Living in Interesting Times
I could not have picked a better time to revive this blog, right? Everything is fine, it’s all right. We’re not in the middle of one of the bleakest periods in modern history, less than a week away from an election that will make the difference between things being slightly less shitty, and even more shitty than we could imagine. What better time to start sharing the thoughts that rise to the top of my insect brain like so much delicious cream again?
So yes, I’m back to trying to update this thing again, largely because, after over six straight months of feeling like I had one (1) functioning crumb of serotonin left, I’ve suddenly generated enough to do more than merely exist. I don’t know how long it’ll last. This might be my only post, followed by another ten months of nothing. As much as I want to make promises, empty or otherwise, about what I’ll be doing here, it’s probably better to just take it day by day, like an alcoholic, only I’m addicted to attention.
I figured I’d start by breaking down my thoughts over annus horribilis and what I’ve learned from it so far, though my next post will likely be revisiting my experience watching Supertrain or some dumb shit like that.
The pandemic
I was a strange child who was interested in strange things (for a child, at least). After watching an HBO documentary about the Spanish Flu, I developed a minor obsession with plagues and epidemics. I took great pleasure in explaining to my classmates (who were, of course, rapt with attention) the origin of “Ring Around the Rosy,” and reading about the quaintly named “National Hotel Disease.” Then, when I was an adult, and understood what such words as “paranoid” and “hypochondria” meant, the idea of mass illness was less fascinating and more terrifying. I tried to read The Hot Zone, and put it down immediately following the description of someone vomiting a substance that looked like wet coffee grounds, an image that has been seared into my subconscious for the rest of my mortal life. Reading about this kind of thing happening in the far-off past, it was gripping, but not particularly scary. To know that the events in The Hot Zone happened a mere five years earlier was too much to process.
That being said, with a naivety that is damn near unforgivable, I didn’t think a genuine “hundreds of thousands dead” pandemic would even touch the shores of the United States in 2020, let alone weave a path of destruction for more than seven months straight with little sign of abating. Sure, we had been threatened with ebola (the same virus about which The Hot Zone was written), bird flu, H1N1, but those were quickly contained. However, in one of countless ways the current President has proven himself to be unqualified to be the town honeypot cleaner, let alone leader of the free world, science was ignored (if not outright dismissed), and instead of bringing people together to look out for each other, it was used as the perfect opportunity to sow discord. Whose side are you going to be on, namby-pamby liberals who are afraid of a little cold, or rock-solid Trump supporters, who have no qualms about spreading an infectious disease, and probably make dumb jokes about how COVID-19 caught Chuck Norris, instead of the other way around.
What I’ve learned
Though i was certain my boss wouldn’t close our office if Andrew Cuomo himself kicked the door down and dragged him out, we did go completely remote for almost four months, and I discovered that I’m not very good at working from home. Don’t get me wrong, I was able to do my job, for the most part, but everything they tell you to do if you’re working from home--don’t do it in your pajamas, make a schedule for yourself, create a separate workspace--I did the complete opposite of that. There were entire days in which the only time I got out of bed was to use the restroom and get something to eat. I turned into Miss Rollings from True Stories (hence the cover image). I knew I was supposed to be doing something, exercising, taking walks around my neighborhood, etc., but I remained stuck in a haze of fear, anger, despair and guilt. I slept a lot. I stress vomited. I listened to several hours of America’s Top 40 from the 80s, because the perhaps misguided nostalgia felt more important to me than it ever had before, and if you’ve spent enough time reading my writing, you’ll know it means a lot,
At least there was that, because my creativity and productivity went right down the toilet. A few days ago the New York Times’ book review Twitter feed smugly tweeted that “when most people were watching Tiger King, Pete Buttigieg started writing a book.” They’re right, I did watch a six part documentary instead of writing a book, as if the two require an equal amount of time and mental effort. I didn’t write a book. Other than some film and TV reviews, I didn’t write anything, not a single word. Hell, I barely read anything--the other day I managed to finish only the second book I’ve been able to read since all this went down. Faced with the gravity of current events, rather than steeling myself and making the best of it like my grandparents would have, my brain turned to cottage cheese and I spent a lot of time crying. Now I’m here writing this, and still crying a lot, but maybe a little less than I was three months ago. More than anything else I’m just mad a lot, and grateful to be living where I am, because if I lived anywhere in which people seem to be gleefully giving the finger to the idea of wearing a mask so as not to spread or contract disease, I’d probably be in jail by now.
