Politics, Etc.

Lockdown Day 24: Devs, Plagues, and Capitalism

April 9, 2020April 9, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

The future and the past, told to us in stories since we were children, have merged here and now, in the present. The past: tales of plagues and great suffering, great depressions. The future: artificial intelligence taking away jobs, the wealthy only further consolidating their wealth, while everyone else aggressively treads water and slowly–or quickly–sinks.

A “great depression” hit me yesterday–and not an economic one. One far greater than the typical extisentialist dread. Because meaninglessness doesn’t hold a candle to the curse of humanity: our survivalist and tribe mentality, rooted in our biology, traps us in a constant state of moving backwards when we should be moving forward. Often it’s like we’re on a train, looking out the window, when another passes quickly the other way, and it seems like we’re moving forwards, but actually we’re still drifting to a stop, or at standstill.

Living with a mind that likes to solve problems by putting together different variations of multiple ideas or experiences, the depression comes when I acknowledge that solving for humanity’s achilles heel is much like trying to divide zero by zero. Don’t get me wrong–there are many beautiful, caring individuals who are today risking their lives to help others. There are beautiful parts to humanity as well. But as far as the general sense of progress towards a greater existence, it simply feels as if we’re constantly on that train, moving backwards without noticing.

It may not behoove me in my mental state to watch near-term speculative science fiction, but my husband’s childlike enthusiasm for a Fx series called Devs (and his semi-joking threat to part ways with me if I don’t watch it) led me to watching episode one, and by the end, I was hooked. Its writing is clumsy at times–poignant points are made a bit too perfunctory–but the overall concept is well worth exploring. Inspired by the double slit experiment, the show explores the dark side of quantum mechanics, in giving humans the power to recreate the past and see into the future. It primarily asks us to question the absoluteness of free will, and it seems the physics of it are close enough to possibly possible that it lets ones imagination run free–and/or not free at all (as all our actions and thoughts are on a “tram line,” as the lead character so brilliantly played by Nick Offerman (yes, that Nick Offerman) tells us.) And the show itself is smartly set sometime between now and the next few years, with a might-as-well-be present day San Francisco as its backdrop. It could certainly be present time, with the quantum mechanics work occurring in a lab somewhere on some tech campus, without anyone knowing what was being discovered that could overnight throw our society and way of existing on its head.

Much like Coronavirus has.

There will always be unavoidable threats that face us. A giant meteor could veer a little too close to our solar system and continue its way into our atmosphere and land at such force that civilization is virtually wiped out. An alien species could attack us. The sun could (will) eventually die, as every star does. We derive comfort from progress, our great human “innovation,” yet if there is anything this crisis has–should tech us–it is that we are practically defenseless against these greater threats. The greater the threat, the more incogitable the threat. Instead of moving forward, we’re buried, suffocated, by fake news and conspiracy theorists who vehemently hate science and seek to destroy true progress for the sake of their own comfort thinking they know everything because they read an article somewhere that told them so.

I have little faith in society and thus not the most faith in democracy. I’m not sure the ideal way of managing a massive collective of people, but democracy (and especially whatever version of it we have in America that isn’t actually democracy at all), is fundamentally flawed, as it trusts that the people in a society actually know what’s best for them. It also, at least in the case of American democracy, enables the wealthy to manipulate and gain influence quickly.

Yesterday, Bernie dropped out. I’m not sure his way would, long-term, solve everything. But certainly a system which focuses on making sure every one of its citizens has access to healthcare and a high education is a start. People don’t want to believe that, though, because they’re afraid of being forced to do anything, even if it is in their best interest.

In the conversations and debates I have with friends who are centrists, I find a battle against the belief that progress is good. I sit here, locked in my 800 square foot apartment, wondering why we blindly trust that progress is a good thing. It can be. Certainly vaccines have saved many from horrible illness and death. Our electric cars will reduce emissions and at least minimally slow climate change. But much “progress” is actually regress. Our advancements… do not always advance us.

Even for the positive progress and innovation in the world, why must this type of progress only come from the desire to be wealthy and/or powerful?

I like nice things. I do. I enjoy gourmet meals and wearing overpriced jeans that fit just right and traveling the world in relative comfort. I also like the security that comes with money. No, not money–but wealth. Not “super wealth,” but enough wealth to not have to worry. Wealth that grows enough that you don’t have to think about it wealth. I’m certainly privileged to even imagine a world where that is possible, and lucky to have fallen into a career that, unlike all the things I thought I’d be doing when I was in college, actually pays a livable wage and then some. But, then I wonder, is this world where striving for security–striving for not having to worry about being unable to pay healthcare bills and put a roof over my family’s heads–is a world that shows us any progress at all.

Or are we all really just shifting slowly backwards on that train, lost in the great illusion of progress as “pro?”

Politics, Etc.

Today is the Day I Grew Up.

