COVID Journal For a Cold Spring Day

I haven't done a virus journal in awhile, and that's partly due to this experience having become normalized, and partly because my job is keeping me so busy that I am too mentally exhausted to write about what's happening in my life.

Today is the first day of a new term at school, which has me in a reflective mood. This new term means that I don't have a course overload, so I also have some more time to reflect. The weather today is helping, too. It's one of those damp, unseasonably cold late April-early May days. I have a history of choosing to go to baseball games on days like this, when it's so chilly that I don't really want to have a beer. The air feels heavy and full of spring life despite the cold and damp. It brings with it a feeling of rebirth.

Tonight when I put my kids to bed one of my daughters told me this was all "a present, but also a bad present." My daughters both told me that they are enjoying having more time with their mother and I. My wife and I were talking today about how making meals is not the stress-filled ordeal we have accustomed ourselves to. Some parts of this have not been so bad for me. To be honest, I am not enthusiastic about going back to my old routine.

Obviously I want the disease to end, but in my personal life and in the nation's life I do not want to back to the way things used to be. Normal sucked, I am not interested in resurrecting it. At this stage it seems like I am in the minority here. Some of this is just the plain-old ingrained human impulse to fear the new and treasure the secure. I am sure this is some kind of evolutionary survival mechanism. However, a lot of this can be chalked up to a lack of imagination brought on by living a society where we have grown used to hearing "there is no alternative."

While I wish this crisis would make it clear that we need things like universal health care and public utility internet, I know it likely won't change anyone's minds on these issues. However, I can control what goes on in my personal life. I have a better understanding of what matters, and what doesn't. It has been refreshing not only to have more time with my family, but also to avoid unnecessary bullshit. Going forward I have resolved to waste less of my time and effort on things that don't merit them. I'm also going to finally get that tattoo and go to more rock shows. Life is short. At this point I have more yesterdays than tomorrows. Time to start living like I actually know that.

Virus Journal, Holy Week Edition

This week was far less stressful than last week. I have today and tomorrow off from work due to Passover and Good Friday. My wife had the entire week off, which meant during the day I could devote my energy to teaching remotely, instead trying to balance that with child care. I began to feel like I had managed to get on top of my new teaching regimen.

It's still been a lot of work, and that's been good. Today when I didn't have to work and it was too rainy to do yardwork I just started cycling through the news and Twitter and was overcome with an intense sense of dread and fear. It's not just the deaths from the virus, which is killing hundreds here in Jersey every day. I think about the economic collapse, the people losing jobs, and how this will be used to push another horrific austerity regime. I think too of the election in Wisconisn this week, which is a harbinger for future stolen elections this year. And I notice how little to nothing is being done to stop it, as if the rest of us have just accepted the imposition of a conservative authoritarian state with a veneer of democratic participation.

So I had to mostly get away from the news. I donated money to a local food bank, ate some of the amazing sausage we got from the local Polish butcher, read some PG Wodehouse, helped my daughters with their distance learning, and baked a delicious apple pie with them.

I also tried to put myself into the mindframe of Holy Week. Growing up I was an intensely devout Catholic, and this week going to mass several times and having my soul shaken while following the stations of the cross. Even though I have mostly drifted from the Church, I have still kept this week in my heart. (I also still keep Lenten promises.) That's been hard while homebound, but I found the right means through recordings of a convent of nuns in France, who have allowed their daily chants to be streamed. I am listening to them now, and finding them absolutely sublime and calming. As my wife joked, "you can take the boy out of the church, but you can't take the church out of the boy."

When I first read about medieval history at about the age of 9 or 10 I thought being a monk would be really cool. There actually was a monastery in my town that invited in local Catholics for mass once a month, and we often went. Afterward there would be coffee and donuts with the brothers. They were so much more interesting than the parish priests, often more approachable, and seemed almost freed by their rejection of society. As a very devout child who was ostracized at school the idea of living in a place where no one could bother me while I prayed and read all day long sounded pretty great.

Hearing these chants reminds me of who I once was. I have also started to think of my home under quarantine as a strange kind of cloister, a mirror version of the one I sought in my youth. Spending all of this time with my wife and children, despite the tragic context, has been fantastic. I really don't have to talk to anyone I don't want to talk to. I can be with my family, talk to my friends over Zoom, and still "see" my students without having to interact with garden variety jerkoffs. There's a lot of them out there, especially in this part of the country.

