I am surprised that I am posting here now.
I am not surprised at my inconsistency. Or my empty promises to myself.
Where have I been the past five months? (December's post does not count.)
Certainly not writing my novel. Nope. I burned myself out in November, and on December 2nd, after working a long day and writing in a room where the television was never off, with half a page written I closed the document and self imposed a deadline I knew, in my heart, I would not keep. The extent to which I would not keep it was an unpredictable mystery, rooted in emotional and irrational whims. Could be a week, could be a month. I lived for a week or two by mercurial work-related excuses and then my computer died. By the time I got a new one I had dredged a new reason for not writing: no reason. This was unprecedented. Not even guilt was a motivating factor.
I kept an empty promise to my one friend who followed up once since November regarding my progress. When he didn't follow up on the day when I told him I would be ready with a sample chapter for proofreading I was transported back to my school days of wishing myself invisible and slipping through the cracks of an indifferent teacher. I did not receive the Shame of Failure that I deserved--and was a requirement for motivation--and coasted on various excuses throughout the months, living the fullness of that Lie until the Truth eventually caught up, as it always does.
So what were the immediate reasons leading to this surprise post?
The World is ending.
That is not new though; the world has always been ending. Civilizations are always (gradually) ending. (I am not going to be tempted with a tangent.)
I no longer read the news, a choice I made before the world Officially began ending in real time in January with the announcement of this alien virus from China. Pompous Americans such as myself chuckled at the filthy culture of the Chinese, thinking 'it could never happen here' while poking fun at viral (pun intended) images of 'Bat Soup.' Ah, the good old days.
Doing my best to ignore and avoid what I thought was a non-story/media bait, I lived my life, praying daily, reading books on topics of personal interest and attending lectures to meet like minded, apolitical friends. It was working and my life was improving away from the mental serfdom of the legacy media, or even the superior underground, social media personalities. 'They all fear monger anyway,' I thought. 'I have my morals. I can begin to pay attention again when the world is burning.'
Two months later I'd overhear true Fear from my coworkers, maintaining my arrogance and thinking, 'wow, the story of that virus is still happening? The political landscape must be really boring and my coworkers must be really gullible!' Then I overheard hypocritical and condescending messages on the NYC subway telling me how to wash my hands as I sat in a subway car with two stinky homeless persons on opposite ends and thought, 'Now the government is telling me how to clean myself? This is going too far!' Then crewmors that other productions were shutting down, then crewmors that we were shutting down for a week and I joked 'three weeks' without any knowledge of the gravity of the situation...then the email that we were on hiatus for at least one month and my thought was 'Wow, people are such sheep. Overreacting because some people don't wash their hands every time they take a shit in China...pathetic."
From my vantage point of 'noble' ignorance the precise way that the world is ending is by Alien Invasion. Elderly Americans are now dying by a very contagious virus, and in the past week governments everywhere in the U.S have increasingly ordered shut downs and lock downs and everything but martial law in name to protect the healthy and the young from its sinister spread. This is just the beginning. The weak always die first. Then the virus mutates, and the strong begin to weaken and die. It is going to get much worse before it starts to get better. I am a young adult, but I have to live through this Event like a Man adult.
People--like myself--are furloughed and sucking unemployment money from the state's coffers. (Prediction: marijuana will be legalized in New York within the next year to make up for its loss of revenue.) Streets are empty. Easter masses worldwide are cancelled, the most devastating part. I will be fasting for 48 hours, on Good Friday and Holy Saturday to make up for being unable to attend Mass.
The reports were coming from China in late December. We had ample time to prepare. And did not? I willingly did not keep up the partisan politics, objectively the least important aspect of this Event. For now, political disputes can be placed aside (in an election year!) because the human race has been invaded and old people are dying. Let's all agree to blame China.
This kind of feels like the Android Saga from Dragon Ball Z. Future Trunks warned the Z fighters of the Androids' incredible power 7 years before their arrival in what he thought was ample enough time to train. However, once the Androids appeared on Earth nothing was the same. 7 years was not ample training time because Trunks warned the Z fighters from the future, changing the past; the Androids were different now. Stronger. And then Cell was born and Future Trunks looked like a Jackass when he didn't know who Cell was. It is exactly like today.
In my downtime and fast from MTGO (and novelling) I have sorted through all of my good cards for two new cubes. In my research for new cards I have discovered some excellent new blogs, and new inspiration to start blogging again. Blogging will lead to novelling as abstaining from social media has lead to reading more Literature.
America is (temporarily) not what it was a week ago. This is a strange moment in history when one month ago feels like another point in history. So drastically has America changed in the past week that I re-read old entries and think, 'I have nothing better to do. I can at least update my blog since my opinions of things are pretty different now because everything is very different now.'
October 2019 was officially a long time ago and things are very different now. Let's pray that August 2020 is going to be different, and better, than March 2020.
I'll let the leaders lead and in the meantime, I'll pray.
