Here I sat recently on one of the hottest nights of this or any other year, and my real problem is a horribly itchy insect bite just below my right ankle. I want to scratch the hell of it, but of course I shouldn't.
(Leaves room)
OK. I just showered it with cold water for about six tracks of Heinrich Biber's Joyful Mysteries. It feels better. When it itches again, I will put my foot in a bowl of cold water.
Covidiocy is like that itch. It won't stop, it distracts me from doing anything else, and if I give way to it, I will wind up worse than before.
How exactly am I affected by Covidiocy?
Out of politeness, I have to wear a bandana when I go shopping or travel on public transport. Ear loops are not stylish and no amount of floral pattern on the mask can distract from that. Those blue not-really-surgical-scraps of plastic and paper are terminally ghastly.
My office has been locked, so I have to work at home, but that means I save a bunch of money not commuting or paying for over-priced sandwiches. The quality of my life improves in so many ways. However, if I pay attendance to my laptop for eight hours plus lunch, I can get to the end of the week and not have done things that would have benefited my life. Just as if I was working in the office. So I've decided to give myself an hour in the morning to do stuff that requires going out: like getting the nearside front wheel trim on my car replaced because it was broken and potentially dangerous. Doing that makes me feel like work is not getting in the way of my life.
(While it's not my choice to work from home, it's my home and work is intruding. When I get a choice, I will or won't set up a dedicated work space and adjust my attitude accordingly.)
So what's the problem?
The problem is that I'm locked in the world with a crazy person. A crazy person who is on record as setting out, in March 2020, to create an atmosphere of fear so that we would stay home. Who chose to call it a `lockdown', which is a term that comes from prison management, so we would think we were prisoners. Who still wants us to stay two metres away from each other and wear masks because we are all diseased. A crazy person who can lock us into our streets and houses on a whim. Who makes up inconsistent rules about what is and is not acceptable behaviour.
For the Regular People, it's like playing a game of Simon Says. They don't need the world to make sense, it's all part of the rich tapestry of life. If you can't take a joke, they will tell you, you shouldn't have joined.
But I'm an alcoholic from a dysfunctional family, so I can't handle crazy people, and I definitely can't handle gaslighters. I can't be around denial and lies. That's why this is affecting me.
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