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