Covid Future - is this too depressing?

[yourfriendclaire]

@molly I feel that! Pre-quar, I always felt like I had to deserve a quiet night in. I used to look forward to the week or so after returning home from a grueling tour, because I could properly veg out without feeling like I was wasting my life. Now it feels like a waste of life just to go out and do things for the sake of doing things. The idea of summer 2021 being some kind of orgy of pleasure is genuinely alienating to me. I want to have fun, but I can't imagine a fun-chasing scenario in which I'll feel completely satisfied, if that makes sense. Still, I'm trying to say yes to stuff. You never know!

@infopetal EXTREMELY normal to feel traumatized. <3 I was trying to explain this to my mother yesterday, who is disappointed that I didn't want to join a family trip abroad this month. I'm not ready! And it's not about being vaccinated or not being vaccinated, it's about surviving a fucked-up year and trying to process what happened in peace.

[meadows]

I find summer stressful in general... I don't feel great in heat and the relentless sun and activity makes me anxious! This summer feels like that but extra. It's pretty confusing- I have lots of things to do and things I've missed doing, but if I do more than one thing every day or so I feel overwhelmed. I'm also kind of sick of my home routine at this point. I'm all jangled!

[meadows]

that turtle genuinely lifted my spirits though <3

[marijke]

The cumulative trauma @infopetal... I am not a crying person and I sobbed on Sunday spontaneously. Some of it overwhelm from reentry and some of it feeling deep grief that we seemed to learn nothing, that maybe we'll never learn anything, and our raging attachment to freedom/choice/ownership will definitely do us in. I feel a lot like I'm on a sinking hamster wheel.

But that turtle, what a good boy.

[RCH]

It's so fucked up! We are looking at centuries of inhumanity and greed. Witnessing so many unheralded deaths reported as a numbers in a game, instead of national mourning and grieving. In my family we couldn't gather to mourn my aunt or see her while she had covid, and that's the average 2020 experience. If covid hadn't happened we'd still have plenty to grieve and rage over.

Feeling wounded and confused is a sign that we are human and our empathy works. I want our country to remember what's been taken from us--and what can be possible through imagination--and not return to the status quo.

@infopetal dancing turtle is a good man. But I hope we don't have to apologize to each other for speaking frankly about painful matters.

[yourfriendclaire]

There's something so sad about going back to normal because it felt for a second there that the world might change, maybe even for the better. When will we ever have such an opportunity again?

(I guess using the word "opportunity" is grim, considering the cuspy moments of last year were brought about by so much pre-existing and new suffering, but you know what I mean: the pandemic made things visible in a way that I really hoped would make the status-quo untenable moving forward).

[infopetal]

I am trying to feel empathy and compassion for the people that have seemingly repressed the past 15 months, but it's hard. not only is it feeling like structural change is elusive but even that collective sense of humanity and care is rapidly deteriorating. here in NYC I've seen so much cruel behavior recently, stuff like someone verbally berating volunteers at our local community-run composting site that popped up during the pandemic because their garden is not visually appealing enough. I don't know that anyone here would be familiar with the NYC mayoral race but that has also been a huge downer as the candidate I was most aligned with policy-wise totally bungled her campaign in its final stretch and now we have a high chance of having a retired cop who probably lives in New Jersey (Eric Adams) or Andrew Yang for mayor. BLECH!

but I am finding little joys in picking up regular lap swimming again and continuing to learn mushroom identification. anybody here on iNaturalist? add me as your friend!

[yourfriendclaire]

re: people being hectic and cruel to one another out in the world right now! It's so real. I've witnessed so much chaotic energy recently in LA. Everything from folks wilding out in line at the coffee shop to ceaseless street racing and donut-tearing on residential streets. There's so much misplaced rage and big feelings are percolating everywhere. The flipside is that we're also, I think, experiencing a blessed window of vulnerability in public space. The line between stranger and friend is unpredictable and porous. You talk to someone on the street for one minute and suddenly you feel like crying? A couple weeks ago @joni and I were walking home and came across a loose dog. Another couple across the street had been looking at it too, and were like "we don't know if he's lost, do you know him?" And we were like, "no," and then the dog trucked up the street like he really knew where he was going, and we watched him walk away, and shrugged, and then the other couple said to us, "well, nice getting to know you." Nice getting to know you?? Last week at a masked event someone mistook us for somebody else, and then once they recognized their error they immediately introduced *themselves* to us. Like, "you're not my friend, but do you want to be?" I really love it.

