The Wonderful Return of Being Boring.

Today is Monday. So get this: I just had the closest thing to a normal weekend that I’ve experienced in the last 14 months!

There was nothing amazing about it. In fact it was pretty mundane. I went to see a coworker’s kid perform in a little play at an outdoor theater. I went to BOTH Target and Walmart. I planted some new seeds in my window sill garden. Yesterday I made a frittata and as I was getting started I realized I was out of cheese, so I just hopped in the car and drove to the store and bought some cheese, without even feeling any trepidation about it! No Greco-Roman mental wrestling about the ethical implications of making an unplanned grocery store trip. I even went to a thrift store on Saturday! 

Now I am not saying life is back to normal. It will be a long long long time before we get back to whatever “normal” was, and we probably won’t ever get there anyway.

But what I am saying is that this past weekend was the closest thing to life I have experienced since the quarantine began. And that is a good thing.

I should say here: I’m fully vaccinated as of about a month ago. And YOU should go get vaccinated too. Everybody should. If you’re not inclined to protect yourself, then do it because it protects the people around you. This is not complicated.

After the so so so many months of quarantine, it was so very nice to be able to return to even the most mundane aspects of living in a society. I walked around Target slowly and just looked at all the stuff and I even touched some of the clothes! Can you even believe that? What joy it is to be alive.

It gets even more exciting! I have PLANS! With other people! PLANS TO SPEND TIME WITH HUMANS! Later this week I am going to go with a small group of fully vaccinated people to get drinks! DRINKS, I SAY! I have not had proper drinks in more than a year. I think sometimes about whiskey and I wonder, “How is whisky doing? How has whiskey been without me all this time? Will whiskey remember me???”

And even more exciting! Next month I am taking a trip! Yes, A TRIP! I have requested vacation days and everything!

I’m slowly trying to get my head in gear for that. We have all — well most of us anyway — internalized the Covid caution over the past year and I think that for some of us it will take a little bit of time to be able to deprogram ourselves out of that. I think that the fact we still have to do mask wearing is actually a good thing. The masks function kind of like training wheels for us as we begin to take those tentative steps back into the world. When I walked around Wal-Mart this weekend, I could often hear the sirens going off in my brain telling me that I shouldn’t be inside, that there were too many people in the store, that my trip wasn’t essential.  Then I’d have to calmly remind myself that it was okay, that I was vaccinated, that I wasn’t going to hurt anybody with my germs, that it was okay to do something non-essential. It will take some time for those sirens to quiet, they’re on a hair trigger after the last 14 months, but with time, they will fade.

While it is true the pandemic is not over and while it is true that the pandemic may never entirely end, it is also true that we are probably through the worst of it now. We are entering a new phase of this whole thing and by all accounts, this phase is so much better.

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BC and AC.

 

Today is my Two Doses + Two Weeks Day!

I am now fully vaccinated! I would like to thank my family, my friends, the staff at the weird grocery store pharmacy where I got my shots …

Sooooooooo … now what?

I’ve expressed a little anxiety here before about what this next part is going to be like. I’ve moved around enough that I know it takes me about six months to settle into a new place and I had lived here almost exactly five months when Quarantine started 13 months ago. I guess this means that my counter restarts? Does it reset to zero? Or does it reset to five months? Does it actually reset at all? Or do I have to wait until the rest of society comes back online?

The thing is, aside from some work people and a few friends 90 minutes away in the Bay Area, I don’t really know anyone here. I live in basically a company town suburb that isn’t walking distance to anything really. The town I “live in” is actually a short drive away and doesn’t have a lot to recommend it in terms of nightlife or meeting people opportunities. Monterey proper is about a twenty minute drive and while there are some bars there that I like, they’re less fun to go to alone. 

I’m not trying to complain. The area is beautiful and I am lucky to be here, but I’m trying to adjust to the reality that from here on out, when I feel lonely, I’m not going to be able to blame that on the pandemic. I now have to blame it on me.

