Wed Mar 25 2020 at 1:50:08
Approaching the end of the first quarter. We don't get to switch sides though.
This is shaping up to be a hell of a year as well.
I'd wanted to get on the road and travel for months and months. I willfully left my employment at the beginning of March. Here I am, far away from my legal home. Staying with relatives in the notoriously dangerous 70+ age demographic. With initial plans to make satellite trips to see other family and friends, to places which have turned out to be moderately infectious. Timing is everything isn't it.
These days really have caused me to re evaluate certain ideas which have always been so synonymous with my country and with civic duty and patriotism therein. Ideas like responsibility, autonomy, independence, freedom.
Here I am mid-leap, with a crisis in the background (and foreground) of my life. Trying to carve a new world for myself, as a radically new world is being carved out beneath my feet. Trying to find a new place of work and a new place of residence at a time when everyone everywhere is being urged to stay home.
Here I am stuck inside. Stuck inside metaphysically as much as physically, which seems more problematic for many people. I can't complain too much about the impact on my lifestyle. I'm a chronic introvert. Doesn't bother me that gyms movie theaters and dance clubs aren't open. But in a collective sense, a spiritual and energy-oriented sense, things feel troublesome. I feel like I'm stuck inside a watershed event for this species. I think we're being forced into a state of social rendering in which active avoidance and active paranoia is influencing our collective psyche, with certain long-term implications.
This won't be over when it's over. We are changing.
Yes, I needed a change of scenery. Yes, I needed to get out of my father's house. Yes, I needed a new place to work and a new place to live. But when I left I needed a vacation more than anything. It's hard to relax. I can feel how tense everything is, how high strung people are. I can feel the pressure of industrial downturn, job availability, violent fluctuations in the housing markets everywhere. It's not an ideal time to be swinging without a net.
Not to mention the people I left behind. Not to mention lovesickness.
But stop me before I get too deeply into the doom and gloom of things. While I feel like it's hard to relax it's also hard to worry in a sense. I came here because of resources. I came here because there are family and friends who are willing to help me. And I feel their hospitality and their patience. I'm grateful. Because I know that if I was still in my former living situation, stuck at home with those routines at a time like this, then I would be suffering immensely. I mean it when I say I'm grateful.
And for another thing I've changed my focus. One of the few meaningful measures of progress in my life throughout the autumn and winter have been spiritual and introspective growths. As I get older I feel more and more convinced about what matters to me, and they're not the superficial things that can be measured in terms of economy and security.
I'm convinced that what I do with my life is not nearly as important as the way I go about it. The attitude with which I approach it. How am I going to deal with my insecurities, my prejudice, my vices, my inner negativity? How am I going to treat other people? What roads will I pave and what legacy will I leave behind? How can I show people new ways of thinking about things? What does it mean to be a good person and what are the ways I can strive towards that?
Those are the important issues and the important questions. Those other questions like where will I reside, how will I earn a sustainable income, what will my "work" be...meh. I can't help but feel like those things will fall into place after I manage my true priorities. Even in a time where so many people are confronting their mortality, with all this death and disease around us, when security and safety feel most paramount. The fact that I will die is something that matters. When I die or how I die does not matter at all. What I choose to do with my time matters. How much of that time I have does not matter at all. Again, it's not what I do that's important so much as the way I go about it.
That's why it's worth it to be here, without a net. To forsake practicality to find my friends again. To have found people I care about enough that I can (slowly, it's a process) feel like I can be my self, my own unmitigated unashamed self. That's why I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid of what my life would be like if I hadn't taken this wild ride away from where I come from. It's why I'm grateful.
It's why I'm not worried, but it's still true that I'm not relaxed. There's a constant droning sound in the back of my mind. There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. But there's one thing I keep trying to remember, a conclusion at the end of a conversation I had with an old friend. Goodness is a series of habits. Make good habits, everyone. Choose to be good.
These are strange times to be certain. If I'm being completely honest, I don't know how I'm doing.
Sat Mar 28 2020 at 17:48:46
Legally, federally, there is a place referred to as my home. I do not want to go back there.
It feels like it took so long to get away in the first place. Grinding through the winter and saving money, so that I could break free and explore. But these days force me to stop and consider ideas like responsibility, autonomy, and freedom.
I'm staying with relatives in the 70+ age range. Both former smokers. One with a significantly compromised immune system. So much for the idea of using this as a home base, making satellite trips only to return after a few days. None of us can afford the risk of me bringing them unwelcome guests. Once I leave here I won't be able to come back for...who knows.
I have other family I'd like to see in Montgomery. Not a particularly safe place either. Military uncle, conservative aunt, anxious hippie cousin with a husband and two children. I don't think they're in a position to gamble, nor would I want to put them in such a position.
It'd be nice to be able to revisit some of those Mississippi river towns like Natchez and Vicksburg. But evidently their governor is an irresponsible nimrod with his head in the sand. Not a safe place. Florida's governor is behaving less actively stupid, and less actively in general. So that seems to rule out Tallahassee as well on account of risk.