I have moved
Despite the Conservative talking points about how New York City is now a crumbling ghost town populated only by rats and the errant crackhead or two, I foolishly insist on continuing to live here. I have moved, however, to a neighborhood as equally unhip as my last neighborhood, although it does boast two different sub shops with sandwiches named after prominent Italian-Americans (I highly recommend the Phil Rizzuto). It was long overdue, after surely breaking some sort of record for living in a non-rent controlled apartment for more than fifteen years. The building was in the kind of condition that a rent broker would describe as “having a lot of character,” meaning that the floors were literally beginning to separate from the walls, taking a shower was a race against the clock before the hot water ran out, and the landlord, rather than try to fix anything, would make half-hearted attempts at trying to sell it every few months.
The new place may have less “character,” but the showers have been luxurious.
What I’ve learned
Oh my god, I have so much stuff. Well, less stuff now, but still a lot of stuff. Before the move, however, holy shit. When you get good at cramming things in every empty space that’s bigger than a postage stamp, you start to lose focus of how many things you actually have. Books I didn’t remember buying, let alone reading. Clothes that were a decade out of fashion. Souvenir mugs for places I had never been. All I needed was a stockpile of canned pasta, and I could have been on an episode of Hoarders. Okay, it wasn’t quite that depressing, but it was overwhelming. I initially tried to take the Marie Kondo “does it spark joy” approach to getting rid of stuff, but after a couple days of that hemming and hawing I just began emptying out entire bookshelves into cardboard boxes to be put outside, without even really looking to see what was going in there. One of those books may have held a map to pirate treasure, but oh well, I guess I’ll never know. What would I do with pirate treasure anyway, except maybe buy more books.
Whatever we pay movers and junk removal services, they’re worth double that. For a country that prides itself on supposed raw strength and fortitude, we have a bafflingly snotty opinion of those in the labor force. Sanitation worker? Guess that person has a criminal record. Gas station attendant? Don’t you want something better for your life? Furniture mover? Sure, if you’re a college student between semesters. Who’s going to be sneering when you’ve slipped a disc and gotten a couch stuck in a stairwell? Imagine, say, Lindsey Graham trying to move a 600 pound armoire. Pay these people what they’re worth.
Finally, styrofoam is the work of the Devil.
On a personal note…
I’m...ugh.
Just the fact that I’m reluctant to even talk about it publicly tells you what a fraught situation this is for me, but here it is: I’m currently in the midst of perimenopause. What does that mean? Well, in the simplest terms it means the ol’ baby factory is closing for business, forever. It also means that I’m continuing to fade out of existence, like Marty McFly before he managed to get his parents to kiss.
What I’ve learned
It fucking sucks. Oh, there’s plenty of hippie-dippy sugarcoating about how perimenopause is just another phase, and when we emerge from it we’ll be more powerful and full of wisdom than ever before. But I won’t lie to you: it sucks. Take the worst aspects of adolescence, combine them with PMS, plus all manner of other weird shit that shouldn’t be connected to your reproductive organs but are somehow, plus insomnia on top of that, and that barely scratches the surface. It’s particularly difficult because we as a society aren’t comfortable talking about vaginas unless there’s a penis or a finger involved, so one occasionally feels terrified, distraught and very, very alone, even if one knows that what one is experiencing is supposedly “natural.”
It’s me. I’m that one. I won’t give you a laundry list of the various miseries I’ve experienced during all this, but I will say that the mood swings, which sometimes feel like someone is pointing a remote control at my brain, are particularly delightful. I’ve barely had to confront the looming sense of mortality or the massive existential crisis this has brought on (which I was already struggling with thanks to the pandemic), because I’m too busy sobbing when Spotify puts “Purple Rain” on a playlist, or furiously Ace Ventura-ing a box through my house because it’s too heavy to pick up. I am, to put it plainly a mess, and while I’ve been able to pull my shit together long enough to write this post, I may not be tomorrow.
So really, I have no idea why I picked now to start this up again. I have ideas about what I want to do with it (I always have ideas, I just have trouble convincing myself that they’re worth a damn), but who knows if I’ll be able to keep up with it for very long. I’m going to go into full triggered snowflake mode and say that if the election goes badly, this may end up being my only post again for a long, long time, because whatever small crumb of hope I’ve been clinging onto recently that things maybe might get better soon will be gone. I don’t know that I would really be able to muster up the energy to watch an entire season of Out of This World and write about it. On the other hand, if I’m still stuck in my house by this time next year, what else better do I have to do?
