006: Hold the World

So.

It's day whatever-it-happens-to-be of Quarantine/Social Distancing/Social Isolation/Shelter in Place. I guess it technically began for me on Wednesday the 18th but realistically Friday the 13th (gasp, I hadn't even realized!) was when the world around me started taking this stuff seriously.

For me personally, I've done pretty well with the situation. Admittedly, work can be frustrating because it can be so much harder to focus on which tasks to prioritize, and the nature of the work keeps changing and it can be difficult to tell exactly what the most recent directive is and what I have permission to do. But I don't think I've shown too much struggle lately. In the beginning it was tough because Marija was off for the week and Jess was off for a few days, so staying on top of everything and coping with the inbound work was tough. Now that level has subsided. By the end of the week I felt the communication was a lot more clear. At first I was stressed because mentally work was following me "home" through the night and I was having, like, allocation table dreams. But now my dreams appear to be more normal in scope. Two nights ago I was roaming the city. Last night I was lip synching "Survivor" by Destiny's Child with two contestants from RuPaul's Drag Race. So like I said, normal.

Of course, for the the decompressing from work, it helps that we took two days off in the middle of the week. It was Mel's birthday of course on the 24th and we took some time, and also used up our last few vacation days. I had a few surprises for Mel that were a real hit. I had ordered a new bed for her parents' place since sleeping on my old one there has always been an issue (I won't lie, I don't love it either but I was always willing to suck it up.) The problem is, who knows when we will be able to even try it? I also ordered her a mini Chonky Seal (that I was expecting to be bigger than it was) which went over big.

We tried to take some of those virtual tours but it didn't really work out. We ended up just watching a video of a guy walking around the Louvre for an hour until he gets to the Mona Lisa. He barely looked at much of the art. I madea really nice Macaroni and Cheese for dinner, at Mel's request.

Then, I had also organized a gathering of our friends for a group Skype Call. I found it fitting because she had done a surprise party for me on my 30th birthday and I loved the idea of doing one for her on hers. The only problem is, Mel is hard to surprise because she is pretty impatient so she always wants to know what's going on and I never have the heart to deceive her. So I probably wouldn't have been able to pull it off unless I had gone like a month early (and wouldn't that have been fortuitous!) So when it looked like her birthday was naturally going to fall by the wayside, I simply made the arrangements and never suggested to her that anything was going to happen.

It worked well albeit not without hitches, since I had the party loaded but forgot to turn off the sound, so a few minutes before 8 the murmurings started and I had to claim it was a work call of some kind (flimsy but effective.) Then there were some technical glitches when Unc and Sherlie got on and got stuck in "Share screen" mode so the only thing anyone could see was the white walls of their place. Oops. I had to admit later to Mel that I hadn't actually invited them, or her parents, (just Laura) but it's not like I was going to shoo them away. Well, it was fun, and they didn't overstay, so after that we got to catching up with our friends and playing JackBox and it was quite lovely.

The next day was for pure relaxation, but also featured one of my personal highlights for the week. Randomly, I started a thread on Facebook saying that anyone who liked this I would post a song dedicated to them. I was not really sure what to expect and my original thought was to do it in a cheeky way but I think what people need now is earnestness and sincerity, and the idea of doing it as a gag went out when my Mom was the third person to like it. So I posted songs I knew, or could reasonably guess, the people would like, or ones that had a personal connection between me and them. Very few misses and the word "Perfect" was used a lot. It was actually a little tricky at times but only one person did I cheat and look at their musical tastes listed on Facebook (and in that case I didn't even pick from there.) It was honestly great to get back to relating to people through music - I love books but nothing beats music for me and I wish selling music could still be a job I have (but sadly the world at large rejected me as a critic, and I later rejected it myself.) It made me want to get back to posting about music, perhaps this is a thing I will do for my FB people during this time.

That's really the thing - wishing I could use QuaranTime to do something creative. Lord knows I was bitching enough about having no time before this went down but it's not like it has given me any more time. It's get up, work - don't get distracted, don't get distracted - power down, dinner, couple time. I don't have zero time of course, I managed to start a story (but I got a ways into it before realizing this was not the angle I wanted to take into it - see, this is why you can't just poop out a masterpiece on your lunchbreak!)