Gulf coast Mississippi is nice too, between Pascagoula and Bay St. Louis, but also out of the question because of irresponsible leadership. I spent a decent amount of time down there because of its proximity to New Orleans. Which seems to be the belly of the beast, as far as this region is concerned. The friend who I'd wanted to visit is a practicing nurse. As desperately as I miss him and that city, the prospect of visiting seems practically suicidal.
I really meant it when I said this was supposed to be about reconnection. Reinvention. Resuscitating my relationships with old friends and making a home for myself in a new place. How do I make inroads, and start anew, when everyone's supposed to stay home? Home is what I'm trying to get away from. I'd said before that I was going to get out of there if it killed me. Now my feet are being put to the fire, but my life is not the only one at stake here.
But there is still Savannah. Who knows when I'll be able to go back there again, after this. As of now Chatham county is reporting a mere 15 confirmed cases. Coastal Georgia actually seems like one of the safest places to be these days. But how long will it last? How long before the money runs out? How long before the infection finds its way there?
Well, it's not home. And it is a next step. Seems like one of the only possibilities that is not home. Might as well be THE next step. Again, and again, and again, what a time to be out on a limb.
Thu Apr 09 2020 at 2:23:29
One night after the full moon of Aries and I've given up the ghost. 650 miles in one day, back to my father's house.
Between a fast food coupon, a Russian-Arabian power struggle resulting in a plummeting price of oil, and a pandemic, it was as inexpensive and unobtruded as a 650 mile trip could be.
I made the willingly painful choice to stop in Memphis, to drive through some of its downtown. Yes it was ghostly, but not in a creepy or disconcerting way, and not in a nostalgically or romantically sad way. Just in a very plain, current, and tangibly sad way. It was hard to not get emotional driving up and down a deserted Beale street, with every place of business closed, some of them boarded up as if they were bracing for a tornado. Sobering doesn't begin to describe it.
Memphis was always a big brother to me. It's depressing to see it in such a state, and to know that it's suffering as a result of such inactivity. But in a strange way it helped me to find peace with my feelings about Memphis and the negative associations that had made me weary of it. The current situation and state of things does make it a little easier, or a little more possible, to forgive and forget. I've now seen proof of it.
There was so much lightning for so much of the drive. But I never found any rain. I was always just south of it. Fine by me.
There's still a young man with a bad attitude who exists inside me. He says pick your poison:
"Home: a place that never leaves you."
"Home is where the heart is."
"Anywhere I lay my head I call my home."
But he ought to shut up. It's important for me to have a good attitude now that I'm here. Because whether I choose to call this home or not, this is where I am.
Get busy writing. Get busy curling dumbbells. Get busy hiking. Get busy relearning instruments. Get busy learning a foreign language. Get busy envisioning an artistic output. There's no greater potential than downtime. Make something of it.
Wed Apr 15 2020 at 23:06:30
My mother is sick.
She feels pretty sure it's just a stomach bug. She's taking mandatory
time off work because she's been dealing with diarreah. Diarreah has
been reported as an initial symptom for Covid-19 in roughly 40% of
cases, internationally. She was still showing symptoms today, although
less severe than it was earlier in the week. She has to be symptom-free
for 5 days before she's allowed to return to work.
Hard to not preoccupy myself with scenarios and possibilities.
Especially with so little to distract me. Hard not to endulge the
slippery slope of paranoia with so much time on my hands.
Now is not the time for weakness. Everything will be okay. If
nobody's here to tell me then I'll have to tell myself. If nobody's here
to tell me I need to be strong then I need to be strong for myself.
The hardest part is also the easiest part, or at least it's the
simplest part. The unavoidable part. The fact that it's out of my hands.
Sun Apr 12 2020 at 4:12:53
Home. Hate it.
Can't be selfish, times like these.
But how much easier it is to be selfish when you've *always* been so
disconnected.
And now there's no more hiding it. No more distraction, illusion, everyone is keeping their distance.
Plans subverted. I'm missing opportunities. I'm disconnected from the people and things I care about.
It's not just my own health and safety that's on the line here though, of course. But I shouldn't chastise myself for feeling like trash just because many other people are going through their own trash which might be considered worse. That's always been true. Doesn't mean that I'm not going through some trash even if it's different from someone else's trash.
Using the word trash 5 times seemed less trashy than using the word shit as many times.
Guess I still have some sense of humor inside somewhere, even if it's just self-serving. Can't be too selfish, times like these, it's true. But I also still have to take care of myself. Which, incidentally, taking care of myself and keeping myself put in this place that I hate is the most important thing I can do to help take care of others.
...Ok. Fine.
Thu Apr 30 2020 at 11:13:41
Got out of town for a night. Didn't have a very good time. But a lot of it can be put down to bad luck, bad circumstances.
The two things I really do regret?
A milkshake. Making a decision out of habit, but based on a habit that's no longer applicable to my current life or wants or priorities. But done anyway, practically unconsciously, purely out of habit.
And making a decision out of fear. That's something I shouldn't ever do again. Easier said than done, perhaps. But breaking that habit is worth doing. No matter how long it takes to learn how.