I Need A Vacation

Like everybody else, the pandemic is "top of mind" 24 x 7 for me. I'm writing to help myself not internalize all of it. You can find other posts in the series at https://odonnellweb.com/pelican/tag/coronavirus.html

I need a vacation. That’s it. That’s the whole post.

Ok, I’ll write some more. I didn’t write anything yesterday, so I guess I owe both of my readers at least that.

I really need a vacation. I haven’t taken a day off all year. Our 5 days in Charleston just after Christmas seems like a lifetime ago, and it hasn’t even been 4 months. And of course, we should have been in Puerto Rico this week. If you think I’m whining IDGAF. It’s my blog and I’ll whine if I want to.

If I take off from work what would I do? At least work gives me something to do for 50% of my waking hours 5 days a week. I don’t think 16 hours of Netflix would really help. I just know that I’ve been increasingly cranky this week. I thought I was doing a pretty good job with the lock-in. I’ve realized from early on that this is not a 4-6 week thing. It’s probably going to be into summer 2021 before we can return to anything resembling normal from 2 months ago. However, this week the stress is getting to me. I thought I was settling into a routine, I even wrote about it a couple of blog posts ago. I may have declared victory too soon.

Another thought, after 40,000 or 100,000 people die, can we really go back? I don’t see normal from last month ever being normal again. We lived in the land of lucky, especially in the US, mostly oblivious to the many microscopic things out there that can kill us. Can we ever be that oblivious again? The low information white people protesting with their Confederate flags that we need to open up the country now, so they can get their hair done or buy grass seed (two actual statements from low information white people in Michigan on April 15) are pining for a world that no longer exists.

Would you venture into a crowd of 30,000 people at a sporting event this summer? Or 500 at a club show for your favorite band? Realistically, I don’t think we’ll have that opportunity, but would you if you could? I see myself maintaining a social distance policy right up to the day I get vaccinated. Not living my best life for the next 18 months does kind of suck as a plan. However, not living at all is a worse outcome.