Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

also even if you worry about the *right* thing your worrying isn't go to change it

— Chronic Worrier

I'm sorry katherine. Many <3s.

Also booming post from Lechera. I wrote something longer about the daily labors being what actually keeps things going until the future is the present, but it's been said before and better.

This weekend was one of the harder ones for me, just in terms of mentally dealing with the loss of everything that will not be happening. While every single one of them was anticipated, Friday I was overwhelmed with a whole sting of cancellation confirmations - kid's school out for the rest of the year, my son's baseball (for which I was to be coaching) canceled for the year, a trip with friends to Colorado in late summer canceled, baseball camp for my son canceled. Again, we were anticipating all of those, but it was a bit overwhelming to see them all in black and white on the same day.

Obviously not as serious as those of you struggling with being ill or ill family members, but it was the first weekend during which the scope of this thing threatened to pull me under.

"string"

I want to bring all my friends who are struggling home to stay with me, and all the suffering ilxors too.

NYC just canceled all public events requiring permits through the end of June. No Pride parade, no Puerto Rican Day parade, etc.

God it seems like a different age when the Tartan Day parade organizers were trying to hedge their bets even after St Pat's was cancelled, and I was yelling at them on twitter to do the right thing and cancel or sacrifice their primarily portly, older, red-faced followers. Like it was even a possibility that they would have a parade and then pack thousands of ppl into a venue in mid-April.

It feels more and more like -- whether you choose to focus on the present or not -- that you are going to be processed by whatever is going on. Whether you get covid, or whether you will have work or make rent over the next month...just howls of laughter when I got my pension statement through the post the other day. No way that's happening. It feels certain to me although part of me just doesn't want to see what the world will look like.

in orbit otm, it's crazy to think that I was at one point arguing with a friend of mine who was insistent on taking their kids to the St. Patrick's Day parade! Fortunately the city wisely came to their senses and canceled it first.

Our retirement account statement came the other day and I filed that one away unopened....

I will check on my net worth again sometime next year.

I do well not dwelling on stuff during the day, but as soon as I try and fall asleep it's like a pack of wolves descending on my mind... the wisdom is sound, but the habit is hard to break.

I've noticed some things on my once sometimes twice weekly jaunts outside. For a start I feel like shit when I'm outside, I feel like coughing as soon as the air hits me - which I assume is probably hay fever. Secondly I'm amazed at how many people there are out and about - social distancing? You're 'avin' a laugh! Also traffic is still annoyingly ever present - that's fucking London for you. Buses are still running and they're much emptier but we're not talking like one or two passengers per bus, put it this way, I wouldn't get on one.

those people on the bus are probably going to the job that they're forced to go to, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Xh7VB-u-U

in other words, they probably wouldn't get on one either, if they had a choice

xp

What, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon?

It's London, the place is full of dipsticks.

the thing about the future vs. the present is that the present is being alone, hemorrhaging money and what's left of any career prospects I might have, gaining weight and getting older, having social ties atrophy. and then all of this is also happening on a global scale, and any options I might have previously had to improve my situation are no longer possible. and even when lockdown is over there will be pressure to self-lockdown anyway until there's a vaccine, which is 1-2 years.

I also lol at communications about my pension, it already existed in the realm of mythology for me and I pay into it as an act of radical optimism - yes, there will be such a thing as retirement for me in 2053 and I will get this much money to live on and it will be enough, sure - but now the idea is even more of a joke and paying in more than the minimum contribution feels mildly quixotic. Maybe UBI will be sufficient after the post-covid reconstruction tho eh

retirement is darkly funny to me because earlier this year I was finally in a position where I could start saving for retirement, but kept putting off opening the account (in part because when does one have the time to spend potentially hours in a bank?), and of course since the stock market crashed earlier this year would have been an awful time to start one

lol katherine, similar thing happened to me. i started up an account 2 months ago. at least since i invested little, I lost little, but sigh

i chose not to contribute to a 401k at my new job, because i doubt i will ever retire, HR followed up to try to convince me to use it, the day we went WFH i'd had a meeting with the company rep that afternoon which is now obviously cancelled indefinitely. felt a little bit redeemed

Also booming post from Lechera.

Seconded. Reminds me of this Rebecca Solnit quote:

Despair is a form of certainty, certainty that the future will be a lot like the present or decline from it. Optimism is similarly confident about what will happen. Both are grounds for not acting. Hope can be the knowledge that reality doesn't necessarily match our plans.

And also regarding quarantine life more generally, from Clarice Lispector:

Living is like being tired and not being able to sleep.

