It is an interesting time to be alive.

I am not sure what spirit I pissed off in some previous existence to manage this lifetime and not some non-turbulent period like…….give me a minute and I am sure I will think of one.

I have been reading a lot about past outbreaks and pandemics. We are repeating a lot of the events of those times. People wanting to believe that there is some big conspiracy at work against them is not a new thing. I guess that engaging in that fantasy is doing something. The rest of us, engaging with reality, are just kind of left with doing nothing. That being what the current situation demands. We are helping by not doing things.

I would not call it being less productive. I’ve had many virtual people, as I can no longer be certain they haven’t been replaced by robots that love to talk on Microsoft Teams, remark to me that they are suddenly more productive at home than they were at the office. Less time for people to come by and chat. I do not know why I am listening to less music and podcasts as I did in the office. Less things that I think of as distraction. My house is comforting in its presence, unlike a bustling office full of people running around trying to get products to market.

I miss people. I find it hard to type that. Only because it is so out of character for me. I am an introvert in most things. I am one of those people that is quiet at the beginning but once I am comfortable, I can be pretty gregarious. I just need a good recharge after any kind of prolonged social interaction. Now I feel the opposite. I have energy reserved, for daily interactions with people, that I am not using anymore. A lot of that gets thrown at my wife and our poor cat now. My wife seems to be enjoying it, my cat not so much. She is probably the entity most ready for the world to go back to normal in our house.

I am finding that I am finally finding routines to get into. Adapting to this, the longer it goes on, probably means that when we must go back to the old ways we will have to adapt again. I hope that we cannot reflexively jump back all the way to the old ways. As terrible and anxiety producing this event is, it also feels like an opportunity. I have not seen anything about what folks back in previous plagues learned that were not directly related to not dying of the plague. Maybe we can be the generation that does more than just survive.