The pandemic is putting me on edge.
I wonder how common this feeling is. However common it is, I'm definitely feeling it.
Part of that is just not knowing how to act. I'm not a really social person to start with, but it's extremely odd for me not to go anywhere, if I'm adhering to the recommendations. No stopping in the sporting goods store, for example, just to peruse.
And dealing with other people is suddenly really odd. Some people want to wholly disregard the entire pandemic, as for example the people who gathered in Pioneer Park yesterday.
But it's not just them. If somebody keeps bringing clients and the like into the office to eat lunch, because they're a highly gregarious person and a world in which you don't do that (I don't even eat lunch in the office normally, as I don't eat lunch) is completely unimaginable to them, it makes me tense. Are we supposed to be doing that?
No Public Masses has me on edge. It's a huge disruption of my routine and I'm not sure how to adjust to it.
The fact that its a non observant Lent puts me on edge, particularly as my wife, who isn't Catholic, definitely isn't observing my observations, which she has no obligation to. One minor one I made is to give up beer over the Lenten season, which is no big deal for me except that beer keeps appearing in the refrigerator which makes having a beer, after a tense day, at dinner, pretty tempting.
And frankly having a full house again after just getting used to it just being two people has me on edge. It's not that people are here, I love my family, it's just that a small house with four adults with radically different work patterns is a renewed shock to me in ways it shouldn't be. My daughter's study patterns are much like my own, daytime and solitary. My son's are the polar opposite, nighttime (but solitary), which I've never been able to do. I never worked later than 8:00 p.m. as an undergraduate and never later than 9:00, and rarely at that, as a law student. I worked lots of times, however, at 5:00 a.m. None of that bothers me save for having this computer ten feet, albeit in another room, from where I go to bed and my association with folks who study late is universally unhappy and it causes me endless angst for the person who does it. Indeed, the latter really causes me angst as everyone I ever knew who did the late night studying didn't make it through their degree programs and it's impossible for me not to recall that. And the lawyers I've known who worked that way burnt out, flamed out, for just did bad work.
That puts me on edge and makes me worry.
The economy has me on edge. I'm not optimistic about it recovering, which does not put me in the "open it all back up" camp. Its badly damaged now, and I don't think we'll see it pull out this year, or next. As the only income earner in a family of four, that has me extremely worried.
And part of that extreme worry is watching a lifetime of retirement savings evaporate. I know that it should come back, but what if it doesn't any time soon and the economy also tanks beyond repair. We already have an imperiled economy here as it is.
That's bound to make a person worry.
I'm also on edge due to the concerns that other people have that I don't. I don't worry about having to go to a new dog groomer as the old one has now moved on to another job. Indeed, I don't even care about that, and the fact that nobody else in the family cares about it either puts my wife on edge and that in turn puts me on edge.
The odd exceptions that people make to pandemic restrictions puts me on edge. We must all self isolate. . . unless it involves this one person whom all the women in the extended family make an exception for. . . we must all self isolate . . unless it involves a friend whom surely does not have it.. . we must all self isolate. . except for going to work as I feel I must be in the office.
On edge.
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