April 3, 2020April 3, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

It seems with every passing year, there are a few stretches of 24 hours where I mutter that to myself under my breath, or allow its veribage float and flutter maniacally in my mind for a brief while, only to be forced out by reconciling my desire to not be old with not actually being old. There was the day I graduated high school, then, the day an airplane–then another–hit the Twin Towers and I watched a city that was once my urban backyard crumble with a vulnerability I never mentally allowed it to have…

…there was the day I got my first real job, the day I got my first solo apartment, and the day I moved back in with roommates. The days of frantic calls from home and hospitals leading up to the day my father died. The traumatic birth of my son, when I lie on a hospital bed, seconds after giving birth, trying to tell myself my son died, just to prepare myself for the absolute worst after the doctors took him from me and tried to get him to breathe on his own (it took over 36 hours for that to happen.) The day my son first called me mommy and not “dada!” (well, it was more like “mommy mommy mommy.”) The day I saw my first (ok, eighth) grey hair and decided I wouldn’t pluck it from my head.

But none of those experiences aged me so permanently as living through an–actual–global pandemic. With so many humans having to life through horrific wars, this pandemic, which kills under 1% of its victims in most regions, is a “baby war.” Even those who feel the impacts of it more acutely, in job losses or crippling illness, are still unlikely to die from it. More will know someone who passes from the disease when all is said and done, but for a horrible pandemic, it, well, it could be a lot more horrible.

Still–as a mother, as a 36 year old woman less than four years away from turning 40–as a worker who is trying to balance working from home without childcare and still being a mother and still having some semblance of sanity AND managing burning waves of anxiety that rip me apart from my inside until I’m left hollow and shaken–I feel–old. I feel my age. I feel those 36 years of knowing exactly what all this is. Of watching people ignoring health official recommendations. Of seeing how in our wealthy country we somehow do not have the proper protections for our vulnerable healthcare workers and EMTs on the front lines. Of watching democracy fall apart because people would rather believe whatever it is they want to believe based on what makes them feel safe, rather than think for themselves. Of watching foreign powers infiltrate our social media and deliver a constant feed of Fake News to further terrorize our democracy into a shadow of its former self.

I grew up, because I know too much, and pay too much attention to all of it. I envy those who find comfort in conspiracy theories and/or religion. I see my life ahead of me, however long that is, of a clear next phase of my reality. I’m not a “young–carefree–mom.” I’m a mother who worries and wonders what will come of our country and our world. It’s not just this pandemic. The pandemic brought to the forefront what is already going on and shone a bright light on rapidly rising inequality and wealth distribution. It shows those of us who care to look that our nation is fractured, possibly past the point of return, though it will take a while for it to crumble. It is, perhaps, the beginning of the fall of the American empire–which is maybe not a horrible thing for the history books, but not so great as a citizen. I question what that means and look to foreign political leaders who are using this situation to consolidate power and take on authoritarian rule overnight.

Growing up means seeing what’s there. The cracks. Seeing all of the cracks in the foundation of our society and being forced to accept that there is nothing to do to avoid its collapse. And, as history tells us, societies must collapse and be reborn in some other model. And here I sit, just a 36 year old woman, a mother, an employee, a half-decent friend, a someone, a no one, just watching the fantastical stability of society slowly, quickly, and again slowly combust, right before my very eyes.

Today is the day I grew up. And this time, I’m aging at full speed, with society etching worry lines into my forehead, and painting dark circles of sleepless nights under my eyes.

Politics, Etc.

Now is not the time to panic.

March 27, 2020March 27, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

It has been 18 or so days since I woke up feeling like I was coming down with something that turned into nothing except the feeling of my chest being pressed in the center by a 50lb weight. It has been 18 days since my sore throat has come and gone, along with it occasional sniffles. It has been 14 days since I contacted my doctor and she told me that I couldn’t come in to be seen, but my symptoms were concerning enough that she would preemptively treat me for pneumonia and give me a strong antibiotic and an inhaler. 10 day for so since I developed a cold ice gel sensation in my lungs that burned a cool burn and tingled through my entire body, waking me up in the middle of the night. 3 days since I thought I was getting better, but the sore throat and bruised lung sensation returned. 1 day since I realized I’m not getting better.

It may well be that I have a new poorly timed allergy after years of suffering no such symptoms come spring. I’d like to see my doctor in person and be checked out properly. This cannot happen, of course. Not in the age of coronavirus. My lungs are sore and likely inflamed. I have shortness of breath when I walk and sometimes I need to sit down to catch my breath. It’s terrifying. And it’s probably not Coronavirus. It’s especially terrifying if it isn’t Coronavirus, because I may have some undiagnosed Asthma or something that would make getting actual Covid-19 really, really bad.

Today, for the first time in two weeks, I went to a store. I really wanted eggs so I ventured into Whole Foods and tried my best to remain 6 feet from everyone, but that was impossible. I found one empty aisles and made a beeline for the back of the store, switching into a different aisle half way to avoid someone who turned the corner. I kept my face down while peering up to identify the eggs. Found them. Grabbed two boxes of eggs. Then a few other things. Grabbed two cans of pinto beans then immediately regretted it as I didn’t have a cart and I was well on my way to dropping two dozen eggs and acquiring a virus that may in under a month take my life. I felt I had to buy everything I touched, so I did. The two dozen eggs, the two cans of pinto beans, the sorbet bars that turned out to be ice cream bars with sorbet in the middle, a tea, and a dark chocolate coconut bar at checkout.