In a way, I'm jealous and frustrated of people who can use this time to pursue something they are passionate about. Me, I'm stuck fretting over inventory transfer caps to online and upcoming initial buys. What's nice, however, is that it feels like my mind has loosened up a little bit, and I am expressing myself differently in online spaces than I have in a while. The "Old Me," but like....the good one.

I think I am doing well. Although I initially felt anxious about restrictions placed on the how and when I should be leaving the apartment - and what I must be doing with my time here - reality is what it is and if you can adjust to it it's better. So of course, we won't be going to the grocery store more than we have to, I'm thinking maybe in the middle of the week, maybe every nine days or so. I do get tired of cooking every night, which can be put down partly on lack of space, lack of will to keep things tidy and all the dishes to do. We ordered in pizza one night this week and I picked up sushi last night. Tip generously. Wash your hands. One thing that set me off last week was Mel saying we were getting more and more workout circuits to do from Jenna, and now had a backlog of three. I was surprised (since we had only been going to the gym once a week) and said that sounded like a lot. Except I guess to Mel it seemed like I was yelling it. So we had a brief fight about my negative response and a brief fight about fighting and I tried to apologize sincerely and talk about how if we're going to make it through this we need to be careful because we're all we've got. Like I said, I think I'm doing well, but you never know when you are going to find yourself a walking raw nerve. It feels bad.

On a sad note, my friend Alex's father passed away from COVID-19. It was very saddening to get the updates from her on his status throughout the week. You hear things like that and you think of your own family, your loved ones. This shit is no joke. We may make jokes to get through it and ease our minds, but the stakes are real. This is what we're up against.

Mel and I have been watching the Rocky movies, which she really seems to like, and she wants to watch the Godfathers after. Friday, we gathered around Zoom (better than Skype, and they lifted the time restriction) to wish Sherlie a Happy Birthday. Then we played a long-distance game of Farkle, which was quite fun. Last night was Earth Hour; we played some more Farkle by candlelight and I read to her, the Jasmine Guillory book she's been nearly finished for months.

You've got to find the tender moments.

Stay well and keep on rockin'
-Scotto

005: Do the dance

So, here's how things are looking on ole planet Earth.

Everybody's in - whether it's "quarantine" or "self-isolation" or "social distancing," whatever you happen to be calling it, people are staying inside and washing their hands. I can no longer sort the hilarious social distancing memes from the dumb ones. It's all anybody is talking about, of course, but if you happen to be reading this years down the road, well, here's where we're at.

Last time I posted, it was just as the office was shut down as a precaution. Everyone was working from home but because of my habitual poor luck when it comes to matters of technology, my WFH capabilities were not fully set up.

The office was not, in fact, closed on Monday, but it was a ghost town. A few stray souls appeared, including Pom, who sits back to back with me and who also had a misfortune on the WFH front. Rania, and some GM people also. It was weird, and there was some concern from people on my team. I had been told, on Thursday, that if I went in and left my computer on, then with the VPN Program and that information I could use remote desktop access.

I also had to sort of answer to some work that had not gotten done the previous week. I was annoyed because a lot of that was due to, you know, not being able to do anything on Thursday and having expected to have that day to complete some stuff. It was irksome to have myself called out without respect to that - yes, there was some fault there, and whether I actually could have gotten all, or at least a significant chunk, done on Thursday had I the opportunity and ability, is pure speculation. I imagine so, because I have managed in the past quite frequently. So I talked Jess down from her utter disappointment in me to a more mitigated response. I did note that a lot of my week had been taken up with my stretch projects, some of which could easily be put on hold in the new reality. In the end, the work I was intending to get done was made largely unnecessary as reality changed, but we had no way of knowing that anyway.

I went home Monday night and tested WFH. No luck. I came back on Tuesday and did some work, then fired off a flurry of e-mails with IT trying to get that sorted out. They seemed baffled, until Tianjiao, the one person there I truly trust, popped in to say my computer needed to be added to the userlist for Work From Home. Well, why didn't anybody say so? Does anybody know anything?

Before I went home for that day - and I left not yet having sorted out my WFH situation - it was declared that our stores would be closed until March 27. So for the next day, my first from home, everything was even different-er than expected, with workflow entirely devoted to pushing everything online and trying to react/anticipate what we believed would be the new lift in that channel. With Marija and Martin on vacation, I was handling a lot and my day consisted of getting a lot of emails from a lot of different sources saying "Look into this," which, admittedly, is how a lot of my day goes under normal circumstances, but the scale and focus was different and this was an adjustment. That Marija was on vacation wasn't such a big deal, since most of the work was easy enough to roll up, although her return will take a load off my shoulders. I also think the workflow will be decreased this next week since so much stuff has already been set up and there's not as many bases to cover.