This time in the quarantine cloister has been enormously revealing, I think. Each year I do an inventory of my soul during Holy Week, and this year the worry and anxiety over the state of the world is leavened by an overwhelming feeling of peacefulness. I have come to realize that my daily schedule during the school year, with its long an unpredictable commute along with other things that wear down my psyche, is bad for me, and maybe not sustainable. I come home too often in a bad mood, and too exhausted to spend quality time with my daughters. As for all teachers, summer helps me have that time with my family and calm my soul, with each year it seems like I earn less and less of it back.

I get the feeling that a lot of other people during quarantine have been discovering what matters in life, and what doesn't. Fortunately for the bosses, the labor market will be too restricted for their underlings to jump ship and try something else or demand a humane workplace.

Virus Journal 4-4-2020 (Back in the Trenches)

I was back at work full time on Monday after my "spring break." This week was the hardest I have worked at teaching since I was a beginner. Back in my younger days it was easier to spend every hour of the day working. With two kids constantly around me it was a little more difficult.

It has been really good for my soul to be interacting with my students again, no matter how hard I have been working to keep my head above water. All the work with my classes and watching my kids has also been a welcome distraction. I just don't have the time to check the news during the day or cry tears of rage like I was doing the prior two weeks. During that time I was also consumed by the anxiety of whether I would be able to be an effective teacher online or just fuck it up. I seem to be doing alright based on the feedback I am getting.

The main thing I have been doing is to be on guard against my biggest weaknesses. One of them is that I am not a fan of calendars, organizers, or and rigid systems of life planning. I keep it all up in the old noodle, so to speak, and tend to find the work of writing down everything I am planning to do to be a huge waste of my time. If I know what I am about to do, why should I have to fill out the adult equivalent of a worksheet?

As you can guess, this system of mine fails from time to time. Another weakness I have is not responding to emails until I know EXACTLY what I want to say. Now I am just firing off responses the second I get emails because if I don't I know I will start screwing up again. This does lead to some real fatigue at the end of the day but so far I think I have managed to keep myself on a good path.

I have also been spending a lot of time talking with friends and loved ones. My wife and I have been talking more than usual to our parents. I called up an old friend and talked for an hour on Thursday, and both of us participated in a Zoom happy hour with our fellow grad school friends that went on for hours. Today I did yard work and shot the shit with my friends next door as they did the same. It felt good.

In a weird way the quarantine has allowed me to only really socialize with the people I actually want to talk to, namely my friends, family, and students. This is pretty much what teenage me would have died for. As much as I want the quarantine to end I do not know how I will adjust to having to be out in public and being forced to interact with garden variety assholes.

That thought reminds me that I have consciously decided not to be such a nice person. It is obvious that people in this part of the country are dying because the government refuses to provide proper support. I have tried hard to be the bigger person when conservative friends and family antagonize me over politics, but those days are over. If they can't understand that the well-being of my family and I is at stake I am more than happy to tell them to fuck off. I already had to do this on Facebook with a high school friend who has spent years trolling me without offering any other kinds of interaction. Why should I keep someone like that in my life?

So if I make it out of this I am pledging to stop tolerating other people's bullshit. I am also thinking of getting a tattoo for the same reason. Life is short and I have really stopped giving a damn about what people think of me. That admirable habit from my youth, which I sloughed off in the adult quest for a path in life, is back and I am glad for it.

Virus Journal 3-30-2020 (Epicenter)

It's been five days since my last journal entry. I have held off because my mind has been in a state of constant anger and confusion. The president has at multiple occasions admitted he is not giving governors what they request, has downplayed the urgency to provide medical equipment, and has basically admitted that he expects fealty and public groveling from governors if they want to get supplies.

In these last few days the New York City area has become the epicenter of the virus. There are over forty cases in my town, and today someone died. The hospitals are filling up and they've had to turn refrigerated semi truck trailers into impromptu morgues. The Javits Center is now a field hospital.

Due to social distancing I feel strangely cut off from all of this. It only becomes real when I hear from real people. One of my neighbors has lost two people she knows. One of my friends in town has also lost two people in his life. One of the dead is 36.