I failed miserably at checkout. But they didn’t make it so easy. There are blue x’s on the floor but the people behind me came up too far and I went up too far and then it was all over. I was panicking and accidentally put my chocolate bar on the pile of food that the people behind me were purchasing. I apologized and kept my head down. I felt horrible for the woman checking me out who must have at least been 50, and probably in her 60s. She had gloves on, but surely she was at high risk for being infected. Given the situation, I’m shocked that grocery stores aren’t turning into order ahead and pickup or delivery only. Maybe that’s not financially feasible, but it would be safer.

The grocery store shopping expense was surreal with the barren shelves and the people shopping all either clearly trying to avoid being anywhere near another human and then others prancing about and walking past me at full speed, way too close. I couldn’t hold my breath the entire time as I did when I went to the post office to drop off a letter the other day, so I just gave in to get my eggs. If I’m going to die, I at least need to experience the delicious fluff of a few more good homemade omelettes.

This will all end eventually. We all know it will. I’m not even really anxious anymore. I mean, I am anxious, but that’s not the predominant mood of the week. I’m just sad. I’m so fucking sad and I don’t know how to process it. Because it’s not like the depression I’m used to which is largely just a self defense mechanism to keep disappointment at bay, this is a true, raw sadness that brings me back to the months leading up to when my father passed away and the weeks after. It’s this emptiness. This being stuck in limbo. Especially while others act as if everything is ok (even though in this case everyone is actually experience the same loss of normalcy) and I know everything is not ok. It may be ok for me, personally, but the world is not ok. There is so much broken in the world and especially in this country. We all need a wake up call but the saddest part of all is that even a pandemic will not wake people up. How many fucking people approve of how Trump is handling this mess? How many fucking people think he’s doing a great job despite lying over and over again how this wasn’t a big deal? You know what’s sickening? That no matter what he does, his supporters don’t care. And people think he’s doing a good job when his actions (or lack of action) is literally killing hundreds of people, if not thousands of people. Yea, great job.

I don’t think the problem is capitalism. Or socialism. It’s people. People are pretty horrible, when it comes down to it. I can’t say I’m better than the average anyone. We’re all in it for self preservation and survival. But our drive to self preserve is our downfall. I’ve tried to explain to conservative types that even rich people are better off if people in their society are not left to suffer in poverty. We don’t have to bring the top down to bring the bottom up. No one gets it. Here is a real example. We give everyone healthcare. We make sure that everyone can have paid sick leave and see a doctor and not spread a virus so quickly because people refuse to stay home from work when they are ill in fear of losing their jobs. Our country is ridiculously wealthy and yet look at us. Doctors. Nurses. Those on the frontlines. Having to reuse masks and protective gear. What the hell is wrong with us, America?

This morning I read an article that has been circulating about how what many of us are feeling is grief. It’s not just about the loss of life, or even the momentary loss of our way of life. It’s knowing that our world from before has forever changed. That we may move on but we’ll never forget. We’ll be a little more nervous about things like hugging friends and the germs we might acquire touching anything in public. It’s this deep sense of loss. And I was thinking yesterday how what I really feel is mourning. Mourning the loss of the early childhood I expected for my son, mourning that I may not be able to have another child if I responsibly wait until all of this has passed to try, mourning that even though I’m incredibly socially awkward I was just in the past year starting to make a few friends at work who I hung out with in person once in a blue moon, which made me incredibly happy, and now that’s all over too. Or, at the very least, on hold for who knows how long.

Sure, we may be allowed back into the world sooner than later. But the virus will still be lurking. I won’t want to go out to restaurants or bars or anywhere. I’ll drive to work, take the steps without holding the railing, sit at my desk, try to find a seat on the far end of the table in meetings, and immediately drive home without stopping along the way. Just weeks ago I was thinking of all the classes and activities I would enroll my son in over the coming years. How fun it would be to take him back to the zoo now that he knows animals and would recognize them. How we would go to the aquarium a few more times this year, every few months watching him grow into being amazed by the schools of fish swimming by and glowing jellyfish floating about on display.

There will be memories made at home, too. I get to see my son much more than I would otherwise while working from home. Not much during the day, but at lunch I can see him, and then after work I don’t have to spend 45 minutes in traffic waiting to get home, exhausted. Instead, I have more energy to be a mother. Which is nice. I mean, outside of my lung problems, and finding it hard to breathe and have energy for much at all these days.

