to when this is all over, posting funny stuff online to make people laugh and etc. Now that the initial scrabbling to get adjusted is over and things are more quiet, I’m starting to realize how isolated I am. That sounds crazy after all I talked about, but working with people doesn’t make you less alone in the most basic sense. Hell, even being married doesn’t make you less lonely sometimes. My cup is getting empty, you guys.
I think that when this is all over, a lot of personal things and feelings will have changed, and I do not look forward to it.
Anyway, that is where my brain is this morning. I told you I didn’t like being serious. Now I need some potato chips.
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