In which… yeah, idk. It’s a new year. Arbitrary date. Whatever.

I sleep a lot because what else is there to do! Still scrolling Twitter and Instagram and watching massive amounts of streaming TV. Still not reading or knitting or painting. My mending basket looks exactly the same as it has forever.

I cook, work, and do chores. That’s my entire life. Occasionally I attend a virtual satsang or retreat, which is really nice and I’m super grateful for it but still, it’s just me sitting on my living room floor in front of the TV watching a live YouTube stream.

In the past, oh, six months or so, I’ve had a few days of swollen lymph nodes, but like I’ve said before I think it’s related to a dental infection I haven’t yet had addressed. (Specialist is in Walla Walla, transpo’s a bitch. Normally I’d just catch a ride and while away the extra time in a bar or coffee shop, but there’s a pandemic on.)

Last Wednesday I had that tight lung feeling you get right before you wake up sick with influenza, but it went away without getting worse. It’s the second time that’s happened. I don’t know if it’s an immune response or maybe from chain vaping too much. It makes me wonder, though, if I’m asymptomatic — people come into my shop unmasked all the fucking time, plus all my co-workers have other jobs, school, and families. I’m living in rural Oregon and see fewer people in half a year now than I did in a week back in Minneapolis, but I’m still indirectly exposed to hundreds of people I don’t know, and any one of them could be sick.

Last year I went to the dentist for the first time in years and discovered my root canal had failed, which resulted in three more appointments: one to repair the root canal (a fourth root had to be cleared out), another to fill the crown, and then another to replace the crown when it cracked in half. I’ve been stabbed with needles at least two dozen times, since each appointment required full numbing. So many needles, Christ.

At the crown replacement appointment last week, the nurse sneezed. Twice. She was wearing a mask and a couple feet away from me at the time but I was lying there in the chair thinking, “Well, that moment right there could be me dead.” It’s a weird way to live, with the knowledge in the back of your head that anybody you interact with could potentially kill you.

I read a lot of medical Twitter and it’s fucking awful. Hospitals all around the world are over capacity, which means if you get in a car accident or have a heart attack, you might not get treatment. So even if you avoid COVID-19, it might kill you anyway.

Then there’s acute Covid. Click this and read the thread to get scared shitless:

And Long Covid? Holy shit. Organ failures. Amputations. Strokes, embolisms. Breathlessness. Fatigue. It’s looking like for each of our 350k dead, there are another 16 or so who may be permanently disabled? (That’s 5,600,000 possibly PERMANENTLY DISABLED FROM COVID-19 IN THIS COUNTRY ALONE so far.) And motherfuckers are out there refusing to wear a piece of cloth over their faces?

I can imagine being disappointed, after decades of, say, zealous survival prepping, that your moment of sacrifice isn’t the zombie apocalypse, but merely a call to wash your hands. But holy shit these people are DUMB. AS. FUCK. They deny reality and fight about “the economy” like it’s a law of nature and not just a human construct. And the rampant ableism and willingness to sacrifice human life is truly disgusting: people with asthma and diabetes can live entirely normal lives with some drugs, they don’t deserve to die of a PREVENTABLE DISEASE because something-something “the economy” and “pre-existing conditions.”

Reading the Faces of Covid account should be fucking mandatory. It’s not “just” old people and sick people, it’s hundreds of thousands of people dead that shouldn’t be.

And then there’s a the vaccine rollout. So fucked up ALREADY that doses are spoiling before being administered, and so slowly that at this rate we won’t have herd immunity for seven more years.

Oh, and only $1,800 stimulus in NINE MONTHS. That’s it. It’s a fucking farce.

And here’s me, snug and safe. I feel weird about how protected I am during all this. I don’t deserve to be, considering I contribute fuck-all to the overall wellbeing of the world, but I have a small job in a small town, and so does my SO. We have plenty of money. We have a really comfortable home. None of this is hurting me directly, and yet somehow I can still have compassion for everybody else.

Uh, I own three tablecloths now. I really like having our own washer & dryer. I mastered falafel in the past year, as well as bread. I have discovered that I love French raclette. I got a raise. I bought some clothes I’ve always wanted (most specifically this, in cocoa!!! expensive as hell, but hand-made and I loooove it). I get three days off per week, like I’m some sort of goddamned royalty. My fountain pen collection is still cool as hell. Christmas was fine. My SO is walking around wearing his black & red bathrobe like a boss.

I don’t know. I guess happy new year and stay safe out there, babies.