As much as i have enjoyed living a varied life that has taken me to live in lots of different places, each time I’ve moved it has felt like I lost people along the way and as if my circle of people has gotten smaller and small until this past year when it was reduced to just me and the cat. Which is too small. But what do I do about that now? I worry a lot that I will just never be able to add to it again and that it will simply remain this small until I end up dying alone one night and then my cat eats my face off.

It happens. In fact we know it happens a lot.

This is what I do though; the stoic in my goes immediately to the worst stuff, that way I can be ready for it, but it is also probably some kind of anxiety doom-loop that is about more than the fact I’ve read some Marcus Aurelius, but we don’t have time to get into all of that right now.

Even though I am working today and have a lot to do, I am going to try to shift into a lower gear than normal and I am going to try and spend some time thinking about what a good day this is. Two doses + two weeks! That is a big big deal. Today, for just this one day, I am going to just live in this one day and try to feel good. For all of us life is going to be broken into Before Covid (BC) and After Covid (AC) and I might reasonably be able to think of today as my first After Covid day. That is a cause for hope.

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Am I in a bad mood? It sounds like I am in a bad mood.

 

On Monday I got my second shot of Moderna and it really knocked me back a step yesterday. It felt like a hangover or the first day of getting the flu. I would have called in sick to work, but I really couldn’t because there is so much going on right now. I’m not going to go into detail about that here, but suffice to say that the new life routine I built for myself (and which i have written about here before) has all but collapsed. 

The problem now is the same as the problem that prompted me to build a new routine in the first place, mainly that my work life is aggressively trying to eat the rest of my life and simply will not stay within the boundaries we agreed upon. 

That being said, I am still doing okay in the mornings. I still manage to do my silly little daily drawings (posted on IG @standard_kink) and I have still mostly managed to keep writing a few hundred words here each morning. So even though it has been two steps forward and one step back lately, at least I can still be proud of that one net step forward.

The demands of my work will lessen somewhat over the next couple weeks and I will try to put it back into its box and maybe try (again) to talk to some people about how to keep it there. At that point I can focus more on the things I have been failing at: I haven’t been for a run so far the entire month of April and I have not been able to spend any time in the evenings writing because during the time I have allocated for that I am still working. Yesterday I worked an 11 hour day and that was less than the day before.

The part that I did not take into account when I set about designing a daily routine, was how little control I have over the demands that are placed on me. And that’s life, right? I am single and have no children. And yet I feel like the world is just pushing back against me constantly. What is it like if you are carrying around all the things I have chosen not to carry: a family, a mortgage, a too-expensive car payment? One has to wonder why we built a world that seeks to crush us. Nothing about the world or society or country or culture that we find ourselves living inside of is in any way naturally occurring or preordained. We made it this way; from our cars that go WAY too fast and run on fossil fuel, to our houses that are WAY too big and terrible for the health of the planet, to our political system that doesn’t seem to work anymore, to our economy that seems constantly on the brink of collapse while only serving to make rich people richer … and on and on and on … we made things this way. One has to wonder why.

Obviously there are answers to all this, but I don’t have the time to get to them right now because I have to go take a shower and get ready for work. Which is, I guess, an illustrative example of the problem.

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April 5th, 2019.

 

Every morning I make a silly little drawing and post it to my Instagram. I’m terrible at it (Can’t draw), but I like doing it. After I post them, I write the date in the bottom corner of the drawing in my sketchbook and today for some reason I wrote: 4-5-2019, which is not the correct date.

I have no idea why my brain did that.

4-5-2019 is of no particular significance (I don’t think), so I guess my internal clock is just a little off today.

But it did get me to thinking: Holy shit, it is 2021!

How the hell did that happen???

Just a minute ago it was 2016 and I’d just moved to Portland. And then the Former Guy got elected that November and we all fell into some sort of Darkest Timeline wormhole and then Covid hit and then a year somehow simultaneously disappeared while also aging all of us ten years.

