Thursday, April 23, 7:20 AM
Day 41 of voluntary social distancing, Day 38 of county shelter-in-place, Day 35 of statewide shelter-in-place
No theme, this week
I woke groggy. I thought really, the best thing for me physically would be to go back to bed and not even write this morning, but I couldn’t stand the thought of missing a day. As a warmup I went into the kitchen and danced to “People, I’ve Been Sad” since it’s been in my head for basically 48h. I did what felt like a completely amazing improv, and since I wasn’t recording or posting it, there were no witnesses. I decided to do another song to post online, and to try doing it outdoors. So I went on the deck in full sight of any neighbors who happened to be looking — I didn’t notice any — and danced for the crows and smaller birds. It was rather wonderful and a bit self-conscious though I tried not to be!
God, focus is so difficult even when I didn’t check social media this morning, or emails, or games! I put Forest on so I wouldn’t be tempted by any of these things, and I don’t even have headphones or music on, but I’m super distractible still. Maybe it’s the tiredness, or the energy still running through me from dancing, or maybe it’s what amounts now to years of training in multitasking — gosh, that’s depressing.
It used to be that Wednesdays felt a bit more lively because of the guaranteed CSA/CSF errands, but yesterday, no. I was incredibly tired and drained-feeling for almost the entire day, so by the time E was off work and I could go out and get the fish on foot, I didn’t want to; it was very sunny even at 5 PM; I didn’t want to change my clothes; I didn’t want to deal with the feeling of everything being contaminated. I did really want a walk but not for 3 miles in the sun. In the end, E went and got the CSA in the car, and then I went and got the fish, also in the car — a silly division of labor but that’s how it ended up. It wasn’t a walk but I did appreciate getting out, feeling the air, seeing the world even just a little bit.
Oh, Owl is up now, and high-pitched and loud and importunate as ever, sigh. Their presence really changes the mood, dammit.
Surely I used to be able to write more than this in half an hour?!
I feel a bit stupid lately as far as the kind of managerial, organizational thinking I’ll need to do next year at preschool. It’s reassuring, I guess?, to know that other people are feeling slow and tired as well. At any rate crisis leadership is a different beast than ordinary leadership and just from the ground level of watching people do it across the country, it feels like people appreciate research/data, willingness to issue clear directives, compassion, and listening. I can do all of those and probably quite well, it’s just that I feel stupid the whole time. I guess a lot of what a leader does is just relieve others of the burden of figuring it out for themselves — which also means I’m never going to experience what it’s like to have me as board president, because I can’t take that weight off of myself!
Yesterday I read a lot of news. I also did some coloring and dancing with Owl, but aside from that spent a lot of time checked out on my headphones and was SO MUCH HAPPIER than how I’d felt the day before. I also did some bookkeeping, researched how to support Chinatown businesses, and set up next week’s Meetup. Under normal circumstances I’d expect the Meetup and bookkeeping to take 45 minutes and the research maybe an hour, but multitasking and with pandemic brain, I think it took much longer AND THAT’S FINE. And I spent some headphones-off time listening to wetland sounds.
Sending loving thoughts to Chinatowns and all Asian people and businesses, in this time of virus-related racism
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