I’m definitely trying to focus on the positive here. Trying to connect with friends who I unfortunately lost touch with, because we’re all so busy but now we’re all stuck at home (though some have quite an active virtual social life!) I’m trying. Like we’re all trying. But I’m sad. And I just have to say it. I’m sad for all of the people who are losing their lives in Italy because there are not enough hospital beds. I’m sad for my friends stuck in New York City who are terrified of going out to get food because few are taking the shelter is place seriously there and the hospitals are overwhelmed. I’m sad for my son who cannot go on the playground that he finally has gotten brave enough to climb on. My son who can’t see his grandmother or grandfather in person after seeing them very frequently for his entire life to date. My husband who misses his parents. Myself who misses being around people and the things I’d do to calm myself like window shopping at the mall and going to a coffee shop and listening to the cacophony of conversation around me. Everyone who has an ill family member, or who worries they soon might. I mourn a time of not having to think any of this. It was only a few weeks ago. And if turning 36 didn’t make me feel like I’ve turned the corner into my mid life, this sudden shift into calm chaos certainly does.

Politics, Etc.

It’s all going to be ok. Right?

March 22, 2020March 22, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

People who do not have anxiety disorders may understand a smidgen of similar panic these days—that deep sense of dread that no matter how hard you try and plan you just are not in control of anything in this rabid little big giant world of ours.

I know I ought to stop reading the news, devouring every qualitative and quantitative data point about this virus. I hadn’t spent a single minute becoming the world’s expert on the flu or other causes of death at scale so why do I find it so impossible to look away from the many articles about infection spreading across the world?

Maybe it’s the tightness in my chest that hasn’t fully dissipated for two weeks despite a full course of strong antibiotics. Maybe it’s knowing that many of my loved ones—my mother, in-laws, and grandmother—are in the at risk category which means things could get very scary if any of them got infected. Given worst-case projections that 75% of us many get sick it’s hard to not worry.

There is also a chance this will all blow over fairly quickly. Maybe the rates of death are much lower here than they have been in other countries. Maybe medicine will soon keep the worst of the disease at bay. It doesn’t help much to be a pessimist, though I wonder how much it helps to be a realist in this situation. I mean, it is important to take necessary precautions and isolate, but beyond that what can we do? How panicked do we want to be?

I don’t understand those who don’t feel the heavy weight of anxiety right now, but I envy them. Those who are in the what will be will be camp seem to accept this may get pretty ugly, but they aren’t particularly worried about it. Then there is the camp that thinks the entire situation is being hypersensationalized. That the media is playing up our fears when the data is not yet available to get an accurate analysis on what is really going on. That this is all not worth shutting down our economy over, despite acknowledging that some people will die from this who weren’t otherwise ready to meet their proverbial maker.

But it’s challenging to pretend everything is business as usual when it so clearly isn’t. Ignore the news—fine. Don’t engage in conversation and social media chatter about hospitals becoming overwhelmed and people of all ages becoming critically ill and unable to breathe. Got it. I just don’t know how to tune out how dramatically life has changed, in an instant. How we can no longer see our friends, or anyone really. We go for walks and sprint to the other side of the street when anyone heads our direction. We do not have a moment to look a stranger in the eye and exchange a friendly silent hello or an awkward accidental glance in anyone’s direction.

Two weeks of this is certainly survivable. It may be longer than that. How long? So many think it won’t be long at all. It doesn’t make sense for this to be a month or two and then we return to normal. To defeat this thing it seems we must accept it will seriously disrupt our lives for quite some time. Months? Years? Certainly not weeks.

There are positives to the isolation as well. It forces us to return to simplicity, in solitude or with our close family. We cannot go out to be entertained, we must entertain ourselves (or at least cozy up on the couch while watching Netflix.) It provides pause to a modern life that sprints ahead with no retrieve, and gives us the opportunity to think, create, and, if we can quiet our minds enough, sleep. So I’m trying, I’m really trying, to focus on the positive and not expect the worst. The focus is to keep loved ones safe, keep ourselves safe, and take everything one day at a time.

Isn’t that what the non anxious folks do?

Politics, Etc.

Cheers to Our New Dystopia.

March 21, 2020March 21, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

Children played in the street, unfazed by the sounds of shelling nearby. Parents ready to grab their children at any moment and run fast to temporary shelter to attempt to save their lives for another day. Toddlers and infants freeze to death in the night.

That is not our dystopia. It is the story of civilian families in Syria, caught between a sealed Turkish border and shelling on all sides, in a war far filled with horrors far beyond our imaginations as we grow anxious over our 2%-8% chance of dying from a destructive virus that looks a bit like a Ferrero Rocher candy as illustrated.

It’s hard to say it helps to put things into perspective as those who are incubated, strapped down, without the allowance of family to provide comfort, and fortunate enough to have their own ventilator, feeling as if they’re drowning for days upon days, may actually prefer to be freezing to death in a war-torn country. The world is a sadist and certainly has no shortage of creative ideas for how to torture her inhabitants. To be fair, we torture her back and ensure equal agony on all sides.