And now it is 2021. 

We live in the future, I guess???

When I was growing up, I  used to read science fiction that was set in like 2015. They had lasers and stuff. We don’t even have jet packs.

I guess what I’m getting at here is that time is kind of merciless in it’s brutal and inevitable march forward. In a way, I guess that’s good. It means that 2020 is in our rear-view now. It means that a summer of vaccinations and hugs is on the horizon.

But it also means we completely lost an entire year. You know, I moved here to Monterey in October of 2019 and I’d only been here about 5 months when quarantine came down. It usually takes me about six months to settle into a new place, and I never really got to do that here. As Vaccine Summer approaches, I’ve started feeling this odd anxiety about life getting “back to normal” because in this case “back to normal” is going to mean “having only lived here 5 months” and so I will still have to do all the work of building a new life. So the relief of surviving Covid is going to immediately turn into the existential dread of having to build yet another new life from scratch. There is a part of my that likes that I’ve gotten to move around a lot, but the part of me that keeps getting older has come to the realization that every time I move, my life seems to get a little smaller and my circle of people is reduced. I really am worried that one day I’m going to look around and realize I don’t even have anyone to get a beer with. There is a part of me that is a little worried that when it is time to start doing hugs again, I simply won’t have anyone to hug.

This is not the future I used to read about and it certainly isn’t the one I imagined for myself. Though I guess I have to admit, at least we have reached the point in the pandemic where it is even reasonable to begin to really think about having a future that’s bigger than just our dumb little quarantine lives. That counts for something.

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Not Quite Yet, But Soon.

So yesterday I got my first shot of the Covid vaccine! I live in California and work in higher education, the vaccine tier for education in California opened up March 3rd. I felt really conflicted about it, I wish they would have prioritized elementary school teachers. Even though a medical program, I can do most of my work from home. The first week or so I was a little less intense than I might have otherwise been about trying to hunt down an appointment, on account of feeling kind of guilty about my own eligibility, but then last week I stumbled onto an appointment via the county website and I took it because Dr. Fauci says we should all get vaccinated as soon as we can.

The anxiety I was feeling yesterday morning largely dissipated as I had to go through the rigmarole of driving to the pharmacy and waiting around in my car for my appointment time. Everyone was super chill about the whole thing. The pharmacy was in the back of a kind of dumpy Safeway grocery store, which seemed odd. I think they only did one vaccination each half an hour, so there was no line or anything. It felt word to get my shot — this thing that will kind of change my life, at least in the near future — and then walk out into the bread aisle.

I felt fine afterward. On my drive back I made a pit stop at the beach (I live in the central coast) and I walked up to a bluff and looked out at the roiling windswept ocean and I cried a little bit for a minute.

Then I came back here to my little apartment and logged back into work for the rest of the day. 

I felt fine, but by quitting time I was completely exhausted. Like eyes drooping exhaustion. Right after work, when I would normally go for a run, I dumped my body onto the couch and took an impromptu nap for more than an hour, which is a thing I rarely if ever do.

I felt tired as I made dinner and then eventually went to bed a little early. And then, this morning I overslept by a damn hour and a half. 90 whole minutes, which is really a thing that almost never happens. Today I’m still tired and feeling kind of run down. I don’t feel bad or anything, just so very tired.

Apparently fatigue is a common side effect, but mostly after the second shot. Of course, this could all be due to the time change, so I’m not making a big thing out of it.

Today as I’ve been working, I’ve also been thinking about so sort of small, safe thing I can do soon. My second shot is April 12 and it’s supposed to take about two weeks for the vaccine to really kick in after that, which would mean that about the end of April/beginning of May I could maybe sneak away for a weekend to … I have no idea. I won’t do any real traveling until more people are vaccinated and I don’t intend to visit friends of family until they are also vaccinated, so no matter what it turns out to be, I’d probably still be alone. 