I have noticed a shocking level of ignorance of this in other parts of the country. Many I talk to back home seem to not understand just how bad things are here. Unfortunately, they will find out soon enough. Some folks are in blossoming hot spots. A friend in Louisiana lost someone she knew. Others live in central Georgia and and eastern Pennsylvania, hot spots that have been missed in the national media. Lynchburg, where some other friends have, has entered the spotlight due to Liberty University's infamous behavior.

At home last week was my last week of break. Just as I finally seemed to be keeping my daughters' home schooling on task, I had to go back to work this week. Working online left me feeling frantic today. I feel like my students appreciate what I am doing, at least. However, I am not sure how long I can sustain the status quo. My wife is a technology coach for her district, and her frantic pace of work just does not seem to be slowing down.

Working hard today at least kept me busy. I spent a lot less time reading the news, which usually leaves me wanting to cry or break something. Today, with Orban becoming a dictator in Hungary and more deaths, the distraction was helpful.Those who just want to end the school year are offering a false promise of more serenity. Without something to do the quarantine can be literally maddening.

Virus Journal 3-25-2020 (A Lousy Week)

"A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall"'s prophecy is now fulfilled

This week has really been something. There's nothing like getting a non-covid shock in the middle of all of this. One of my daughters had been itching her head a lot, and we thought it was dry scalp, which is an issue she's had in the past. As you have probably guessed, it was lice.

We had an all-hands on deck emergency that disrupted the home schooling schedule and pushed me to the brink. I spent the entire day furiously cleaning and doing laundry along with going through my wife's hair and searching for lice. She did most of the tough work of doing the lice combing with our daughters, who spent a lot of time crying in pain. That was fun. In the end only one of my daughters had lice and as of today both are totally louse and nit free.

My wife and I have joked about learning the origins of certain cliches: "fine tooth comb," "nit-picking," "lousy" etc. Monday was tough but we came out of it with a feeling of accomplishment. This whole experience is awful but it least has brought home how much I love my family.

I am starting to notice things I didn't before. While my commute is grueling, I have transformed it into quiet reading time for myself. I rarely get a minute of solitude now, and it's really beginning to wear on me.

Today I learned someone I love has cancer and my wife was kind enough to let me get out of the house to be alone. I walked three miles in cold drizzle. I listened to Dylan's "It's A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" multiple times. His prophecy is being fulfilled. I prefer the amped up version from the 1975 Rolling Thunder tour, which sounds appropriately furious at a society bringing doom upon itself.

I have been feeling alternately depressed and full of rage. This week the president seems to have decided on letting the virus burn through society and kill all so his bottom line can be increased. Republicans and Fox News are lining up behind this, treating the nation's elderly like kamikaze pilots ready to sacrifice for the God Emperor. In trying to craft an economic response, Congress is stymied by Republicans who think the current bill is too good to workers.

It is obvious to me now more than ever that this country cannot survive. Unless the scourge of this virus kills me I am completely confident that I will outlive this republic. All of the stuff eating away at our society has been exposed: our horrible inequality, our lack of respect for human life, our inability to sacrifice, the undemocratic nature of our political process, and most of all, the attitude of right wing Bolsheviks who would rather destroy the country than give up control.  That chaotic, destructive faction runs riot by manipulating the democratic process and by having such a pathetic opposition. Even after all this the liberals are still weak and leftists are engaging in a circular firing squad.

There's no point in comtemplating this stuff because I start to spiral. I should be focused right now on my family, and in a few days, teaching my kids. However, I can't help myself. I called Ben Sasse's office to tell him to knock off his bullshit. I've been writing stuff like this and a couple of other essays. To shrink from a fight right now, no matter how impossible it is, is something I just don't have in me. I know I will likely kick myself for that later.

Virus Journal 3-22-2020

Since my last entry my routine has been well established. During the week I mixed the required assignments from my daughters' teachers with activities of my own. This wasn't just so I could play teacher, my wife is doing necessary work as a tech specialist at her school and the kids need to stay out of her hair. By Friday my lessons got less regimented, and we could relax some more. That afternoon we took a long walk to drop a birthday gift off at a friend's house and had long conversations about what my daughters observed on the way. This allowed for tangents discussing the different levels of government (prompted by them noticing that electrical wires are above the ground here but not in New York City.) When we got home we put together a little robot model with a solar-powered electric motor.