Both are grounds for not acting.
philosophy it's a smile on a dog

that's not a bad album really

It’s a walk on a slippery rock? I thought religion was a smile on a dog 🐶

Also I always thought it was a smile on a doll. Is it dog??

the talk on a cereal box:a smile on a dog::a walk on the slippery rocks:a light in the fog

Philosophy is a walk in a cereal box: religion is a fly on a dog. I get it now.

In a verse that was ultimately cut from the final arrangement, Ms. Brickell is reputed to have asserted that semiotics is a frown on a cat.

Dog Fly Religion?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kzJE31TsPA

that me butchering the ref could turn into some lols for me is not bad not bad. :)

Living is like being tired and not being able to sleep.

― avellano medio inglés (f. hazel), Monday, 20 April 2020 16:57 (one hour ago) link

I wish this were a metaphor instead of an increasingly common occurrence in my life -- last night I attempted to get some sleep at 4:30, failed to do so, gave up around 5:45 and have been up since

"Despair is a form of certainty, certainty that the future will be a lot like the present or decline from it. Optimism is similarly confident about what will happen. Both are grounds for not acting. Hope can be the knowledge that reality doesn't necessarily match our plans."

I don't think this quote really gets to anything much. It does feel like covid has put in a place a process which we will be all chewed up and spat out - we could come out of it better or worse, if we happen to get it/live through it. Optimism or despair does feel like it's for the world after that. It's more like we are being shaken up.

officially postponed my wedding and let the guests know over the weekend. i know that it's ultimately the right decision, and me and my fiancé are lucky to have our loved ones and jobs unaffected (so far), but damn if it isn't a huge bummer.

postponement was a full year, to june 2021, and part of me is worried that we might not have pushed it back far enough.

depends on how anxiety and despair affect you, I guess... this is not a kind of stasis where we aren't subject to being damaged, and I can use these kind of incantations to break the surface of an irrational mode of thinking that tends to settle in.

(xpost)

I would love for Djokovic to retire because of his refusal to be vaccinated. I would love never have to see his stupid face again.

and of course since the stock market crashed earlier this year would have been an awful time to start one

― like, I’m eating an elephant head (katherine), Tuesday, 21 April 2020 1:32 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Best time to start one, you catch the recovery with your early investments. Also no need to go to the bank. Use the time to start one online. Pick an institution that is too big to fail, put some money in. You can sort out the details later.

Nobody not close to retirement lost anything (much) in the crash. It’s there for the long term; 20,30,40 years away.

I mean there is also the very substantial possibility of needing the money in the near future

I've a close friend who a month ago invested (first time!) in airline stocks, anticipating some kind of pay day when "this" is over.

Air travel ain’t going back to how it was. Whether that correlates with the stock price of airlines is unclear to me

Will the changes you anticipate in air travel be due to individuals choosing to travel less, businesses reducing business travel, governments regulating free movement more closely, or some combination of these? Of the three factors I named, I think the first effect will fade within a couple of years, the second is likely to have the most repercussions, and I don't think the third is very likely to happen.

I think a lot of remote-working tech has completely outstrippped senior exec's ability to keep up and they've had their eyes opened in recent months to the fact that it's not Skype and ICQ out there any longer.

Their long-held "people need to be in the office where I can see them" and "you better get on a plane" is going to be replaced for many with "how many expensive buildings do we actually need?" and "travel over my dead body"

xpost picking up what Ed is saying, if you just want a non-employer retirement account, you could just set up a Roth IRA quickly online. You could leave all the money as cash if you don't want to purchase anything at this time or feel like you might want to withdraw it, but at least the account is there if you change your mind.

https://reallifemag.com/grounded/

Business travel is pointless and where, presumably, all the money is made, and I don't know why it would ever go back to previous levels, surely hardly anybody likes it or views it as a perk

Flying is an already-miserable experience made more miserable by security theater, maybe this time next year the airlines will be selling anywhere-in-the-US tickets for $49 or something to get people to come back but a year to get used to not flying places or going anywhere at all might be enough for some people to get out of the habit.

If I hadn't moved across the country from my parents I probably would never fly at all, covid or not

That's a nice read. I wonder if there's going to be a business to be had in offering first-class Zoom or telepresence suites, like internet cafes of old.

just pop in The Shining dynamic background like i do, boom job done

I would love for Djokovic to retire because of his refusal to be vaccinated. I would love never have to see his stupid face again.

― Yerac, Monday, April 20, 2020 5:25 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^^
Rafa 4ever.