Afternoon Pages: January 23rd, 2021

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the D.C. metro region has been in a state of lockdown. To alleviate fear and stress, my writer's group has put together a daily "morning pages" get-together on Zoom in order to touch base before starting the day. Here's some of my brief thoughts.

Kitteh falls asleep drinking milk.

Ahhhhhhh

So, Biden's inauguration was this past Wednesday and I honestly feel worse than I did than when Trump was president. Not because Biden is worse than Trump, but probably because he's better (but not good enough). There's all this talk about unity and surrendering to the will of insurrectionists and I don't like it very much. And I'm terrified people will forget the bad things and not press forward in order to fix the country. Also might just be release of stress hormones now that I feel a bit safer to fall apart. I need to build up some habits to remain engaged with my community. I signed up to volunteer for the local library to teach things like Excel, also the CERT teams for emergency management in Arlington in case things go real south in a few months time, and USDS (though they rejected me out of hand so I don't have to worry about that).

I can't shake the feeling that 2020 was the tutorial. And level 1 is still out there. A pandemic that only killed 400,000 so far (and 600,000 total projected right now)...seems low. I can very easily imagine a pandemic that can take out 60% of the U.S. population in 3 months time, the kind Dark Winter forecasted that would result in the total collapse of most organized civilization, where doctors are literally locked into hospitals by soldiers and where the military starts shooting civilians out of hand in panic. I'm wondering what I can do to prepare for such a situation. Probably start with CERT. Never go alone.

In more positive news, I just finished my 2020 year in review!! It's the first time I digitized all the things in my spreadsheets. I think it's a good start in order to produce some life management software framework, get on that database-backed spreadsheet app. This weekend is more productive; it kind of has to be given the personal deadlines I'm looking to meet.