Thursday I ventured out to get some groceries. The main supermarket had everything I needed, except for chicken. The only thing on the shelf was hearts and gizzards! I then went to the local Polish butcher, where I bought their last chicken thighs, which my wife made into an amazing chicken adobo yesterday. I also stopped at the liquor store to get a supplement to my current supplies. My strategy has been to go cheap on beer (which I buy in bulk) and pricey on whiskey. I got some Elijah Craig single barrel (a great value for the quality) and a four pack of a local microbrew just to give my beer supply some variety. The line was the biggest I've ever seen at the liquor store. A rumor raged that the stores would be shut down, but the order yesterday shutting down non-essential businesses did not cover liquor stores. There goes my new career in bootlegging.

I have mostly been making myself as busy as possible. In fact, I am not able to do all the things I want to do each day, which I take as a good sign. In normal times as well boredom is a luxury that I don't have. Yesterday I finished cleaning our screened-in porch, scrubbing away with a sponge and pail of water and Murphy's Oil Soap. I got special motivation from an anxiety attack, the first I've had since the virus hit, and work was my only way out.

This attack came after checking the news and realizing that the only way for the economy to start up again is for there to be massive testing, which is not forthcoming. I began to fear that the president, in all his infantile mania. thought that some "miracle drug" would save us all from the need to take public health measures. I was also freaking out over the lack of support for states suffering the worst, thinking that he didn't care if people in places that didn't vote for him lived or died. I also started freaking out about how the national media has not broken their tendency to bend over backwards to treat Trump as a "normal" president. That combined with his daily propaganda briefings I think has legitimated his authoritarian behavior. Even as Trump shits his pants in public each day and tells lies I can see that this actually makes him MORE powerful.

So I went out back and started scrubbing, then took a three mile walk.

On a happier note, I developed a Dungeons and Dragons adventure to play with my family this week. I am really looking forward to it.

Books

I am still reading Middlemarch, about 200 pages in. I realized that I needed to keep that book at a slow pace due to the richness of the writing. Eliot is one of those authors who packs a lot of meaning on the page. I really love how she is giving such a thick description of a provincial Midlands town circa 1830. When I wrote my dissertatation I was obsessed with how the 19th century novel was grounded in historical thinking, and this one is now exception. Eliot is writing about the world 40 years in the past to get a sense of what in her time represents change. If I had the time and talent I'd love to write something like this about my rural Nebraska stomping grounds and how that out of the way place has gone through its own transformations in recent history.

While I have been moving through Eliot slow, I read another, breezier book more quickly: William B. Irvine's A Guide To The Good Life: the ancient art of stoic joy. It was a Christmas gift from an old dear friend (and reader of the blog) who sensed my growing despair towards the end of last year. I figured the middle of a pandemic was the perfrect time to read a book about Stoic philosophy. I was a philosophy co-major in college, but haven't read any philosophy in quite a long time. The book reminded me of a kind of deep thinking I have missed. The main point of the book is about incorporating Stoic practice in everyday life, rather than the logic chopping of contemporary academic philosophy.

I took a lot of this book to heart. It is important for us to contemplate our eventual death, and the impermanence is everything in our lives. It is important to evaluate our attachments, and to not keep our negative emotions from overwhelming us. I have recently had to deal with some passive aggressiveness from people in my life and the book made me think about how I can deal with that while not bringing me down. Of course, the book has many of the flaws of philosophy as a discipline, namely the excision of social context from its thought process. Saying, for example, that disadvantaged people should merely banish the negative emotions caused by discrimination and oppression is some real bullshit.  But I do not want to be too negative, this book has helped center me this week and remind me that my wife and kids are what matter to me most and that I am lucky to get all this time with them.

Virus Journal, 3-14-2020

[Editor's Note: I have a lot of time at home right now for obvious reasons, and I thought I'd journal my experience with the pandemic, both to process and as a record. In college I read Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year and it really stuck with me, so that's an inspiration here.]

