If you’re anything like me, you relate to things in terms of music. I hear my current situation in the feelz behind the words or theme of a song. Or a song title speaks to the current moment. Before you think I’m gonna get too deep, I’ll lay out some lyrics:
“I don’t know what the world may want, but some words of wisdom could comfort us; think I’ll leave that up to someone wiser” –Cracker* (for post-GenX kids, this was a band, not a racial slur, lol)
So if you’re reading this to get some wisdom and poetic insight into our current madness, this prolly isn’t your kind of post.
It’s easy to just assume everyone thinks/feels/deals the same as I do. That’s a human weakness. And while I try not to fall into that trap, I sometimes find myself surprised–no, shocked–by something someone says that blows up my perceptions. In light of that, I don’t believe we all are experiencing the Covid pandemic exactly the same. One of the highlights to the current situation is that I learn something new about people in my (wide) circle every single day. I’ve enjoyed others’ stories so much that I thought I would keep sharing about mine.
Thom is newly managing a pretty large group of engineers and technicians in the IT field. Trying to help a number of Atlanta-based businesses to suddenly put everyone onto completely virtual workstations has kept him busy. It has become mostly work from home, but it’s challenging and the days are long (and then sometimes the day keeps texting well into bedtime). He’s so tired that he bailed out of a D&D online game with friends & Brandon two weeks in a row (but he’s back with the gang tonight). I’m keeping maybe one nostril above water right now. There are moments where I feel like I’m drowning under the pounding waves–each time I get my footing and feel like I can swim out, I get knocked over by a new wave. And each time I get knocked over, I get weaker and weaker.
Let me just say, I KNOW it could be so much worse. A million ways worse. We could be out of jobs. We could be working jobs in dangerous situations (like the angels that we call doctors, nurses, scientists, and all the others who are working to save as many lives as possible). We could be sick. We could be homeless. We could be utterly alone. There are so many ways it could be worse that I can’t count them.
I have been through stuff in the last year that less than a handful of people know 100% of. I’ve clawed out of some of that stuff to some extent. But then for the last three months of the year I worked two jobs, one that I gave ridiculous notice to, out of some sort of respect and kindness that I believed was mutual. The other was a new job in a new environment with a completely different field of work than I’ve ever done. I can only believe it was my grit that got me the job, as it certainly wasn’t because of experience specific to the job. (Side note: Be careful what you say you’re “never” going to do because whatever your youthful self says will surely set what your older self will, in fact, be doing.) So, I was never going to do accounting (insert yawn here). My advisor at UGA (and my grandpa Jolly) wanted me to go into actuarial science. I thought that sounded like the most boring thing on the planet. (Sorry Thom, we could’ve been money rich!) Funny thing is, I love what I’m doing. It fits in my desired job sweet spots: involved with decisions at a high level, small business, a wide-variety of tasks, and a schedule that is family-raising-friendly. Despite loving the job, it’s still overwhelming as I’m trying to dust off those accounting principles from 20+ years ago in business school.
So I got through the tornado of two jobs and the holidays and honestly, it allowed me to avoid dealing with the earlier life junk. Of course that’s never good but I believe you’ve sensed my mantra: will I never learn? Then I rolled into the post-Christmas and pre-winter break weirdly-fast time period. I wrote last week about that break and the cruise and my arrival on land with some sort of terrible virus. Well, what’s extra weird is the timing of all this for me personally. I didn’t feel like normal until over two weeks later, and then I had a beautiful weekend in Athens celebrating my talented daughter and her peers from across the state. I had a wonderful time with some of my band mom peeps plus a concert and a meal alongside family, friends, and a wonderful lady new to my life (who reminds me, in spirit, of my grandma–fun, loving, and wise). We came home and had a few days of trying to catch up on everything that fell behind during the break, my illness, and the trip. But then I’m trying to find cleaning supplies for work and there’s all this talk of people hoarding supplies for this outbreak. And then I go to a conference with government folks and there are lots of last minute cancellations. And all anyone can talk about is the virus. And Rome is also out of typical cleaning supplies. So I decide to bail on a scout banquet where I was getting an award, and I decide to go to Lizzy’s first night of the musical, Chicago. I planned to go Saturday, but things felt weird, so I followed my bizarre instincts (and Thom went along with my “craziness”). By the time we got to the school, word was already out that school was shutting down Monday “until further notice” and that we would only get the one night of the musical.
The musical was fantastic, but then people were being awkward afterwards (avoiding hugs and handshakes). Everyone was lamenting that it was their one and only show and talking about how the next (and turns out last) school day was going to be weird. Somewhere on that drive home I felt like I slid behind the veil of life. Ever since that night, I’ve had to ask myself, daily, Is this Real?!? If I ponder it too long, I start wondering if anything has been real since I came home from that cruise. Some days, it’s almost easy to imagine that I died that last feverish stormy night at sea. That means this is certainly not Heaven, so it must be Hell. Then I imagine that Hell would prolly be much worse, so maybe this is Hell on Earth. When my mind goes down this path, I either cry myself back up to ground level or I realize I’m sinking and start reminding myself of everything I have to be thankful for.
