It’s been a much better day today.
I slept well last night, accomplished a lot at “work” (and my co-worker, Phoenix the cat, never left my side), and made a delicious curry for dinner. No particular stressors.
Thanks to all my loving and supportive friends – you all are awesome, and had my back when I needed it. Love you all.
One day at a time….that’s the way it’s going to have to be.
I hit a serious low point yesterday. The broadly applicable stress of this whole international pandemic situation knocked me the hell down. Sobbing, anxious, breakdown for an hour or two down. I’m not sure I’m really better yet, but by evening, I was functional enough to watch an episode of “Tiger King”, but…nonetheless, here I am, up before 5:30am and on my work computer sending out the morning emails because I couldn’t sleep past four, which is becoming the norm.
It’s really a mix of things that are adding up to this perfect storm of mental and emotional instability. The whole “state of things”, three weeks or so into the “social distancing” era, feels like it’s breaking down out there, which isn’t encouraging at all.
From inside the family compound, it doesn’t look too bad, really. I can push my documents around from the home office, the kids can deal with school online, and evenings are filled with virtual dance classes via videoconference; the spouse taught two of hers from the kitchen in front of the webcam last night. It’s amazing what a fat internet pipe will get you.
However, my role as “the one who goes out and does the shopping”, lets me see more of the outside world. Yesterday in the early afternoon, I took a quick jaunt down to the office to retrieve a few things that would make long-term telework more effective (and to grab the office plants that hadn’t been watered in a week), and combined that with a trip to the grocery store to grab a couple of things we needed, because I want to make as few trips out as possible.
Yesterday, the general aura of politeness and consideration that I described last week appeared to be crumbling. Out in public, some people are starting to ignore the sensible practices; greeting friends with hugs in public, disregarding distancing signage, unnecessarily fondling merchandise, being rude to store staff about empty paper product shelves, and, most oddly, wearing masks, but not covering their nose with it, or pulling the mask down whenever they’re talking to someone (!). Others are taking it to the other extreme, wearing what are effectively haz-mat suits and aggressively blocking aisles with their shopping cart while still hoarding all kinds of staples.
Seeing this kind of behavior, combined with the daily unhelpful bullshit being peddled by the White House, is really straining my faith in humanity, at least the humanity that lives here in the United States mid-Atlantic region. People aren’t behaving with the proper levels of seriousness or responsibility, which just means this is all going to be worse than it should be, and is going to last a hell of a lot longer.
That, in addition to the extra friction of five people stuck in teh house, isn’t exactly ideal for my mental health. Also not helping me is that I’ve been doing some mental math, and realized that I’m pretty much right at the same point in life my dad was when I lost him. I know that I’m *not* in the same state that he was at the time, but with all this extra metaphysical weight I’m carrying, I’m concerned that I’m only a couple of bad steps away from getting there, and I don’t like that feeling.
I’m trying to cope the best I can. I do my work, I try to find distractions, and keep telling myself that it’s not forever, even if the evidence I’m seeing out in the world isn’t completely supporting that thesis.
Here’s to hoping it works.
We’re all, of course, in the same place as we have been, because that’s the way it is. Working from home has become habit now, and it’s not terrible; as I described earlier this week, I have a routine.
I haven’t really interacted with anyone beyond the immediate fam beyond phone or email, but we’re keeping each other occupied and usually entertained (or at least consoled). The work itself is slightly more bullshit than usual, but it’s a living, so to speak. I won’t bore the world (or out anyone) by describing office politics further.
Face it, you’re not interested anyway.
Things continue as they are, and likely will do for some time. Our (perfectly reasonable) bumroll stash should hold out a few more days, hopefully longer than it takes to get some back on the shelves and convince the idiots that they don’t need enough to build a three storey McMansion that’ll disintegrate come the first rain.
As for weekend plans….what do you think?
In any case, tunes. Mostly actual new discoveries for me, though #8 was, for whatever reason, a staple of radio for a while in college, and I owned the record #10 comes from on cassette, though I donated it last summer while clearing out the cruft. Still a good record:
This business is starting to become routine now, which I guess is good, because I’m pretty sure we’re in this for the long-term, at least through June, if I’m reading the tea leaves of state government and the scant information coming out of the office.
I’ve been working from home for the last week (even if I’m considered “essential” because my organization supports the national manufacturing base and is driving the economy forward or something, to paraphrase the Big Boss™’s all-hands briefing yesterday), which is not awful, even with all the bodies stuffed into this small house. I might go into the office for a few hours later this week to water the plants and grab a few things, but I’m kind of okay with saving the gas. I push electronic documents and sit on conference calls just as well from here as anywhere else.