It's hard to tell which day it was that the reality of the virus hit me. Weeks ago my wife started stocking up on medicine and food items, and I gently mocked her for it. She is always quicker than me to get anxious about public events, so my default is usually to be the brake, in order to keep her from spiraling. The day I heard about Lombardy being shut down I told her she was right all along and I was stupid for doubting her. (Married people are aware of what a big deal it is to make such a statement conceding your wrong judgement to your spouse.) 

Early this week we were calm because we had been prepared. The leaders of the school where I teach had also started making plans, so I felt prepared in my job as well. When we had a meeting after school on Monday we were still talking about school closure as a strong possibility after spring break, which was to begin the next week. By the next day the calculus had already shifted, and by the end of the day we learned that the students would be away on Thursday while the faculty planned, and Friday we would be going remote, right before spring break. Meanwhile, each day I commuted by train from New Jersey the number of people riding in got fewer and fewer.

I thought Friday went well, and I was filled with a greater feeling of optimism than I had known in a long time. Whenever one confronts a problem instead of avoiding it, one feels a deep sense of security and control. I was glad other schools were cancelling, I had the feeling that we as a nation had finally gotten serious about this.

This was important because the leadership from the top of the nation has been nothing but a complete shitshow. The president had to finally admit something was wrong, after weeks of talking about a "hoax." His address to the country on Wednesday night was not only a disaster, he seemed completely incapable of matching his emotional affect to the seriousness of the topic. His breathing and speaking were extremely labored, a product of illness, obesity, or both. He seemed to imply that trade with Europe was being cut off, and the market responded by plunging the next day. 

I did not watch his press conference from the Rose Garden yesterday. I was too busy running my online classes and watching my kids, and I wasn't sure my psyche could take another look at this man's complete incompetence in the face of deadly catastrophe. Surreally, his words actually soothed the markets. The corporate overlords just want to make sure that they were protected, and he assured them of that. Meanwhile, the Senate went on recess over the weekend.

That reflected a widespread lack of seriousness about this crisis. I have heard and seen it everywhere. Some of it is politically motivated, like the conservative family member claiming "H1N1 under Obama was worse." Some of it is refusal to alter life patterns, like the friends who went to a crowded restaurant last night. As for my part, I decided to make this morning the last major day out. I went to the barber because I was way overdue for a haircut and beard trim. I also reasoned that they would be a business badly hit by this crisis, and if I was going to get a haircut I should do it ASAP before things got worse. I also made sure to give an extra large tip. Of course I had to hear an insufferable man in the next chair complain that we were all just overreacting to the situation.

From there I went to the local Polish butcher and Asian supermarket. We had stocked up on things, but we needed variety and some fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables. Both places were fully stocked and both were not busy. The only issue I had was that the Asian market was sold out of Daikon radishes, but my wife (who had gone with the kids to visit her parents) managed to get some at the Korean produce market hear where they live. We will be having banh mi for dinner tomorrow. The fact that Whole Foods and Trader Joe's locally were sold out on Friday made me laugh. The basic bougie folk of suburbia have horizons that are far too narrow.

I should add that before I went to the butcher I stopped into a Catholic church around the corner, which had a sign on the door announcing it was not hosting masses this weekend. My religious situation is pretty ambivalent. I guess I am an agnostic lapsed Catholic who attends Episcopal services from time to time. I don't know if someone is on the other side of the line, but I still pray. I went into the church and prayed for a bit while someone was practicing some pretty sublime music on piano. I prayed that the people facing this crisis would have strength and wisdom.

What I saw later today made me realize how relevant my prayer was. It seems that the nation's bars are jammed, that a great many people are releasing the tension of the current moment by going out and trying to be with other people. At this point I wonder why I am reconfiguring my entire job as a teacher when these other people can't be bothered to stay away from the bar. Of course, the bigger problem comes from the lack of government action to regulate all this stuff and give all of us a sense of what we should actually be DOING.

For now I guess I will have to use my spring break putting my courses online and keeping my children entertained. We have already drawn up a calendar for the "school" day. I am the opposite of a homebody, so I am get a feeling that social distancing is going to take a toll on my psyche.

While the fact that I feel like I am doing something to improve the situation is helping, the nagging anxieties won't go away. I keep thinking there's a good chance that someone I love will die, and I will not even be able to go to their funeral. That thought haunts my waking hours. In the meantime, I try to stay busy and have fun with my family. What else can be done?