Can we even use the term Boogaloo anymore?

Oddly, we're still pre-Boogaloo. This has never gone away, this is not a second wave (for the majority of the country), this is very, very the first wave.

I see no dip that would imply the first wave ended. (Source: The charts I check every day even though I try very hard not to.)

From "How do we venture out safely?" we've gone to "How do we deal with this in the long term and not interact with people ever again?" The answer is just damnably simple: don't be an asshole. (Well and testing and contact tracing and vaccines. But those are systemic asks, which are not arriving any time soon. (God, can that lame duck session (knock on all of the wood) just be bypassed this year?  Please, please, please?)) 

By "don't be an asshole" I really mean wear a mask, sanitize your pants off, and keep your distance. No one succeeds at that all the time. I ended up in a co-workers office with no mask, and bumbled my way out. Being back in the office feels like an old pattern that needs to habits applied to it. There haven't been many chances to practice them. So, things are gonna suck for a little bit. 

Again. More than they had, I think.

All that said, my brain has adjusted. By which I mean there's a new baseline for anxiety, and all the daily going-ons have settled themselves in their new nooks and crannies. So we can act like we used to and freak out like normal. Just sadder.

Electric Boogaloo: We know it's coming

High school graduation has been ongoing. They're doing it drive through style, with everyone piled up in a car. The graduate is the only one allowed outside of the car, and only 3 cars are allowed on the football field at a time. There's been about five hours of this a day, since Tuesday. With precious little to celebrate recently, seeing all the cards decked out in signs, balloons and streamers has been really, really nice. 

The neighbors' nephew graduated yesterday and all the kids hung out in the front yard, music blasting, encouraging honks from passersby and fellow graduates. They cheered every time a honk came through. I sat outside on the porch , pulling dried thyme leaves from their woody stems. I was drinking wine and smiling at every cheer and slightly weirded out by how out of touch I am with what the kids listen to these days. (I swear to glob, Baby Shark is a damn symphony compared to some of that nonsense.)

There are events scheduled for the coming months, our favorite restaurants have opened up and people are starting to gather again. I'm nervous and a bit scared. I can't help but want to embrace these things, cautiously but embrace it. If distancing and caution is a new normal it makes sense to learn how to find joy among others under those circumstances. Community is still a big part of my brain and emotional health, and I have been really lonely without it. It would be nice to figure out how to participate again while keeping our loved ones safe. (It would be really fucking nice if the people required to work through the re-opening could be guaranteed protections and still make a living. But that seems to be too much to ask.)  

...This was going to be a reflection on trying to find my way back into communities In These Trying Times. However, my brain realizes there are people required to help you do that, and those people work in small confined areas, maybe following OSHA standards, at the best of times. I'm really trying to avoid a rant on capitalist ideology and the dollar over all, but those attitudes reflect why "normal" life feels hard to attain right now. I like to think that this can push some overall change in how what we think of as valuable work. But I see very little evidence of that. 

I guess it's a matter of creeping out of the house with kindness and mindfulness, tipping well and voting our pants off. So yeah, wear a mask and go vote. 

Furloghed...furlouhed...furledddd

Dear Mother,
It is the first day of furlough and times already feel endless. We've removed the rug from the kitchen only to discover horrors underneath. To think! We were eating above such madness on a semi-regular...

Okay, I've never gotten past the first two sentences in my brain, but it's been a fun way to frame the weirdness of the time.

It's technically Day 2 of The Furlough, but I spent the first day between bed, the mildest of errands, and the internet. I made myself a handy little activity chart to lend the days some structure, but today is already stacked up with things outside that chart. It already has scribbles and additions and brain-exceptions. I had a goal to do accomplish at least 12 out of the fifteen tasks, but I didn't account of the daily drudge of things. I think I thought I'd let it all go, but that's not the case at all.

In other news, it's a non-drinking day. I had a chat with my therapist on loss and grief and finding other ways to remove the hard-edge of stress that borders the daily routine. The conversation itself was a relief. I think while acknowledging things were hard I wasn't actually feeling that it was hard. I thought I was letting myself off the hook and it turns out I was very much on it. In regards to feelings anyway. I'm glad I went. I forget that it's fine to actually feel your feelings, and simply moving through the motions in the face of adversity is not at all the same thing.

So I suppose that's another item for the to-do chart. Maybe it's the center free-cell of the bingo card: feel your fucking feelings. And deep clean your dining room...y'all nasty.

Shame

So, I'm furloughed. I don't have a job next week. I filed for unemployment and still have some benefits, and then we go back to normal the week after. Except my work partner is furloughed. And we go back to normal for real for a couple of weeks. And then we begin again.

So my brain's been swirling a bit. Mostly that 1. I hit a good place earlier this week, and then things changed, and then 2. I stopped being in a good place. None of this is that bad, certainly comparatively, but filling out the unemployment form just felt bad. Like pit in my stomach bad.

So I recently wat (I start all my new thoughts with "so"s. That's a bad habit.). I recently re-watched ContraPoints video on shame. (Which, watch it. And then watch all of her other videos.) The first time I watched it, I went down a pretty thoughtful path for a while, ruminating on heteronormative expectations and how we place them on ourselves, and our bodies and our brains. All of which lead to some pretty ridiculous actions in our formative years. The second time I watched it It occurred to me that expectations, in general, not met lead to all sorts of crappy feelings: frustration, low-self esteem, terrible self-talk and self-destructive actions, all brought about by the shame.