As I said, though, it’s kind of become routine. Wanna know what my day looks like? Here’s a basic rundown:
I wake up at 6am, pop on the work machine, check the schedule and deal with any pressing emails or other concerns, and throw my own requests for the same back at the rest of the organization over a cup of coffee. After that, I step away, take a shower and get dressed (I joke, but yes, I put on pants…) by which time the regular home-office (aka the bedroom) is free of sleeping spouses. From there, I spin bullshit, sit conference calls and such until lunchtime, where I go out to the kitchen and grab a quick bite; then more of the same until my eight hours or so are up (around 230 or 3pm), at which time I put the work away. If there are errands to run (grocery, beer run, prescriptions, whatever), I take a quick drive out to do, and if the weather’s nice like on the weekend, I maybe hit the park to hike my 5k route in the back country (where nobody else bothers going – the front area’s a little too crowded with people not following proper pandemic protocol); all while practicing social distancing and completing daily Pokemon Go/HP Wizards Unite tasks. I then come home, make some dinner, then open up a beer and watch a mindless movie, Masked Singer with the kid, or play an hour or two of Witcher 3, then settle in around 9 or 10, read myself to sleep, then start over again in the morning.
This is my life. In between time, I do scan the headlines and check social media to see what the world, and the lives of my friends, look like, but I’m doing my best to maintain proper social distance from the news as well, as it is better for my mental health. I also pet cats; Phoenix and Lebowski take turns being my co-worker throughout the day.
My life probably looks pretty much the same as yours. This is the way it is now. And will be for a while. Might as well get used to it.
After being in “social distancing” mode for two weeks or so now, it’s weird that all this is starting to feel, well…if not normal, then at least kind of routine. We’re starting to develop patterns and habits, and for someone like me with obsessive/compulsive tendencies, regularity is comforting on a base, lizard-brain level (though that could also be the Xanax I’m taking a little more regularly). Not that my pattern is always healthy; nearly everyone I know is drinking way more than is necessarily good for us long-term, but while I think this is going to go on longer than a lot of people expects (personally, I expect to be an Artist-in-Residence* until at least the end of May), it’s not going to be forever.
When I do venture out, people are, for the most part, participating in the current rules of the social contract, which is encouraging. People appear to be hoarding less at the grocery store and maintaining their bubbles of space, and are generally kind of pleasant and making the best of it. Wednesday afternoon I popped out to Castleburg to pick up my weekly supply (#supportyourlocal, folks), my friend the brewmaster was in much better spirits than when I saw him last week; he’s got his online ordering system up and running, and it’s showing promise; enough to spark some cautious optimism that we’ll all survive this. It was very nice to see.
The kids, now that all three of them have officially gone online-only or whatever for the rest of the school year, are developing a routine (in spite of the struggle to get them out of bed), and experiencing the same sort of joy that I am with conference calls and online collaboration tools, which is kind of entertaining to watch. My lovely spouse has, I think, largely gotten through the frustration of having so many more bodies in “her” space all the time, though is currently dealing with more serious than usual allergies; if she accompanies me on errands to get out of the house for a change of scenery, she tends to stay in the car, for fear of her cough (productive, not dry) will have her mistaken for Patient Zero™ and causing tension or some sort of scene.
Part of what’s got me feeling a little better, I think, is making a conscious effort to keep my distance from the news. I get my headlines from NPR on the morning commute, and scan a few other outlets daily, but other than that, I just step away. I’ve taken to audiobooks or the local independent music radio station or Spotify in the car, and it’s making me feel better. I’m well aware the executive branch is making a hash of it and sending the wrong messages (see the last post of mine – those anger-sparking talking points have only increased), though I think the Senate relief bill, should it get through the House (and I expect it will – I like imagine Liz Warren backing McConnell into a corner and browbeating him into submission -all while maintaining proper social distance – to get those controls on business aid and those unemployment insurance concessions included), is going to help to temper a lot of folks’ anxiety at least a little bit.
