Pandemic Journal Entry for 3-10-21

Question: How has the corona virus pandemic impacted my life in the past week.  Tell them about my experiences, feelings, and thoughts.  

My Reply

My life under Covid has continued much as it has before in the last week.  I’m still working from home most of the time.  I still do a company required health check using an app before I go to the office.  I still wear masks before going out to take my walks or go to the store.  I still give people distance whenever I encounter them in the market or on the street.  

But the news has been encouraging.  My parents got their second vaccination last week.  My best friend from college and his wife got their first.  The new vaccination from Johnson & Johnson was approved and is being shipped out.  The number of infections and hospitalizations has flattened and is going down.  

This week, I put in two requests for PTO (Paid Time Off) at work.  One was for two weeks in October.  A rescheduling of a trip to Japan that was cancelled last year because of the virus.  The other was a week in Washington, DC at the end of August, to go to a Science Fiction convention called WorldCon, which I couldn’t go to last year for the same reason.  I also told my nephew that I would try to honor the promise I made to him last year, to take pay for a baseball game at some stadium we hadn’t been to before, as well as his hotel room and meals, if he can get to the city on the dates he choses.  

I’m trying to control my anticipation.  I know there is still a ways to go before we get to whatever “normal” we can establish.  I believe that even after that normal time is reached, things will change.  We won’t go back to what we were before completely.  And there may be relapses.  

But, I am starting to feel hopeful that I can do some of the things I’ve given up for the last year.  Like travel.  See my family.  Things like that.  I can’t help but look forward to doing them.  I will do my best to keep a level head and not break the habits that have kept me healthy so far until we’re really in the clear.  Getting my own shot will be the next big signpost that the light at the end of the tunnel is real.  

Question: Some people are feeling intense feelings right now.  Is anything making you especially sad right now, or especially angry?  If so, what is on your mind? 

My Reply

This is a hard question because the answer is everything and nothing.  

During the pandemic, I’ve noticed an increasing tendency to react strongly to things happening.  Returning home from shopping and discovering that I forgot the item that prompted me to go in the first place has caused me to curse loudly at the waste of time.  Hearing something on the news, especially if it is about someone spreading obvious misinformation or conspiracy theories about things happening around us, has filled me with a rage and hatred toward that person or the individuals that support and propagate such nonsense.  Sometimes, during my walks, I’ll find myself imagining encountering such people, facing them and their nonsense directly, and doing violent things to shut them up once and for all.  

Once I noticed this trend in me, I started to do my best to stop and find out where it was coming from.  This overreaction.  This desire to have superpowers and use them to wipe “them” from the face of the planet.  I’ve asked myself what it was that was scaring me so much about them, because I think that ‘Fear’ is the flip side of ‘Anger,’ that both emotions are part of the flight of fight response of living creatures.  

The answer I’ve come closest to finding is that it relates to control.  Specifically, what if thoughts like that, and people like that, become the norm.  What if they take control and gain the ability to spread such lies unchecked, and suppress the truth to ensure that their ideas, and by extension the way of life and the shape of society they want, is the norm.  

I am not afraid of ideas, per se.  As long as they can be evaluated fairly and honestly.  But there are those that only care about getting what they want at any cost, and they’ll believe, or at least promote, any concept that gets them that.