Pandemic Journal Entry - 12/29/21

Here’s another entry of mine in UCONN’s Pandemic Journal Project.  

For those interested in participating in the project or reading what some may have written you can go here: 

https://pandemic-journaling-project.chip.uconn.edu

Q: How has the corona virus affected your life in the past week?  Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

With the advent of the Omicron variant, things seem to be sliding backwards a bit.  The company has increased its restrictions in response to Covid.  First requiring everyone to wear a mask even if they were sitting at their cubicle.  Previously, people who provided proof of vaccination could go without a mask, and everyone sitting at their cubicle could do so as well.  They’ve also announced, in keeping with our State’s requirements, that they were reviewing making vaccinations mandatory, or requiring weekly testing for those seeking exceptions.  This week, the company decided to have everyone who could work remotely to do so, with only a handful of people to come in to do things like print documents, receive mail, and ship out records to clients.  

Yesterday, one of my agents sent me a message that a location we visit frequently was once more requiring requests sent to them be sent to them electronically.  This was common during the beginning of the original lockdown in March of 2020.  It’s the first location to return to that more restrictive means of sending them requests so far since the Omicron hit the news.  In 2020 we were forced to close our Field Department and furlough our agents as a result of that shut down.  We reinstated a fifth of them at the start of December, and I was put in charge of them.  Getting this news puts the specter of shutting down the Field Department again due to Omicron.  A scary thought since my employment is now linked to that department.  I’m hoping that everything we’ve done and learned since then, including vaccinations and new medications, will provide enough of a buffer to keep it from getting that far again. 

Q: Some people have described a sense of “pandemic fatigue.”  Is this something you, or those around you, have talked about or experienced?  If so, what has that been like?

I’ve heard about pandemic fatigue on the news, and I understand what they mean.  I don’t know to what degree I’m feeling it, though.  

Overall, I think of a lot of what we’re doing now is what I would call the “new normal.”  Mask wearing for instance.  I’ve traveled to Japan often in the past, usually going once each year for several years in a row.  I would always notice how wearing a mask there was commonplace when people caught a cold or had hay fever, while in the U.S. no one would wear a mask unless they worked in a hospital or doctor’s office.  I think that will change now and even after Covid has been officially defeated wearing a mask when you’re sick will be more common.  I think that even when Covid is under control, we’ll have to worry about other diseases and pandemics coming and going.  I think Covid is the beginning of a new era where diseases will take advantage of our increased ability to travel all around the world to spread wherever people go.  We’ll just have to get used to it.  

There are a couple of areas where I find myself hoping for things to get back to the old normal.  One of them is travel.  As stated before, it was normal for me to have at least one overseas trip each year.  I’ve not been able to do that since 2019.  My trip in 2020, to Japan and South Korea, was postponed to October 2021, and again to August of 2020, because of travel restrictions imposed by the virus.  At this point, I think I’m going to finally cancel the flight entirely, get my refund, and wait until I really can go to rebook the trip.  Domestic travel has also been difficult.  I finally got to see my family this Thanksgiving in a couple of years when I flew to my parents’ house.  All of us vaccinated, my parents boosted.  It was the most memorable holiday since the virus became part of our daily lives.  

The other area is meeting people.  Specifically the possibility of meeting someone with romantic intentions.  Since Covid came around, the possibility of meeting someone new, going out on dates, has seemed impossible.  With mask wearing and social distancing, the subtext of the zeitgeist we live in has been, “If you don’t have someone already, you won’t get someone.”  It’s one of those things that is best done in person, where the restrictions to keep from getting sick seem to preclude any chance of meeting someone that could become someone special.  It’s sad.  It’s lonely.  It’s someone I want to stop or figure out a way around it. 

Pandemic Journal Entry for 12/25/21

I made another entry in UCONN’s Pandemic Journal Project.  I decided to share my entry on my own blog.

For those interested in participating in the project or reading what some may have written you can go here: 

https://pandemic-journaling-project.chip.uconn.edu

Question

How has the coronavirus pandemic affected your life in the past week?  Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.  

Reply

“Here we go again,” comes to mind when I think about the pandemic and my life in the past week.  The company has brought back strict distancing and mask-wearing protocols, to keep the office in compliance with the mandates issued by the state and county we work in.  I went online to find a place to get an anti-Covid vaccination shot.  This time I was looking for a booster to my first two shots.  But it wasn’t easy to get one right away.  I have an appointment at my pharmacy the day after New Years, about a week from now.  The news is filled with stories about rising infection rates, games being cancelled, events scaled back, and warnings about traveling to see friends and family.  

I am not as tense or nervous as I was last time, though.  The recent evidence is that being fully vaccinated keeps you from getting the worst of it, which I am.  And I am used to wearing my masks, two of them, one under the other, when I go out.  I still wash my hands often, using hand sanitizer in between.  I’m a veteran of this fight.  It is what it is.  I’ve decided to assume that a lot of the changes to my former life are now permanent.  There is no “Normal” to return to.  It is what it is. 

Question

Is there anything you feel you’ve gained as a result of the pandemic?  If so, talk about that.

Reply

I was listening to a news program on public radio this week about being happy as a form of self-care.  One of the experts being interviewed talked about how happiness wasn’t a zero-sum game.  That being happy doesn’t mean you’re taking happiness from someone else.  That being happy, even in a crisis, is something one needs to do to take care of oneself, so you can face the troubles and deal with them effectively.  That one shouldn’t feel guilty if you have reasons to be happy when others are going through the worst of it.  

It was a good reminder for me.  I have largely been unscathed.  I kept my job throughout, and even when I had a pay cut, my expenses were cut so much from working at home that I was able to pay off my car and put money away in the bank.  I now have more cash on hand that I’d had at any other time in my adult life.  And once my pay cuts were restored, and I got a raise, I decided to save even more my increasing my contributions to my savings and 401k.  

And it gave me the chance to start writing again.  In the months before the restrictions in response to the pandemic were announced, I had decided to give it up, out of frustration and a feeling that I wasn’t going anywhere with it.  Being cooped up at home gave me the time and opportunity to go back to it, make it the daily habit it had been before.  It helped me remember how much I enjoyed the process of crafting stories.  And it allowed me to remember that the important thing was to write and keep writing for its own sake.  Not for some dream of success, which I still have and try to nurture again.  But for what it does for me in the present, the here and now.  

And I’ve gained at least the desire to change my point of view.  In the early days of the lockdown I heard another news story on public radio about optimism.  Someone on the show quoted the mottos of the Optimists’ Society.  “I will be strong so nothing will disturb my Peace of Mind.  I will be as enthusiastic about the success of others as I am may own.  I will be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.”  Since hearing them, I’ve made a point of writing them out in my journal, every morning, as a way of reminding myself on how I want to be.  I add one I made up for myself, “I will create opportunities to make progress in life.”  

I am not as good as I should be at living up to this morning mantra.  But I having given up on reminding myself of the outlook I want too create for myself.  And as long as I keep doing that, I have a chance at gaining something more as a result.