The trick about all this for me, and maybe others of you out there, is that right now I learn the hard way. I pull up to the bar of wallowing. Even though I know it’s worse for me, I purposely choose to enter the darkness and sit with Misery–she comforts me. Don’t get me wrong, I make the right choice sometimes; I go for a walk, put on music that’s light & bright, do some yoga stretches, work on a puzzle, rock on the porch at dusk, or do something else healthy.
Every day has seemed to carry more weird or scary news. Cobb schools were closed “until further notice” which seemed like something out of a dystopian novel. But most surrounding schools were closed for just two weeks, so it seemed like we had a timeline. We lamented several concerts and prom that would be missed in the last part of March, but it was (at first) unspoken as “see ya after spring break”. Then, nearly every day still, there was something cancelled and marked off our calendars. Things progressed to shelter-in-place for Cobb to then a more serious sounding SIP from Georgia. Every time someone talked about the time needed before this ends, in seemingly mere moments someone else would talk of longer. It went from two weeks (end of March) to mid-April, to end of April, to Mid-May. And now Brandon’s driver’s test for May 22nd is cancelled, so obviously the government thinks we’re still in the thick of things until the end of May. This is my 4th week of working/living exclusively at home–and we might need 7 more??? I mean, the logical part of me knows that Wuhan and other areas were shut down for about 11 weeks, but the ME part of me wants no part in those thoughts.
I’ve been throwing lots of mental tantrums lately. I don’t want Easter at home (I’ve ALWAYS been with my mom). I don’t want Lizzy’s 18th birthday, prom, concerts, celebrations, yearbook signing, honors night, baccalaureate, and graduation to all be unavoidably altered by this virus. I don’t want Brandon to miss concerts and celebrations, to delay his Eagle project, to miss MomoCon, to miss band leadership sessions, to have a strange 16th birthday, or to be delayed on his drivers’ test. I don’t want to go any longer without seeing my big ol’ crazy family. I don’t want to miss our west coast road trip. I don’t want to imagine summer without time in PTC, in Sky Valley, at the beach. I’m mentally like a child laying on the floor kicking her hands & feet, yelling, and turning red. Maybe, like that child, I just need a long bit of true rest–the kind of rest a toddler has after a busy day where they’re dead to the world and drooling. I am trying to take better care of myself, but there’s so much going on that it’s hard to do.
I haven’t been watching the news except very occasionally and briefly. It’s really weird not to have a traffic report every 10 minutes in Atlanta. I can’t absorb the numbers of this pandemic, as they seem to double every few days. It’s weird to hear that America is still/again (depending on your politics) #1…but that’s in number of cases and deaths among other countries of the world (including China, which seemed like a nightmare just seeing them on the news many weeks ago). And, yes, I know that you can often make any numbers work in your favor, but it’s surreal to hear it even if there are errors in the numbers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are positive stories on the news (as everyone’s grasping at anything that brings a little hope), but I can’t wade through the cold dark waters right now.
I have been on social media more, as it’s one of the few ways to connect with people right now. Funny enough, most of the political garbage I had been seeing was mostly gone (at least until this week). People were doing those surveys that are bad for your privacy but good for getting to know someone. Others were sharing resources–everything from “check out this free museum tour” to “here’s how to make your own disinfecting wipes” to “here are some homeschooling tips that might help”. Some were posting stories of kindness and moments of thankfulness. Some were posting silly jokes and memes and not really mean, sarcastic, or political ones (again, before this week). This week I’ve seen a turn on my feeds. There’s more anger at the government (both on under-reacting and over-reacting). There’s more political/agenda type discussions. There’s more worry as increasing numbers of people lose their jobs in some manner. There’s more stress as some people are starting to run low on certain supplies that are in low supply (toilet paper being the funny yet important American staple that tops the lottery-winning level of acquisition skill needed). There’s confusion as we try to discern why it’s acceptable to have grocery aisles open (when stores could go to pick-up or delivery orders only), yet the local parks are closed. There’s frustration when all the different levels of government seem to contradict one another–almost daily. There is disgust from someone no matter where you fall in all this. At first, we came together as people, much like right after 9/11. But it feels like that Americana fabric is starting to tear at itself once again. Heaping on the pile of unbelievable stuff, there seems to be a growing amount of rebellious talk, all in the name of hashtag freedom. Catchphrases are starting to circulate about “survival of the fittest” and “economy first” that really makes me wonder if I landed in Alice in Wonderland and took the red pill. I really hope we’re not jumping into Lord of the Flies. Heck, the literature analogies are making me wonder if I’m Thursday Next in a new Jasper Fforde book. 🙂
On a more positive note, there are silver linings on all these clouds. One, quite literally, is that the seemingly incessant rain stopped. Even though it brought the gosh-darn pollen, it also brought out the sunshine. If I sit on the porch with the sun shining in on my face, I can almost pretend I’m somewhere else in time. Another is that people feel more connected in a weird way. Technology (Zoom being the biggest impact) has been embraced in a way I’ve never seen before. I’m checking in on more people than I did before (and more people are checking on me). It’s refreshing, and it’s something I hope continues after all this. I do think I’ll appreciate a good many things more: traveling, time with family, eating out at a restaurant, walking through the park, and hugs. While there’s much more to unpack in all this, I’ll leave it right there. I’m looking forward to the day when I can give you all some warm hugs. ❤
Standing Strength 