Plague Diaries, Issue 54: May 6-7, 2020

For the last couple of days, I've been silent on the blog here, for the simple reason that literally, nothing has transpired that merits any remarks. Wednesday and Thursday seemed to bled together: sat inside my home, doing work, napping, petting my cats, eating. I berated myself for not doing more. I thanked whatever higher power is listening that I am not yet sick. I re-read books that I have read many times before, because I knew what would happen, and that's a huge comfort right now. I skyped with my sisters and zoomed with colleagues and visited with Susan and shook my head over the news. I listened to the birds sing, I watched the trees start to bedeck themselves in their summer foliage, I wondered when I will see my friends again. Late last night, I went onto Google Streetview and explored far northeastern Indiana, day-dreaming about a time when I can drive up there and visit friends and see a different part of the state and simply...escape.

It's becoming more and more clear to me that 2020, at least, is going to be a lost year. I'm not saying, exactly, that our lives are wasted during this time. But it does feel like this time--these weeks and months--is lost to us in many ways, as we cannot live and love and experience and explore and carry on as we used to have the privilege to do. (Right now, I am not going to unpack the "p" word. Yes, we were privileged to have the freedom and means to live the lives that we have lived up until this point, but just because it was a privilege doesn't make it less painful, now that we have lost that privilege. Or maybe it should. But again, right now, I'm not going to unpack my privilege beyond acknowledging its existence.) Yes, we can live meaningful lives shut up in our homes, but both the things that brought us joy--plans and dreams and goals and trips and treats and meaningful human interactions--and the things that seemed like unremarkable, quotidian drudgeries--errands and tedious work meetings and meaningless human interactions and picking up our mail without washing our hands afterwards like we're channeling Lady MacBeth--have been denied to us, so the definition of meaningful lives, or at least the execution of meaningful lives, must change.

Also, I'm long enough in the tooth now to really fucking resent having lost this time. I'm turning 40 in a few weeks, for fucks sake; I don't have so many prime years of my life left to surrender this time with good grace.

I know that there are people reading this who probably think I am being feeble or defeatist or grumbly and am limiting my definitions about what a good and meaningful life can look like right now. And they might not be wrong. Nonetheless, this is how I feel right now. Well, lest it seems like I am completely and unabashedly wallowing, I'll end this reflection on a bitterly humorous note: It's kinda funny: before the end of the world, I wasted plenty of my life, lost hours to god only knows what, didn't have much meaning to my existence quite often. But I chose that, dammit.)

Daily Indiana COVID-19 Count:

Total Number of Cases: 22,503

1,295 people have died

Nationwide: 73, 297 people have died.