A case of deja vu in which toilet paper disappears and small businesses gasp for air. Moreover, the weather has changed to all day cold and dark. I can’t ride a bicycle through a downpour (I mean, I could, but where to go?) and the playgrounds are damp and frigid.
I am trying to read. I am trying to get through the days. I am trying to educate my kid.
Somehow, the work comes in and somehow I do it. And somehow, the world seems busier than ever, even as it grinds to a halt. Information presents itself in an infinite scroll and the email chains grow baroque in detailed jargon to be decoded. My to-do lists grow as I accept assignments that splinter into tasks and subtasks, all carried in and out of the inbox by the tides of email.
Who am I? Who are we? Who are people?
I miss people. Real people — not the online personas of people I once knew. This isolation is real. I can taste it.
And so I keep moving through the days like a shark through night waters.
Keep moving by instinct.