That’s the other thing that’s starting to make me feel a little less despondent; it feels like this pandemic, by showing how unprepared we were to deal with it, is going to usher in some serious re-conceptualizing of the role of government in people’s lives, and it has the potential to lead to some serious structural change. I’m not sure what it’s going to look like in the end, but it’s already looking like people are willing to consider something other than the unfettered free-market capitalism that’s been the norm since the Reagan era. Ideas like UBI and serious student loan forgiveness are being talked about as more than just leftist dreams today. People are beginning to realize that the commercial sector isn’t looking out for anybody but it’s shareholders, and that it takes us all coming together under the auspices of government looking out for the good of society at large to weather crises like this one. I’m starting to get visions of the New Deal rather than Hoovervilles, and I hope those feelings continue.
Nothing planned for the weekend, other than sheltering in place (what else are we going to do). Might do a short live-stream at some point (if interested, keep an eye on social media), and have been considering the possibilities of the gigantic half pork loin I’ve had defrosting for a couple of days.
Anyway – tunes. Lots and lots of power pop here, though it kicks off with a track from my favorite Patty Griffin record (which swung way more into the electric pop realm than her other, also excellent, folky stuff), another favorite, if obscure, tune in there at #11, and refreshingly, at #9, a Knack song that isn’t “My Sharona.”
I swear, if I hear another person thinking they are the next musical comedy genius by coming up with a parody titled “My Corona” and sincerly believing they are the only one…ugh.
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* – Doesn’t that sound much more pleasant than “Under Quarantine”? I won’t take credit for it (it’s just a meme going around in my musician/artist circles online), but that’s not going to stop me from using it.
The circumstances we’re living in right now, and will likely be doing for at least the next couple of months? Sure, they suck. But by doing the social distancing and such, we’re saving lives by making sure that important medical resources (hospital beds, ventilators, etc) are available to the people who’ll need them by slowing down the inevitable spread so the world’s health care infrastructure isn’t overwhelmed. It’s taking care of Matthew 25:40’s “least of these”, which seems like exactly the kind of thing conservatives in government would understand and be really into.
You’d think so, but you’d be wrong.
Last night, the President essentially gave an ultimatum to a force of nature, giving the virus two weeks to get out of the way, and saying that the economy and the markets shouldn’t suffer in the face of efforts to preserve lives. It’s ugly, uninformed, and inappropriate.
Then The Federalist goes ahead and says hold my beer (emphasis mine):
The extreme reactionary measures to the pandemic focus only on the benefits of those actions, entirely ignoring the costs. And the costs will likely be massive.
Of course, it sounds very callous to talk about considering the costs. It seems harsh to ask whether the nation might be better off letting a few hundred thousand people die. Probably for that reason, few have been willing to do so publicly thus far. Yet honestly facing reality is not callous, and refusing even to consider whether the present response constitutes an even greater evil than the one it intends to mitigate would be cowardly.
First, consider the massive sacrifice of life Americans are making in their social distancing campaign. True, nearly all are not literally dying, but they are giving up a good deal of what makes life worth living — work, classes, travel, hugs, time with friends, conferences, quiet nights out, and so forth. Probably almost everyone would be willing to live a somewhat shorter normal life rather than a somewhat longer life under current conditions. The abandonment of normalcy, therefore, is in many ways equivalent to shortening the lives of the entire nation.
The article goes on to invoke Benjamin Franklin’s wisdom about giving up “essential liberty” for “a little temporary safety,” which is insulting, as the same people have been suggesting the limitations of rights and freedoms in the interest of defeating terrorism or whatever for the last 20 years.
The message here is that the economy, markets, and the wealthy are the ones that matter (see also: the current conflict over the stimulus/relief bill in Congress, and the fact that the government could find a trillion dollars lying around to bail out Wall Street, but can’t find the same amount to give Americans health care), and people* who are struggling in the face of this; losing jobs, tightening household budgets, etc, are acceptable losses in the face of economists’ worries and the inconvenience of not being able to go out to some exclusive supper club for cocktails.
This is our world right now, folks. If you’re not offended, you’re not paying attention.
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* – When I say people, I’m talking about actual, breathing, born people. It’s not stopping states to use this crisis from block legal abortion to rile up the base, because “protecting the unborn” is the kind of empathy a certain segment of society can engage in without it actually affecting their lives in any meaningful way.
My last couple of posts read as pretty dire, don’t they? It kind of makes sense; these are dire times.
I did indeed get out in the woods a couple of times since the last post; a nice hike along the river, and a refreshing 10 mile bike ride on Friday afternoon. Thursday’s hike was a bit eye-opening, at least as I entered the park to pass kids climbing and drooling all over playground equipment while their parents stood idly by, ignoring the “this amenity is closed because we can’t possibly sanitize it effectively, please stay off” signs posted prominently anywhere.