It is perplexing how, given life is already so difficult with its illnesses and the mortal fate that we all share, we still manage to make everything so awful. It isn’t that hard to live a good life and doesn’t require a great deal of anything outside of healthy food, fresh air, safety and health, warmth, friends and family, and a roof over our heads. As a society we’re in such a race to innovate and make things better but what is better? If we rush to innovate to make things better and we’re creating technologies that optimize all of our work so that we no longer have jobs, and at the same time end up in a situation for one easily spread virus can take down our society literally overnight, are we actually making any progress forward?

This pandemic isn’t even that bad. Not to make light of the suffering of those who are made extremely ill by the virus, or the horrors dying alone gasping for breath. But it looks as though through all the deaths and after effects of surviving moderate and severe cases of the illness, we still as a society will exist, pretty much as we had prior to our 2020 plague. We’ll mourn the loss of loved ones, and in a worst case scenario that my pessimistic mind says will likely play out, 75% of us will experience the illness, and all of us will know someone who died from it. We’ll mourn collectively, we’ll scream out our tears, we’ll say our thanks to the healthcare workers on the frontline some who too gave their lives in this battle, unprepared and ill equipped. Then, one day, sooner or later, it will all be back to normal. And it will be up to us to not forget and to invest in battling such pandemics because they will return, likely in our lifetimes. If not a pandemic, then surely climate change, class warfare, and other challenges we face will take us down without much better planning and just a tinge of social architecting.

What if we took all of our collective intelligence and put this towards saving ourselves? There is only so much saving we can do. Wars will still be fought. Children will still freeze because sociopaths rule the world and, in many cases, hide behind religion and other myths which fuel the madness that makes it ok for death of the innocent to ever be ok.

Those partying on the beaches of Florida or the streets of Bourbon fail to see that they are shelling our nation right now, but the behavior of our masses is less horrific to me than how we as an advanced society have allowed ourselves to get here. To the point where nurses are begging for protective gear to be donated. Where people coughing and feverish cannot get a test to see if they have been exposed to the virus because protocols still ask if they’ve been to a foreign country with the illness when the illness is right here in our own backyards. And front yards. Where hospital administrators are telling our healthcare workers to reuse masks and where we do not have enough ventilators to save those who will need to be saved in a pandemic situation which has been modeled out and understood for years yet ignored by our government in inaction that can be defined as nothing short of criminal.

We will get through this. And, as the history books tell us, even the longest wars fought eventually come to an end. With our lives of maybe 100 years, if we’re lucky, time tells us stories differently than they are written. But there is no reason for any of this suffering. These self-inflicted wounds and slices that cut through the heart of the bare minimum things we need to just live our lives. Our dystopia is of our own making. As continue down this path I see the smoke billowing across our future, the dust settling on another failure of using all the brainpower and computing power we have to get ahead of the otherwise inevitable destruction that will toss all humanity so deep into a gaping pit with walls slippery and unclimbable, Mother Nature leaving us there, laughing at our once and many times avertible annihilation.

This is our dystopia.

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And So. We Wait.

March 20, 2020March 20, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

The lights go out, one city, one county, one state at a time. That’s how I envision it, a rolling blackout overtaking the life we once knew, just days ago. Sitting in a coffee shop and enjoying the soft buzz of conversation is somehow a memento of life before, a sweet memory of last week, tinged with the eerie, stomach-churning nostalgia of something that happened far too recently to qualify as nostalgic.

Yesterday, son in car seat, husband in driver’s seat, we set out to find an empty space where we could all run and forget the surreality of our reality. Park number one was too crowded, and the field at the local school packed with a handful of people, far too many to qualify for frolicking and social distancing in tandem. So we drove on, to another park, one that I thought might work. We found an empty soccer field and jumped and skipped and threw frisbees and although I was there with my family never had I felt more alone in the world. I felt grateful for having my husband and son, and sad for friends I know who must truly socially isolate, without others to run with or laugh with or hold into the darkness of the many nights ahead.

Our world is indeed upside down. It is incredible that so many in this country don’t know it yet, but it’s coming. Those rolling blackouts, each light of the life we have come to assume to be the only life we’ll ever know is put out, twinkling bright until it’s not. We are breathing fresh air and then sucked into the depths of the sea, suffocated with little warning.

But this isn’t a death sentence–for most of us. This too shall pass. We’ll dig out of this darkness at some point–in 3 months, in 6 months, in 18 months–but soon, soon enough, the lights will flicker on again, and there we’ll be, expected to move on and forget about how we’ve all drowned and resurfaced in our own reincarnation. Those of us who make it. The many of us who do. As we mourn those who did not. There, on the other side.

The darkness is upon us. It is not as scary as a tsunami or hurricane or tornado or earthquake, but with it is the same danger, at far greater scale. We see the waves pull back from the shore and stare out at the sand admiring the vast landscape of emptiness and loneliness. We take a breath and it feels like the waves will forever recede as we walk six feet apart from each other and question our agreement to not embrace or come near each other. And then, with the rumbling of the angriest gods, a tidal wave so big comes racing to shore, to us standing frozen still, staring at it in denial it could ever tackle us down so viciously.