[richjensen]

That high-pitched sound you heard when you turned the color knob all the way up.

[yourfriendclaire]

Hi Rich!

[richjensen]

Hi Claire! Hi e'r'body! Just thinking about sitting too long and too close to the cathode ray tubes in the previous century. I got cooked. We all got cooked.

The institutions are melting along with the glaciers. The distance between peak kindness and peak cruelty is exploding in astronomical intensity. I can be intimidated but not depressed because I'm old enough to have accepted death.

I saw some Left theorists the other day speaking on how for most of a century they had imagined massive social transformation as a consequence if only the system were brought to a standstill through a strike or another sort of breakdown. These particular theorists mused that never in modern history had there been a global stoppage of the sort that every nation on the planet endured last year. And viola! Apparently it has provoked no radical social transformation or structural discontinuity. Back to more of the same, though maybe a bit faster with peaks of greater amplitude. And that whining sound.

It's going to be too hot to live on much of the planet soon. Billions of refugees will be moving north. I hope kindness wins. It still could.

[infopetal]

well, covid got me. feeling very sad to have made my world so small and tried SO hard to avoid it, and all for naught.

[yourfriendclaire]

ohhh nooooooo sending virtual healing broth, hand-knitted socks and large DVD collection <3

You protected a lot of other people by making your world small, so it's not all for naught!! Care is never for naught, no matter what this hostile reality tries to have us believe

How's it treating you?

[infopetal]

thank you for the sweet words, @yourfriendclaire. <3 I do take some comfort in that I think the odds I could have passed it on are super small. this virus ends here! right now it feels like a particularly rough strep throat/sinus infection combo.

[m o l l y]

I have covid again. Almost one year to the day after the first case. I am on spring break and the sun is shining and I am rapunzel in a flat attic with weird bangs.

[yourfriendclaire]

Oh geez oh no @m o l l y!

Do you feel okay? How are you passing the time? Is it time for a Trek rewatch? Are you sewing? Paint us a word picture so that we may be with you in your room of repose.

This exact moment: the moment at which the *most* people I know have COVID since the very beginning! I think the active count right now is like six friends. It's really going around

[m o l l y]

I'm tempted to rewatch Trek. I just fear/fantasize that it will result in an instagram account devoted to screenshots of their outfits.

More on my room of repose later (maybe).

[infopetal]

noooo! I am wishing you a speedy recovery, @m o l l y.

in the end, I was in rough shape for about 5 days, and then just finished the additional 5 days of isolation. not even sure I want to go back out into the world in its current state, real collapse of society vibes this week…

[m o l l y]

Glad you are feeling better @infopetal. I am amazed that you made it this far without getting it! Well done.
I bought tickets this week to fly to the most west this summer and feel like at least I won't have to worry (as much) about covid then! See you then, Cali buds!

[m o l l y]

noooo! I am wishing you a speedy recovery, @m o l l y.

in the end, I was in rough shape for about 5 days, and then just finished the additional 5 days of isolation. not even sure I want to go back out into the world in its current state, real collapse of society vibes this week…

Update: Screenshots of Netflix are black now? That throws a real wrench in my Trek fantasy sewing screenshots folder. Help!

[yourfriendclaire]

Welp, it finally came for me too. Just tested posi this morning. Feeling a weird combination of gripping fear and kinda…relief? At the unknowable becoming known. So far sore throat, cough, low fever.

[m o l l y]

Yelp. It's got the board! I'm sorry to hear this news. Take care, friend.

[infopetal]

noooo!! I'm so sorry, @yourfriendclaire. for us holdouts, it's so trippy when our time is finally up. I've cycled through years worth of emotions in the past 3 weeks.

practically speaking, here's what got me through my bout:
https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/mucin ... 79-product
admittedly I love medicinal flavor, but I really looked forward to my little elderberry shot every 4 hours.

[yourfriendclaire]

Thanks bud. I've managed to avoid anything but Tylenol in the day to keep the fever at bay and NyQuil at night—but I too love Elderberry flaveurs, so noted. Might dispatch my @joni to CVS. Right now I'm congratulating myself for being a soup hoarder. Today for lunch I had a bowl of turbo green health soup I made and froze from an overabundance of CSA box dandelion greens back in early 2020. In the back of my mind I was like, "if I ever get COVID I'll have this," and now I have! Thanks Past Me!

[richjensen]

OMG. The call is coming from inside the house. So sorry for the suffering you are suffering. Trying to believe I can keep bobbing and weaving.