Ugh.
Beyond the bike ride though, I was kind of wrecked a lot of the weekend. I tried to muddle through; doing laundry, watching big, dumb, loud movies (The Fast and Furious series is wonderful for that), and tring to hold off the occasional sobbing brought on by this anxiety and the pressure of being largely stuck in the house. Reading the news didn’t really help, and neither did finding out a good friend on the West Coast managed to get infected with this thing (I’m not worried about him; he’s low-risk and otherwise healthy), which makes this business personal.
The one highlight was my online show on Saturday afternoon; earlier in the day, I was kind of struggling with the idea of doing it – as I said, I wasn’t feeling great. Still, I put it on the schedule (and then it made it to other schedules) and had a bunch of people respond and tell me they were looking forward to it, so I did it. I managed to fine-tune the sound on the streaming setup (at least for FB Live, which seemed easiest to pull off in short order), and played for about an hour an a half in front of the webcam in the back room, to an average audience of 30 folks or so, and and the video’s had over 250 views at this point. People (and not just people who know me) seemed to enjoy it, and I even made a few bucks from the tip jar. I figure I’ll do it again.
Beyond that, though, I’m kind of a wreck emotionally and mentally (and I know I’m not alone). Weird, troubling dreams; of long-dead relatives and authority figures from my past telling me I was living my life entirely wrong; and another last night where I kept trying to catch up with my dad, but we kept missing each other.
That last bit; that’s the real kicker. Today is my dad’s birthday, and for whatever reason, this is the hardest time of the year for me to work through, even though he’s been gone over 25 years; longer than I had him in my life at this point…but…yeah. The last couple of years I’ve had out-of-town con gigs with the band at this time, which serve both as a welcome distraction to get me out of my own head, and, strangely enough, as a way of feeling closer to him, because we bonded over music and sci-fi, and I think he’d really have enjoyed the kind of stuff I have the privilege of doing as part of that community; and it’s a community I’d have loved to share with him, but it wasn’t part of my life then. Other than playing some songs in front of my laptop Saturday afternoon, I didn’t have that this year. Knowing I made some people’s afternoon a little more interesting felt good, but it’s not the same as having a live audience to respond to.
As for the week ahead: as of today, I’m still being allowed to come in to the office in my otherwise empty building, so there’s something of a routine, which helps a bit. Otherwise, there’s lots of rain in the forecast, so I don’t think I’ll really be getting out in the woods much, which sucks. Not that I have much of a plan otherwise, but I think I’m going to try and cook some decent meals, keep watching dumb movies and not the news, try to support another local brewery or two, and listen to and comment on a rough cut of a friend’s album he sent me.
We’re all doing the best we can; I know. I just hope it’s enough, because I think this week’s going to be really hard.
If you read my last post, you know where my head’s at with this whole business. I won’t lie; I had a couple of meltdowns this week. I’m a creature of habit, and all these necessary changes to how we’ve got to live life for the next little while is really wearing on me. Seriously. As disorganized and mismanaged work environment is, and how much stress it gives me, at least I can still get up and come in to my empty building and work from my office…for now. Never mind that that work is all over the place (on a status call Wednesday, my boss acknowledged, to the gathered project heads in our PMO, that I’m essentially working two jobs), just the act of getting up and driving in and spending eight hours (this week, anyway, last week was a bit more) at my desk answering emails and filling out forms and such and then leaving is at least something regular for me to hang my fraying sanity on.
As I write this in fits and starts on Thursday, I’m fretting about a conference call with a particularly frustrating and aggressively obstinate customer who won’t take “Please be patient, let us make sure this new stuff works before you get to use it” for an answer, let alone “No”, that I have to do today. It sucks, certainly, but at least it’s something that’s approaching “normal.”
I have gotten out into the woods a little bit this week; hiking at this point, but Friday afternoon’s weather looks like it might be conducive to biking; which I could really use, to be frank – it does reduce stress levels, and I’m carrying a few more pounds than I’d like due to unpredictable weather and, honestly, because I’ve been drinking away my feelings a bit more than usual.
That last bit is a problem that could likely solve itself; I really worry that a lot of my favorite haunts and music venues, small businesses all, might not survive this.
Honestly, who the hell knows about the weekend…it’ll be what it’ll be. We’re hitting particular place on the calendar that hits me hard pretty much every year; I was kind of counting on a con gig this weekend to provide a welcome distraction, but…yeah. I did some live stream testing earlier this week, and I just might do a “testing the waters” online show if I can muster up the enthusiasm.