But maybe around the start of May I can get a pretty little AirBnB someplace with a nice view and just for a night or two be someplace that isn’t my apartment. In the last year I have only spent a single night away from here. 

What I would really like is a nice tall hotel, someplace with a bar. I don’t even need to go to the bar, but maybe I could order a drink from room service and sit on a balcony and drink it slowly.

I could also do that here in my home, but that’s not the point.

What I really want though is to be around people. I miss people so very much. I’d like a fucking hug, thank you very much. That will come in the next few months, as more vaccine tiers open up and more people can get their shots. And then after that, soon we’ll be able to travel again and I can get one a plane again with just my backpack slipped under the seat in front of me and put this whole godforsaken year behind me. 

Soon. Not quite yet, but soon.

I’m grateful to have made it through this whole pandemic thing so far. I’m grateful that so far my family has made it through and that so many of my friends have. Just a little while longer. We all just need to hang in there a little while longer.

Soon, we’ll get back to something like normal soon. 

Not quite yet, but soon.

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Not Going to Miss My Shot.

This will likely be a short post today. I’m feeling some anxiety. See, today I have an appointment to get my first Covid vaccine shot. I am SOOOOOOOO happy about that. Yesterday I did a dry run and drove out to the pharmacy (because it is in a place I had never been before) and it seemed easy enough.

So why the anxiety?

I’m not sure.

I want so badly to see people and hug people and be in the same room with other people (I have been quarantined alone for 12 months), but I think I have a little fear about what the return to life will be like. This past year has been terrible and so incredibly lonely, but I had only lived here about 5 months when quarantine started and I had just barely started to settle into a life. I don’t really know anyone nearby and I didn’t have the chance to — you know --- make friends or do anything more than think about dating. So I think the anxiety is maybe tied up with the fact that when quarantine ends I will have to do the soul numbing work of trying to build a life.

Maybe that will be easy (I think people will want so much to be out in the world, meeting new people, and going to parties, etc.), but maybe it won’t be.

Obviously I will have some time to work all of this out, so I know in my brain there is no point in worrying about it right now, but I’m still feeling the anxiety in my body. 

Obviously I’m over-thinking.

Obviously.

I’m so happy to have gotten an appointment and I’m so happy to be one small part of getting our entire society safe and back to normal, but what is normal going to be next? I think I am a little afraid that I have gotten used to how lonely this past year has been and so maybe I’ll just continue to carry that loneliness around. The thing is, that right before quarantine, my “normal” was pretty lonely. I don’t want to go back to that normal. I want a better one. I have no idea how to do that.

Ironically, I kind of had the proper skill set for staying home, I’m not sure if I still possess the skill set to go out in the world and meet people and make small talk and even god-forbid, try to date.

So yeah, I think that is why I am feeling this way this morning.

That being said, I imagine I will feel much much happier five hours from now when they are injecting me with that sweet, sweet mRNA vaccine! I will get this done today. I will make Dr. Fauci happy. I will do my part today. I’ll worry about the next part after this part.

Wish me luck!

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Failure and/or Success.

So I was only partially successful yesterday, but it’s not my fault!

Yesterday was Day One of this sort of new daily life routine I’ve been planning out for a little while now.

Here are the ways in which I failed and/or succeeded:

FAIL: I’d planned to wake up at 6am and go for a short run. I did not. It was 37 degrees yesterday at 6am and I do not have any cold weather running gear.

SUCCESS: I did still get up at 6am though. I used to get up at 6am all the time, but it has been getting harder and harder as quarantine has stretched on, so simply being conscious at an appointed time was nothing to sneeze at.