The timing of these thought processes was good. Filling out an unemployment form felt shameful. That things had gone wrong, and I had direct responsibility for these bad things.

Let's unpack all of that. Because that's a layer cake. (There are probably bad things that come in layers, but they won't come to me for the moment.)

First, I'm responsible for being furloughed.  Which, dear God, brain. What sort of Herculean responsibility do you think you have over a fucking virus and downward spiraling economy?  Just the hubris! Cripes.

Second.... I don't fully have that layer yet. It's there but I can't vocalize it. (Later: Oh there it is. It's a week, Pallavi. A freaking week. Why are you spazzing over a week? (It was the thought that had to be least examined, I think.))

Third, filing for unemployment is shameful. Even if I'd been fully laid off and were filing for the long-term, there is absolutely no shame in accepting help when it's right there for the taking. It is not wrong, it is not a moral failing, and you wouldn't apply that thinking to anyone else so why are you putting that ish on yourself?  There's a lot of sub-layers to that one, I think. It's fine for them, but I'm obviously better than that; it's for people who "really need it" and I am obviously not one of those; of course it should exist as a safety net, like all safety nets, but obviously I'll never fall into that trap.

And how gross are those thoughts? There's so much liberal moral superiority that I forget I have in the back of my brain.  It's there in in a lot of ways, but living in a socio-economic and, let's be real, super white bubble, I rarely have to examine it (which I should probably make a regular practice on these thoughts) or apply my political thinking to myself. It's for other people. And I'm not Those People. Obviously.

No, needing assistance is not shameful and there's no reason to put your brain through that. And maybe don't be a superior asshole.

Spots #TheIsolationJournals @suleikajaouad

I don't move much. I stay within a few blocks of home, and home hasn't moved more than three houses down in almost twenty years.

I work four blocks over and three miles down the road.

I do my daily shopping two blocks down and less than a mile away. Or sometimes around the corner at the sandwich place/meat market when I'm looking for simple stuff.

My watering hole was four blocks directly down the road, and has since shift a block north.

I live within a couple of square miles everyday.

In the past few weeks that radius has shrunk to less than a square mile. I'd love a heat map of time spent at various places, comparing this time last year and the last month. I can visualize it. The dark red in the few blocks around my house, the house itself would be a black pinprick. The orange around my office would gone, maybe faded into light green. (I did go there a couple of weeks ago for two hours. I couldn't shower enough after yelling into someone's ear over the hum of the machines. I haven't been back. The data verification will wait.) All the red in the buildings would be spread into the streets like ink oozing into a puddle of water. And the light green fingers that had extended out of town is just be gone.

I weirdly don't feel confined by my square mileage. It's a tiny security blanket under which I've curled into a tiny ball. If my brain didn't long to look at another city at the moment (Nashville, Tybee, the Mass. coast) I'd think it downright boring, and shove myself back into therapy (which, let's be real, I could use at this point for completely obvious reasons).

But it's been good. There can be growth in one place. Standing still doesn't mean not moving or not challenging. A lot can happen in a single square mile: you can realize you want to be in love, that you want to grow to be something better, that you're far more than you thought you were when you started out in this spot.

There's a Pandemic On!

The voice above is supposed to be more excited than panicked, but the word pandemic automatically just implies panic.

We've been self-isolating since mid-March, maybe? I know that's behind the curve for the rest of the States, but a rural area doesn't think things are coming our way very quickly. It comes to us, but it takes a minute.

Luckily it's spring: we can sit on our porch and holler at our neighbors; there's lots to do in the yard; and since we can't go into any buildings but Dalton does have an open container law, we can sit in appropriately distanced parking spots, drink some local beer and still play trivia through the bar window thanks to Facebook (ugh, I typed that).  There are plenty of nice things about being in  rural area: living with someone, being in walking distance of friends with yards and roads we can stand in and yell from, and an open container law. (I cannot emphasize that last one enough.)

I get to work from home, and we had enough furniture to set up a home office quickly. I get to work next to my sleeping cats and in some natural light. I see folks in far more lonely and confined straits than we are and am really grateful for what we can do.

All that out of the way.

Goddamit this sucks sometimes. I would like to hug a friend. I want to go see my folks. I want to sit at a restaurant table and eat fresh restaurant food. I would like a nice cocktail I didn't have to shake. I want to see a different city. I'd like to go on the trips we had planned. I'd like to be able to know what's going to happen next week so I can plan a trip in the first place. I want to be able to breathe normally in a grocery store, and it'd be nice not to feel like a leech on The Supply Chain when I run out of paper towels. I'd like to quit being stressed about The Supply Chain and all the people who work so hard to fill it. It'd be hella cool to sit on someone else's porch.  And yeah, my ends could use a trim.

Ahem.

Shit's kinda cray. And I've been up and down with it. Mostly down. I look at DPH graphs cobbled together by redditors every morning and drink my coffee. And try not to read Twitter in the evening with wine. Peter, of course, is solidly putting one foot in front of the other, planning out yard projects in his brain and keeping the grass cut. I had been trying to plan dinners, make sure the trash was put out, manage the cat smell (there's always cat smell), keep the kitchen sink cleared up, etc. I dropped a couple of those things and my brain cleared up. We are eating not great things, and the house could be tidier. But I'm going to be okay with that. I'm trying really hard to put things on my to-do list that make me feel internally together (put some purple in your hair, do your nails, maybe shower?) even if that sacrifices the external appearance of togetherness.

Trade-offs. Balance. Whatever the hell gets you through this and you're not an alcoholic by the end. #goals