Anyway, tunes: Lots of melodic power pop this week, with some chanteuse action sprinkled in for flavor. Normally this would hit me in my happy place, but to be honest, I’m having a hard time finding it:
Given that so many of us who are musicians are finding ourselves without places to play in this age of social distancing and pandemics and all, after some sort of clandestine testing earlier this week, I shall be doing my own streaming show on Saturday afternoon at 4pm on Facebook Live:
I’m calling it Chuck Parker’s Happy Hour Streaming Matinee, because I’m doing it during traditional Happy Hour/Matinee times, and I’ll probably be drinking, because why the heck not.
I expect I’ll have a tip jar via PayPal if you care to toss a coin to your filker, but it’s really about giving us something to look at during this time of CORVID-19 and social distancing and all that. My record, World’s Okayest…, is currently out there for free (or name your price) on bandcamp for the duration of this pandemic business, though I’d prefer if you spend the money you’d toss toward my record on somebody who depends on this for their livelihood; you know, “pay it forward” and all that.
In any case, I’ll be playing for at least an hour on Saturday afternoon here in front of my laptop camera in my spare room. If you feel like joining me, I’d love to have you!
Coping with the current General State of Things™ certainly isn’t made easier when you have a degree in history, and not just because it lets you pervert Santayana for effect.
Beyond the whole “plaugues of the xx20s” thing that’s going around the internets, the stock market fluctuating wildly then tanking (which is mostly due to panic, but our entire financial system really does hinge on the superstitious nature of a few twitchy elites), and the usual senior Executive branch incompetence (stuff I encounter directly, but especially I read about in the news), it’s hard to feel confident about where we’re going as a civilization, and more specifically a nation.
I’ve kind of given up getting excited about blips of goodness I see; cynicism and low expectations are, frankly, easier. I’ve watched over the past year or so a wildly diverse, progressive, and effective crop of Democratic Presidential candidates get whittled down to a couple of sunsetting white guys to run against another sunsetting white guy, only more inept and fascist. I visit the grocery store to find empty shelves (and not *just* toilet paper, but damned near everything) and people (nearly, most of the time) getting into physical confrontations over bottles of hand sanitizer. I’m watching the Government, who claims they can’t possibly afford to set up a functional national healthcare solution toss $1.5 BILLION dollars (a number of a kind with what it would cost to get every American’s basic health care needs covered) at the financial industry last week because it panicked. I see conservative polticians and evangelical religious groups ignoring good advice about “flattening the curve” so our rickety healthcare system might have a chance at keeping pace with the needs of the most vulnerable Americans, threatening to “lick the floors” to own the libs rather than doing the smart thing.
I’m struggling to cope with it all. Right now there’s so much uncertainty (I can work from my office right now, but who knows when they’re going to kick me out to work from home? Who knows when my kids will get to go back to school?), as well as uncomfortable parallels from history. I think it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better, and right now, at least at the moment, I’m finding it hard to see much good in the world, no matter how much better I have it than most people.
One of the first headlines I read this morning was about how apparently the White House has finally, maybe started to take this business seriously instead of whatever he’s been doing, which has mostly been mucking around with appearances and denying there’s anything wrong. These couple of execerpts really hit me in my inner history major:
“Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin drew a parallel from today to the Great Depression in the early 1930s, when President Herbert Hoover was so lacking in leadership and unwilling to commit federal aid to help those suffering that it fell to governors to protect their citizens. That was when a New York governor named Franklin D. Roosevelt rose to national prominence by talking about the government’s responsibility to lift up society and launched the first public works programs for unemployed citizens. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932…”
“…Why is it that most of the presidents we remember the best had moments of crisis, whether it’s George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt? It’s because they were able to communicate to the people what the crisis was, to make the people feel inspired to be part of working it out through empathy, taking responsibility and setting an example, and then to mobilize every resource in the country.”
It’s looking awfully familiar, and it’s not exactly comforting. Worse, even if we do manage to overcome the advantages of incumbency and vote out the current administration in November, it’s likely to be too little, too late; I don’t dislike either of the guys still in the race, though I’m relatively sure we’ve already eliminated our best chance at another FDR, no matter how many of her plans are incorporated into the eventual party platform; I just don’t think either of them have the charisma, drive, or ovaries.
Well, we’ll just manage the best we can day to day. We might even come out okay on the other side of this. But right now, at this moment, I’m struggling to find the upside.
