8.01.2020

1 august 2020

i started a piece to submit to the new york times' "modern love" column, then didn't finish it because i never came back to it until today; it is revised and less like a piece for publication. i haven't blogged in a while, so i'll put it here.

i'm tired. quarantine life in the age of COVID-19 is doing things to everyone's lives and mental health in some degree. 

In the early weeks of quarantine, I would I blink my eyes open around eight in the morning on workdays and involuntarily reach for my phone to scan the news, social media, and a dating app. I was an automaton, moving wordlessly from bedroom to bathroom. I removed my night guard, stared briefly at my drug-store bleached hair (brunette roots cresting against multi-tonal yellows and golds; not quite the look I had gone for), and lean down to tap the handle of my bathtub faucet until the water began to trickle out. Moxie, my slim, gray cat, dipped his paw in and out, drinking droplets off his fur.

Working from home began at noon on March 11, 2020, when my manager called the entire team into a conference room at 11:53AM. We were told to go home to ensure we could remotely login to our desktops and access all necessary programs and network folders. I left in a fog, saying goodbye to coworkers on other teams who hadn’t been told to go home yet. Weeks earlier, C and I had planned to spend Friday the thirteenth at Disneyland. The most remarkable moment at the end of that day was the myriad cast members waving at guests exiting the park (C and I left just shy of midnight). I waved back frantically, yelling out words of gratitude and trying to make eye contact while fighting the urge to ball up and sob; it's August 1, 2020 and Disneyland is still closed.

I cobbled together a home office at my kitchen nook and waited for various auxiliary equipment to arrive in the mail when my remote connection locked up a week later. Desperate calls to internal IT support netted mounting frustrations: “It must be your internet connection.” “Everything is fine on our end.” “Oh, you have a Mac?” “It’s your personal laptop so we can’t open a ticket.” I finally asked to pick up the work-issued laptop I’d declined just hours earlier because everything had been fine. I left the office that afternoon, laptop in tow, wheeling my office chair into the elevator and across the parking lot because by god I was not going to break my back trying to make my kitchen chair work any longer. I felt gloriously defiant.

Now, 143 days into working from home and primarily staying home, I rescued a calico cat (found in front of the neighborhood library; friendly, flea-ridden, and pregnant), received an "exceeds expectations" review at work (plus, earned a raise), begun an at-home yoga practice, single-handedly sustained a local ice cream shop, become a regular at the neighborhood farmers market (hooked on the unlikely pairing of kettle corn and kale), finally made it to week four of Couch-to-5K (just say no to shin splints), and joined an antiracist book club (we're reading Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad for August).

I chatted with M a couple of days ago about work. She's at a bank in Orange County; it's not her normal branch, which got closed temporarily (albeit indefinitely) in the early weeks of California's shelter in place orders. She highlighted for me the nightmares of being a frontline worker: angry customers, shorthanded-ness due to coworkers calling out sick/quarantining because of  COVID-19 exposure or illness, stressed out managers who pass that stress onto the staff, ever-increasing anxiety manifesting in shortness of breath that is exacerbated by wearing a mask all day, and all while having more work to do and fewer hours to do it in (the branch shaved an hour off their opening and closing times).

An acquaintance I volunteer with got COVID-19 from her roommates, who went to a bar during California's momentary reopening of many establishments. The roommates experienced mild symptoms, while S has asthma and struggled to catch her breath without having a coughing fit for a week. S recovered without being hospitalized, but it was hell. Also, her longtime employer has been shuttered since March 14, 2020; she has to work the graveyard shift at her new job. 

Last weekend I rearranged my bookshelves by color, played Pokémon GO, and watched old episodes of Property Brothers on Hulu. 

1.05.2020

making space

i'm trying to wrangle the mess that's built up in my apartment for several months into something decent. i'm trying to be present and take the time i need to do things. i quickly realized that i'm not going to be able to post something every day, but i can post a little more frequently than i used to.

i try to make this public act of journaling something worthy of being read by anyone (not just friends, but thank you to those who do). i want to be honest as hell about what i'm going through or thinking of, but undoubtedly it's a little weird to do so because i'm not always feeling good as hell (i'm looking at you, december 2019).

let me tell you about the cat i met today. she's a sweet, friendly, snowshoe cat and she needs a new home because her owner travels too much. i've been thinking about getting a companion for moxie for years now, ever since mango passed (3 may 2015). what's holding me up? i've asked myself that for a while now. let's go macro with this: what holds me back from anything? from moving to a new state, or changing jobs, or adopting a cat? finances aside, one aspect of this is a personal battle with fear of failure. i fail ALL THE TIME at things. large or small, and i'm still moving forward.

this post is meandering--there is still much cleaning to do--but i think the answer is coming soon. i will know soon, and maybe i will write about it. soon.

p.s. it is interminably difficult to enjoy writing (or other things) when i'm staring at a to do list.

1.02.2020

day two

today was work, then yoga. the yoga is new. i like it and will do more of it. it centers me.

1.01.2020

hindsight, et. al.

today is the first day...
hindsight is...
the early bird...
treat others...
if you can't say something nice...

whatever you're thinking of this day and its significance, i can assure you that a) i am too and b) i want to reject all of it. why wait until the calendar tells us that a day is meaningful? but also, why not do something since it is the first day of the month/year/not-so-roaring twenties (don't write me about this decade v. not a new decade nonsense because i couldn't care less)? 

i want to do something different. i always talk about wanting to do something different and, like a character straight out of waiting for godot, i do not move, immobilized by how overwhelming it will be to get to that thing, or how expensive it is, or how it feels impossible to get there on my own (reminder: divorced, one cat, one piano, pounds of books and a couple of bookshelves [one i helped build last year, one i've had since i was 19] <--this is me). that ends here, i want to declare. this is the year i get shit done. (this is a terrifying assertion.)

i will try to write something everyday, because writing is important to me. this might be a foolish promise to make. i think i will try to write here, because why not? let's see how it goes.