How many of us believe it will come? It doesn’t matter. For it will.

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Life in the Time of Corona

March 17, 2020March 17, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

50 minutes until we go on lockdown. It still seems like we’re all living in the middle of a movie, instead of real life. We slowly–very slowly–start to accept that things aren’t as they should be. Some of us by choice, other’s, force. Our self-promoting everything-is-dandy-and-I’m-perfect President finally admitted that our situation is “bad, very bad.” Yes, it is Mr. President, it is.

Today, the stock market dropped 3000 points. Everyone is panicking. The fed dropped interest rates to 0 and eased some quantitativeness but no one seems to care. The world is ending (it’s not ending)–the stock market is certainly acting like it is–because EVERYTHING is impacted by this little bug. As others have written, it’s like a silent tsunami. It’s a natural disaster of epic proportion but we can’t see it. We’ll only see the carnage in hindsight.

Today, the President asked people in our country to avoid gathering in crowds of more than 10 people. Today, the President admitted that this is a serious issue. Today, in California, in the Bay Area, six counties are, as of midnight tonight, on full lockdown. For the next three weeks we can go out only to get groceries and to visit the doctor in an emergency. We’re supposedly allowed to go for walks, as long as we remain six feet away from others. Police are supposedly enforcing all of these rules and at least in San Francisco it’s a misdemeanor to go out for reasons that aren’t allowed.

Despite my lingering chest tightness, I decided to go for a walk this evening to get some fresh air. I first brought my son in his stroller, then eventually made a few more loops around my apartment complex solo. The way people darted across the street when I walked by, you’d think I had developed a case of toxic B.O.–but one quickly remembers it’s just Corona Etiquette–walk briskly and deviate from your path if needed to avoid any and all social contact. Everyone has the plague. Act accordingly.

I managed 11,000 steps this evening, which is more than I’ve gotten in the last week since my company went work from home and I’ve opted to mostly shelter in place as my lung issue worsened. I had a phone appointment with my doctor today, which was as surreal as anything else going on these days. Dear doc: do I worry, or not worry, about this chest tightness and cool liquid sensation in my lungs? DOC AM I GONNA DIE? TELL ME LIKE IT IS DOC, TELL ME LIKE IT IS.

Doc: well, your symptoms are a bit concerning, not particularly because of Coronavirus, but typically with chest tightness that isn’t getting better I’d have you come in to get checked out. But since, well, things are, different these days–because shortness of breath is a symptom of, Corona, if you came in we’d have to suit up and it would be a whole thing and… I’m just going to prescribe you drugs for pneumonia, which I wouldn’t normally do without seeing you, but these are different times… and, uh, you won’t be able to get a test because, uh, you don’t have any exposure to someone with Coronavirus or severe symptoms so…”

Me: thanks doc. I know it must be, uh, crazy these days. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. So, uh, if this doesn’t get better, uh, when should I be worried, like, uh, where I, you know, contact you, before it’s really bad, but not before it’s like, not really bad, because I know you’re busy dealing with people who are, uh, really bad…

Doc: if it gets worse and you have pain in your chest, if the medicine isn’t helping…

Me: Ok, doc. Thank you. doc.

Doc: oh, it would be better to send someone else to pick up the medicine since you, um, have some symptoms…

Me: uhhhhh…

Doc: have your husband pick it up for you.

Me: um… (thinking: husband doesn’t want to get sick) …um, ok. Thanks doc.(click.)

A Week Ago…

A week ago we just got sent home from work and told that we would be working from home for two weeks. Then everything in the world fell apart. The time between last Monday and this Monday may as well been the length of a thousand Mondays. I’ve aged too many years with worry in such a short time because the rawness of life, the vulnerability of humanity, the weakness of all of us and our mortality is there, in front of all of us, like a raw beating heart that is pulsing to the rhythm of some childhood joke “nah nah nah nah” beats the heart, pouring blood everywhere, squirting up to the moon–there’s your rotten humanity for you. There’s all the control you’ve tried to obtain fucking painted red across the stars, a sky dripping with maroon rain all over our faces, yet most people somehow don’t even notice it yet, don’t taste the blood there, slipping slowly down to their lips, smelling like salt and old copper pennies.

We control nothing. Nada. Not when a little tiny virus can slip into our throats and nostrils and lungs and take over our bodies, our poor little weak bodies that try to wage war against against these intruders and yet eventually fail in 2 out of 100 cases or maybe 3 out of 100 or 5. There is nothing we can do when the army of our white blood cells can’t take on the enemy. And when hospitals no longer can give our army the backup needed to fight the good fight to keep us alive, we’re on our own, and on our own, we are alone in the fight.

This is happening. It’s not an overreaction. It’s not an anxiety-induced prophecy. Look at Italy. Italy is in chaos. And we are 10 days behind. 10 days. A lifetime. A lifetime of 240 hours where in this horror movie some percent of us know the plot and we’re saying nooo, wait, stoppppp, don’t open the dooooorrrrr and you’ve got people still having birthday parties and gatherings and choosing not to pay attention to the inevitable because it’s too hard to admit how little we control in this world for ourselves and yet how much we DO control if we work together to stop this thing. But we’d never do that.