FAIL: After work, I did manage to go for a run, but after the run and after dinner, I have about 2 hours on the schedule that I am supposed to focus on fancy pants smart things like writing and reading, which huge parts of my life, but which have fallen away during quarantine. Well I did not do any fancy pants smart things because my right shoulder was KILLING ME. I frequently have shoulder problems (I think because I sleep on my side, but my ad hoc quarantine desk set up doesn’t help), so I spent my fancy pants smart guy time last night lying flat on the floor with a heating pad and when that didn’t work, I switched to a bag of frozen peas on my shoulder and that seemed to help for awhile.

SUCCESS: Not to bury the lede, but I DID manage to go run. Not a great run, but it was chilly and overcast after work and it was the kind of day when I normally would have just said, “Eh, it looks gross outside, I’ll go running tomorrow.” BUT I DID NOT DO THAT! I went anyway. I try to at least do a 5K whenever I go out and yesterday I did about 3.6 miles in 47 minutes, which is a TERRIBLE time for a 5K, but did I mention that I’m a trail runner??? So I go running where other people go hiking. I go running up the trails and through the woods where other people go mountain biking. I go running in places where other people hike out with their cameras to get pictures of all the nature. It helps that I live across the street from an open space preserve the size of the city of San Francisco.

FAILURE: I’m supposed to go to bed now at 10pm on the dot (because I have lost of trouble sleeping and so making myself get in bed always feels like admitting my day was a failure (Am I the only one who experiences this feeling?), but I didn’t go to bed until about 10:30 because while I was prostrate on the floor, I found the movie Motherless Brooklyn on TV and OGM! do I have a lot to say about that thing, but I will save it for another time. 

SUCCESS: Okay, just ONE thing about the Motherless Brooklyn movie … I successfully predicted the plot of the movies simply from watching the trailer once a year ago. I didn’t even feel like I’d figured anything out last night, because I figured out the movie a year ago, but still, being SO RIGHT is a kind of success of its own.

Last night I tracked down a Youtube morning yoga video and I replaced the morning run with the video and OMG! It kicked my ass, so maybe I will swap out the morning run with the morning yoga. Interestingly, it did not seem to aggravate my shoulder as I did it this morning. Perhaps that kind of stretching and such is actually what I should be doing to prevent myself from hurting myself while I sleep? This getting old stuff is some bullshit, BTW. Aging is not for the faint of heart.

I recognize how silly it is to be on Day Two of anything, but I do feel better than I have in quite awhile. It has taken a year, but I might finally be figuring out how to get this quarantine life to suck a little less.

Okay. That’s it for now. More tomorrow.

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It Has Been Awhile.

It has been awhile.

I’m kind of happy that no one even remembers this little blog anymore, much less reads it, because I need a little bit of private time to remember how to do this.

Let’s cut to the chase and talk about why we are here: we are coming up on a year of quarantine and since I live with just an obnoxious cat, I have essentially been alone for an entire year. I could have been a solo astronaut to Mars in less time than that.

As of late, my mental health has not been so great. Quarantine has given me a pretty nasty bit of low grade depressions and a whole lot of dumb work stress has given me some anxiety and I can’t say that I really developed any healthy coping strategies for all of that over the past year.

In the last couple of weeks I feel like I hit a wall pretty hard and so I started exploring ways to deal with that. We all know that good routine is supposed to be one of those things that can save us from ourselves, so I sat down with a spreadsheet and started working out what a day should look like. I needed to de-center my job in my day, to free myself of that feeling that all I do is wake, work, sleep, repeat. I also knew that I needed an actual schedule so that when I feel compelled to sit down on the couch and doom scroll Twitter for hours, I could point at a schedule and say, “Nope, that is not what I am supposed to be doing right now.”

In the coming days I’ll post the schedule and whatever other things I can come up with. Coming up with content for no one to read is a muscle and I have not used that one in awhile, but I built this time into my mornings, so I will have to start coming up with something!

For now though, the fact that this post — this set of works that I have written — even exists, is a sign that I am having a somewhat successful first day. Now we will just have to wait and see how every other single subsequent day goes.

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