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In Medias Tardapocalypsis
Aug. 22nd, 2021 01:55 pmIt's starting to feel like the walls are closing in.
COVID case at the kiddo's new school on Day 1.
My partner's sister, a nurse, has now tested positive. She has a kid who is still too young to vaccinate.
But mostly, I'm still not used to how deserted the future looks.
Not to get all metaphysical, but I typically have some vague sense about where I'm headed in the future. It's not that it's ever been all that accurate, only that it had been consistently useful. My relationship with metaphysics is often what I call "falling down the right flight of stairs", that going through the motions of where I thought I wanted to be actually lands me exactly where I was needed to be, however far aflung from my intention. And in late 2019, I developed this weird vibe that my future stopped existing past the early months of 2020. I told everyone it was a "death card event", because when I tried to describe it as "on the level of a major death" and not "on the level of a Death card", people got upset. My instincts were more nuanced, too: I had gotten excited about the prospect of finishing grad school around the same time, and when I had to delay I somehow knew that all of the fun and logistics of graduation would disappear. Either I walked the stage in December of 2019 with full regalia, graduation photos, the works... or I didn't celebrate at all.
What's funny is I didn't even make the connection with "death card event" right away when the pandemic set in. It was months later when I put it together. THIS was the thing I couldn't see around. THIS was the thing that was so big it would change everything in my life -- even though it didn't. It changed everything AROUND my life. My pandemic life, even in lockdown, hasn't changed all that much from graduate school. Stay home a lot, try to make meaningful work that gets noticed, hope that it leads to gainful employment... someday...
And now here we are, 20 months after my sense of any future evaporated. I spent the first half of 2021 plotting to get hired out of state and bail since no one was taking the pandemic seriously anyway, but that was my own anxiety, seasoned with the trauma of Texas' catastrophic power failure in February. I knew the pandemic wasn't over, I was just angry and felt helpless.
I still struggle to see more than a few weeks out -- making intentions rather than plans -- and to find my motivation in all of it. I know some things that helped last year, but to the extent I can extrapolate anything (whether it's logic or instinct or esoteric voices whispering in my ear) I am certain we have yet to see the worst of it. And since my family is stable with minimal involvement from me, I can't tell whether I should be using this time to brain-hack myself further (my general habit up to this point) or to just de-center any sense of self. Maybe I just need to be present more than I need to need to do anything.
COVID case at the kiddo's new school on Day 1.
My partner's sister, a nurse, has now tested positive. She has a kid who is still too young to vaccinate.
But mostly, I'm still not used to how deserted the future looks.
Not to get all metaphysical, but I typically have some vague sense about where I'm headed in the future. It's not that it's ever been all that accurate, only that it had been consistently useful. My relationship with metaphysics is often what I call "falling down the right flight of stairs", that going through the motions of where I thought I wanted to be actually lands me exactly where I was needed to be, however far aflung from my intention. And in late 2019, I developed this weird vibe that my future stopped existing past the early months of 2020. I told everyone it was a "death card event", because when I tried to describe it as "on the level of a major death" and not "on the level of a Death card", people got upset. My instincts were more nuanced, too: I had gotten excited about the prospect of finishing grad school around the same time, and when I had to delay I somehow knew that all of the fun and logistics of graduation would disappear. Either I walked the stage in December of 2019 with full regalia, graduation photos, the works... or I didn't celebrate at all.
What's funny is I didn't even make the connection with "death card event" right away when the pandemic set in. It was months later when I put it together. THIS was the thing I couldn't see around. THIS was the thing that was so big it would change everything in my life -- even though it didn't. It changed everything AROUND my life. My pandemic life, even in lockdown, hasn't changed all that much from graduate school. Stay home a lot, try to make meaningful work that gets noticed, hope that it leads to gainful employment... someday...
And now here we are, 20 months after my sense of any future evaporated. I spent the first half of 2021 plotting to get hired out of state and bail since no one was taking the pandemic seriously anyway, but that was my own anxiety, seasoned with the trauma of Texas' catastrophic power failure in February. I knew the pandemic wasn't over, I was just angry and felt helpless.
I still struggle to see more than a few weeks out -- making intentions rather than plans -- and to find my motivation in all of it. I know some things that helped last year, but to the extent I can extrapolate anything (whether it's logic or instinct or esoteric voices whispering in my ear) I am certain we have yet to see the worst of it. And since my family is stable with minimal involvement from me, I can't tell whether I should be using this time to brain-hack myself further (my general habit up to this point) or to just de-center any sense of self. Maybe I just need to be present more than I need to need to do anything.