It's not that it's hard, or particularly stressful, it's just... different. And sharing space has some drawbacks. And I knew it would be, which is why I was keen to keep going into the office as long as it seemed permissible to do so. But after only two days, I felt wrong about it. Now, having the whole office nearly to myself was actually not so bad, but being out in the world was making me paranoid. As it is, I'm finding it hard to transition into, and then out of, work mode, when there's nothing delineating it.

I am trying to summon the mental fortitude required to be strong for myself (with the lack of my coveted "alone time") and for my partner, who needs me. I am hoping that this next week brings with it some opportunities to get away from work and away from other things and maybe put some energy towards the things I like to do on my own (writing.) That said, I have gotten pretty far ahead on X-CERPTS and people don't seem extra-interested in them during quarantine, so I have no desire to increase the rate of posting (my twice-a-week posts in January resulted in only about 10 or 20 more hits than my once-per-week  schedule in February, while November and December were shockingly high without much content, meaning the average readership seems to go down the more I post.) So if I get much further ahead, why don't I go ahead and put some energy during the times I'm working on it towards finishing other things?

That could be right now, but I felt it was a good time for an SWP post, and that I was feeling glum from feeling very confined and from all of social media being about one thing (last weekend we took a break from it, this weekend, I dunno if I should but maybe would have felt better.)

I know that my problems don't amount to a hill of beans in this reality - I would never take them to someone else and try to get some sympathy. But you know, this is my space, and these problems are worse than a lot of the stuff I've spilled tears for over the years.

As a thought experiment - I suppose because I can't seem to stop trying to throw my mind back to other times - I envisioned what it would be like to have found myself in this situation during a different time in my life. Would I have coped better, or worse, if I were back at home, working at HMV, living with mom, and Brandon and Eric? What about during my University years when I often felt alone in a full city, going through seemingly entire days without saying a word out loud to anyone?

My conclusion is that, for a combination of practicality and mental health reasons, this is on balance the best time in my life - personally - for this to have happened. For all the stresses and confines and drawbacks, I have someone I love to get through this with. I am at a financial and emotional point of stability, compared to other periods of my life. I have a space, I have routes to get food and other amenities even in this emptied out and frenzied city. I'm okay. I hope you feel okay too.

Last weekend right as the world was going into quarantine mode, we watched The Circle on Netflix, kind of presciently - it's about a bunch of people living alone in apartments for a time, only able to communicate through social media. I think it would be fun to do a season of that where one of the participants was secretly a celebrity.

I posted on Instagram the other day - and I've seen lots along this vein since but hadn't prior to my post - reflecting on all the empty gathering spaces that were cordoned off, and how the natural instinct is to see this as a loss and a hard sacrifice, but a moment's reflection reveals that it was not that hard, as it turns out, for vast swathes of the population to do what is necessary and right for the benefit of all. None of us, living our comfortable western lives, anticipated every having to do something like this at such a vast scale (except my online friend Paul G, who has called it for years.) It's entirely possible, dare I say likely, that this will not be the last time we are called on to take such a drastic action in our lifetimes. Or if not, there may be something that doesn't look quite like this either, but knowing we had the capacity to do this - that we didn't, as a society, take the easy route and say "We're just going to live our lives and if we get sick we get sick" - is extremely heartening for me and many others. I just hope we are taking notes on new ways to live and that when this is all over we don't just snap back and say "Yeah, let's get back to normal because nothing can ever hurt us again!" and then tilt way far in the other direction (eg licking each other in public? I don't know.)

Well, my attention has somewhat faltered, but I think I've got everything out I needed, and I'm feeling better, and it's nearly time to get dinner started.

Keep on rockin' your way through all of this
-Scotto

004: Beauty in the Everyday

It's funny, in a way. My previous post was from the Longos tables on a day  I took off from work because I was "sick" - not that I had a cold or flu but because I hadn't slept and thus needed to rest. In a way it felt a little like I was playing hooky, but I do believe this was in the true spirit of a sick day, a privilege I most certainly do no abuse.