So every country goes and does their own thing to try to stop the impact of the virus. Italy goes on lockdown. Every state in the US has some different rule, some with curfews, some not, some with no events, some with any event, who knows. The UK says fuck it, let the young folks get sick now, so when winter comes the old folks can be less likely to get infected (yes, my friend, winter is indeed coming–though it’s hard to imagine winter and the Return of the Corona (in theaters this December) while spring has barely sprung and the virus has barely, well, viraled.)

Tomorrow morning, I will go to the pharmacy to get my steroid inhaler and antibiotics, and I will pray to the gods I don’t believe in that I don’t catch this virus at the pharmacy with all of the other sick people to get medicine to treat what may be this virus or may be something else that is still causing some serious issues with my respiratory system which probably makes me more at risk for serious complications from this virus if I was to get it if I don’t already have it. And so. Anxiety amplifies. I try to breathe. To remind myself that most people my age do not die form this thing. That I am doing the right thing and staying inside and in a weeks time this should all pass.

But in the back of mind I’m also thinking–we are 10 days behind Italy… we are 10 days behind Italy–and what if, what if in 10 days, or 5 days, or 7 days, my lungs take a turn for the worst? What if, whatever it is I have, I need to go to the hospital in the thick of it. What then? What can I do now to prevent that? Take my medicine, I guess. I can’t get an X-ray, they won’t give anyone X-rays for pneumonia at this time. I just have to take my medicine and hope I get better. Stay home. Stay home and hope. That’s modern medicine for you.

Why are my lungs so cold? There’s ice liquid in there. Liquid ice. Pouring in. I can breathe. And these days, breath is our most valuable asset. So, I remind myself, just breathe. Just. Fucking. Breathe.

T-10(?).

Politics, Etc.

The World Catches Fire

March 15, 2020March 15, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

It happened in the blink of an eye. Like in the movies. One day, we heard about some people in China getting infected with some new virus from–rumor had it–a live bat sold at a market that someone possibly made into bat soup. It was there. Then everywhere. Then here.

Wuhan, China. The epicenter of the virus. A city that I, like many Americans, had never heard of until this sudden onset of illness that immediately sounded the alarms of potential pandemic amongst those in the know. I wasn’t in the know. I continued my daily routine and tried to take comfort in the vast distance between my Silicon Valley California home and the horror that was unfolding in China.

Then came Italy. And the rest of Europe. And the first cases in America. The moment I saw the headline about a nursing home outside of Seattle my heart sank. I tried not to obsess with the latest news article and statistics on this virus, but it was clear that a nursing home would not fare well with an infection that was slaughtering the frail and most vulnerable. Then, the first cases popped up in my own backyard. The first official cases. It seems the virus may have been here already for weeks. We don’t know yet. A patient was transferred to a hospital 10 minutes from my apartment. A few days later, that patient died.

Our offices closed their doors. All of the tech offices across Silicon Valley (well, most of them.) Offices full one day–full of meetings and water cooler chatter and open office chit chat, dark and silent the next. Slack and Zoom made the transition to work from home smooth logistically, but the social and mental impact of this sudden shift was jarring to all of us. We are moving forward as if the world is the same as it was, yet, suddenly in the middle of a global pandemic. We carry on because life goes on, as I imagine it did in the times of all the pandemics of the past. With our highly connected world we have the luxury of social distancing without full on social isolation, but also the continuous spread of real and false news which fuels necessary awareness as well as anxieties and misinformation. We wonder–can we go outside to get our mail? Can we take a walk around the block? Can we visit the local cafe? Plan a vacation for this summer? Will we be able to visit loved ones in assisted living facilities? How much toilet paper do we need to prepare for the apocalypse? And, most importantly, can we convince our stubborn and aging parents to take this risk seriously?

It is not as if some bomb dropped on our heads. We are not at war. Yet in other parts of the world, in the hospitals where doctors are forced to decide who to save based on their predicted outcome, it sure looks like it. Those amongst us who believe in statistics and trust statisticians fear that we are not doing enough to mitigate overwhelming our own fragile health system. That we are days behind Italy. That so many here will soon suffer. We secretly hope that our friends on Facebook posting that this is all a hoax are right, though our friends who work in healthcare and respond to their posts to inform them of how wrong they are remind us that this is all real. All too real.

We wonder if the cold we have is actually this infection. How would we know? There are no tests available unless you’ve been traveling to another country or have clearly been near someone who has tested positive. A week ago I felt a slight chill and my lungs, lungs weak since a bout of pneumonia years ago, started to tingle, then burn into a throbbing soreness. But, a week later, with no fever and cough, only sore lungs that make it slightly hard to breathe, I assume I have one of the thousands of other illnesses one can get this time of year–not Coronavirus. I still scan hundreds of articles to try to find a case similar to mine in case this might be a mild form of what I’m reading about, though I’m not sure how that would help anything at all other than in increasing my anxiety. I’m already home, already trying to not go out much, and trying to do my part.

