Quarantine Reflections

I’ve been staring at blank screens for a few days now. It’s been hard to write and be verbally creative during this quarantine time. Like many folks, I’ve been in a kind of brain fog. It’s hard to watch the news (especially coming out of the US), it’s hard to be home all the time, and hard to watch people completely disregard the severity of this virus. While the US isn’t alone in it’s share of stupid walking dead, it is the loudest and most visible. It's hard to watch your home country slowly imploding.

It’s also hard to realize that this virus isn’t going away any time soon. Hard to accept that this is our new normal. I know I’ve gone from periods of acceptance to periods of depression and anger. It’s grief, and it’s ok to feel these things. It’s ok that I'm not feeling like working.

I try to remember this most of the time. I don’t always succeed.

But for now, doing physical things has been the easiest for me to keep my mind on. Spinning, weaving, baking, cooking, and reading has been easier for my mind to keep up with. I do my German classes, study every day, and make sure bills get paid and groceries get ordered. We’re lucky and privileged to be where we are. We’re lucky to have the means to stay home and protect ourselves.

It's also hard because both the Wife and I are scientists and know how viruses work. We know how things can propagate and move through populations biologically and mathematically. It’s hard because we feel like we know too much and we also feel like a lot of people, even some people we know, don’t believe us when we say months, not weeks.

I know that there’s not much I can do about the thoughts and actions of other people. I do know what we can do to keep ourselves safe. To survive as best we can. We help people where and when we can from here.

We survive and endure, and that’s all we can really do.

I know this isn’t like my other updates. There’s not much I have to really update folks on anyway. I probably should make a baking post, but the brain isn’t ready to do that yet.

I hope you all are staying as safe as possible. I hope that we get through this and everyone endures as best they can. I offer you my prayers, and if anyone needs to talk about their grief, feel free to contact me.

May the gods carry us through and may we learn from this as a species.