When You're Near Me I Have Difficulty

First of all, sure, this blog space is all fun and games usually, but let's get the basics out of the way: I'm fine. Everyone around me is fine. The kids who are in my house all the goddamned time now are also fine. They're hungry and lethargic sometimes unresponsive, but if you don't see me building to a hackey-ass joke about how teenagers be, you really haven't been paying attention.

It's an interesting time to be someone like me, not a hypochondriac but definitely a self-important narcissist. So I'm not convinced necessarily that I have coronavirus, but I'm pretty sure if there's going to be a major outbreak locally, I'll probably find a way to be a catalyst for the whole thing. I'm going to do everything asked of me and more to avoid being exposed or being a vector, but at the same time, if all this momentous stuff is going to happen, I'll be goddamned if I'm going to be left out.

I guess what I'm saying is if it's more likely than not that I'm going to get coronavirus anyway AND there's going to a category of super-spreader available, why not compete to be the best? We didn't wreck shit in two World Wars to finish behind fucking Italy in anything.

In all seriousness, I'd like to say we in America are doing our level best, but I think you and I both know that that's completely unsupportable by the facts. I want to be more optimistic, but if you spend any time watching the press conferences including the current president of the United States, you'd know there was very little justification for anything as outlandish as "optimism."

I don't want to leave you with despair. Despair is a dead end, not to mention a massive draw on the finite precious resource of your patience and sanity, both of which are already being taxed by a total disruption of your daily routine, the sudden uncertainty in your job and/or your physical health, the false sense of scarcity in food and supplies caused by a mass hoarding feedback loop and, worst of all, forced prolonged proximity to your families.

I'm writing this under some stress and uncertainty as within the last hour the governor of my non-awful state has ordered a lockdown. I don't work for a private business in a for-profit space, so I'm not really sure how this applies to me. I also have some responsibilities to the people who report to me to make sure they get paid and can continue to work, but the ethical questions about my duty to their professional and financial stability (as well as my own) and the larger question of state- and nationwide public health by not being the self-declared exception zipping around like a free radical threatening the cell walls of the Body Politic are real. So I'm pretty sure I'm going in to the office tomorrow, but I'm not going to feel super awesome about it.

My kids are out of school until at least the end of April, which is disruptive, but it doesn't carry the same of decision-making anxiety I have about 12 hours to figure out. They still have assignments they're responsible for, so it's just like being in school, except minus the travel or concentration, whatever schedule suits them and access to all the Oreo Thins they want. I keep telling them this will be a seminal period of their lives, one they will never likely forget, but so far if I ask them how it's going, their answer is "pretty sick, fam." But you know, in a good way.