But it’s difficult to suddenly shift into a safe set of processes in life even when one moves to isolate themselves and yet maintain an otherwise normal cadence of life. For those with children who are able to work from home, we face unplanned challenges with childcare.

My son, 19 months old, is watched daily by my 76-year-old father in law who prefers to continue his routine of taking the train from his town to ours. I am very concerned due to his age that he is putting himself at great risk doing this. But he prefers this method of transportation and I’ve yet to determine if I ought to ask him not to come at all–for we still need someone to watch our child while we work. Others face similar situations as many workers now have their children home with schools closed for weeks to try to slow the spread of this (hopefully) little plague of 2020. What do we do? There are no rules written for how any of this plays out. We can only do our best and support each other through the unknown to come.

I haven’t yet written about any of this as it has all been quite overwhelming. But I think I’ll try to write a bit more as I read earlier some recommendation that we ought to journal through this time which likely will be remembered in the history books (we can only hope not.) So I’ll write here as I do, with no particular purpose other than to share what it’s like to be alive through all of this. How one’s world, chaotic as it felt before, can be so rapidly upended that all prior chaos, from just a week earlier, mind you, feels quite quaint.

And my 19 month old with a fountain of energy to match his fountain of hair, who now says “thank you” whenever handing you an item and who yells at our Echo to play “Janis Joplin” and “Bad Guy” all day long, has no idea what is going on in the world. And for now, he doesn’t have to. Thank god that this virus is not harming children. I am terrified for our elders and the vulnerable amongst us, but I am so relieved that children are not severely impacted. The thought of living through a pandemic wiping out our youth, especially as a mother of a young child, makes me want to hide in a dark cave with my family and never come out. So, I feel grateful that of all the plagues to be unleashed into the world this time around, my son should be ok. But many others won’t be. And I think of my mother who refuses to change her behavior to try to mitigate her chance of infection or infecting others, whose doctor told her (shockingly) that this is no worse than the common flu. And all the people I know who are forced to make decisions on whether to come together to mourn the dying or to avoid further spreading of the disease. I think of all the stories coming out of Italy and the rest of the world where people are dying not because they have to die but because there aren’t enough hospital beds and ventilators and I see the charts that show we are slipping day by day closer to this exact scenario and I worry. I feel, for once in my life, my anxiety levels match the actual rational amount of anxiety for the situation at hand.

And yet, anxiety helps no one.

I told my husband, as I was trying to spin up positives for the horror unfolding int he world, that there is something beautiful about all of this–not the people dying part, of course–but how pandemics reveal that no matter how much we have or don’t have, whatever our political affiliation or ethnicity or nationality, we’re all equally vulnerable because we’re all equally human. At that moment, he let out an accidental sneeze to punctuate the statement with the most perfect unplanned comic timing possible. Even though it hurt a bit to laugh, my lungs as sore as they are, I couldn’t help but break into a deep bellied chuckle for a good minute in tandem with my husband who found his sneeze equally hilarious.

And that’s life. Nothing makes any sense and yet it all does. Sometimes it takes a disaster to pull ourselves out of the dirt so we can again see the sky. But now we’re still in the dirt, deep in it. As an atheist I’m not one for prayer, but since it’s officially our national day of prayer I’ll throw one prayer out that maybe this will all blow over and soon we’ll be making “too soon” jokes after the fact. But I have little faith my prayer or anyone’s prayers will do much of anything. Our government officials are, not surprisingly, failing us. I don’t want to get into politics here. Not in this post. But it is terrifying how this crisis is being handled. And I sit here, as if watching a horror film, waiting as the next weeks unfold, with my lungs burning and throbbing with something, and my mind racing through what might be coming a week from now, seeing how much has changed from a just a week ago.

Politics, Etc.

Pride Month and Prejudice

June 23, 2018September 16, 2019by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

It’s Pride month, and it’s time again when rainbows take over the country and remind us why we have a long way to go for true equality, and also why some men look better in tight shiny pants than women do.

In all seriousness, the last 25 years has both progressed us forward and moved backwards. We live in a society today where the Supreme Court says it’s ok for a private business to refuse services to a person or couple because they are “religiously opposed” to who that person is. But, at the same time, we have many more GLBTQ role models in the media, and although there is still a challenge for public figures to come out, being honest about one’s sexuality no longer banishes you from a successful career, especially in the public eye.

Continue reading →

Politics, Etc.

The Truth About Trump’s 2018 Tax Plan

April 7, 2018September 16, 2019by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

As a marketer, one thing I can spot from a mile away is marketing spin. Enter, Donald Trump, the master of said spin. When the 2018 Tax Plan was being debated I did an unhealthy amount of research and calculations on if what was being spun was actually true. Since my last post about keeping separate finances in marriage led to a big of confusion and misinformation over taxes for married couples in 2018, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned.

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