I wound up back at Longos again yesterday, intending to write another post. The office had been closed yesterday and today for a deep cleaning spurred on by, of course, the COVID-19 virus which has gripped the global imagination. But it was very busy and I ended up going back upstairs to attempt to work. I made as serious an attempt to work from home as I could but my system was not properly set up - when I had inquired, nobody at Service Desk gave me a full checklist of things I needed to do to enable work from home protocols. I only found out after it was too late.

In a way, I'm lucky, although that remains to be seen. Had this been a genuine quarantine and the office fully closed, I would be out of luck altogether. Ostensibly, I will be able to go into the office on Monday and set up my computer and thus enable protocols going forward that will permit me to work from home at will. My plan is to work in the office on Monday, and then if need be, be more flexible for further days. If for whatever reason - and 32 years of living this life has told me this could easily happen - the office is closed on Monday, I'll be screwed. Well, let's not think about that too hard.

I did manage to conduct a little bit of business through e-mail while watching old wrestling. It wasn't so bad. Today, Mel and I had taken off as a vacation and her office ended up closing too - we had been pencilled in for a dinner with her work friend group, which Mel was iffy on whether to do, since it was supposed to be a day off. I convinced her to hold off on bailing because sometimes it's good to go through with things like this, and then the universe bailed for her, so that's a win. I personally love it when fate and chance take these things out of my hands. Mel's office is closed all next week.

Honestly, even as late as Wednesday, it felt like there was some degree of distance between us and the pandemic. A few months ago it was "Oh, this thing is going on." And then it was like "Oh, people are buying lots of toilet paper haha." And now it's like... here. I don't know if the situation is genuinely very dire, or people just feel the need to be dire about it, based on the increased tone of the conversation. It feels weird to go around the world doing things that are not meant to be pandemic related. It feels weird to try to find online spaces where this is not the topic of discussion. It feels weird to indulge in any escapism. For our day off today we started watching The Circle, about a group of people who only interact through an in-house social media and otherwise must live in isolation in a small apartment, which for obvious reasons seems prescient now. I'm washing my hands so frequently they're start to feel like clammy death. I don't generally keep hand sanitizer in the house, which I feel a little dismayed over now (I don't believe in it for everyday use, but for a pandemic scenario, sure, yes.) Mercifully we do have a regular amount of toilet paper on hand, not too much not too little but I'll probably grab some more if and when it becomes available (after all, if we both end up working from home our rate of usage would increase, perhaps drastically.)

It feels quaint to be thinking about everyday things like, oh, how is my development going at work, how is my writing going. But hey, I do want to think about these things, especially the latter. Life must go on. It's not The Stand over here. It's not Station Eleven (good book that I had wanted to re-read but it seems like it'll be a while before the time is right.)

There will be times for these things, and sooner than one might think. Perhaps this weekend, although we've pledged to use it to clean the apartment and do some post-Wedding tasks.

I'm... I don't know. It's a weird headspace I'm in. I do have my own things going on but it seems weird to spend too much time discussing. I just wish that I could teleport my writing into being. That I could just say "Here's the idea," and find it immediately on paper and see how it turns out. No, there's the doing of it too, and that's the problem. Last Thursday I went to AJ's after-work writing group and got a goodly amount done, and I just needed that kind of direction, that "Here is your time, do it." Because most of the rest of the time when those times present themselves, I won't feel like I am in the space to pursue it. Including right now! I want it to be done, but not to do it.

A few weeks ago we saw Eric. He and I, when we had a moment where we could talk, brother to brother, writer to writer, discussed some things we want to write. And I had some momentum there but self doubt and fatigue set in, and we've reached that same "Almost done but not done" status that a lot of what I have written gets to.

We'll see, we'll see.

Last weekend, we saw the family again, at Dad's, for a nice casual dinner, and a lot of chat afterwards. The next day, the time-change day, we went to church with Nonna for the anniversary of Papa's passing, then spent the whole afternoon at her place. Not bad, but tiring, and it ended up being a long one.

Well, that'll be it tonight. Keep on rockin'
-Yr Ole Scotto

Addendum: I'm just begging for one conversation not defined by the pandemic, some sort of innocent distraction that will give me the sensory input I desire. I think back to my years on Tumblr, when I had a group of people who were shockingly accessible, and who I could throw it to during my endless nights alone and could usually trust to bring me something. Now I have a person, and she's great, but I do sometimes miss the buffet of conversation (which ended of its own momentum, not anything to do with my relationship or anyone else's.) I was sad a lot of the time back then, but I miss having that to make me happy.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto