(As someone who has been allergic to bee stings since she was a kid, let me tell you how hard it was finding a photo of a bee that wasn’t total nightmare fuel! Lol)
This quasi-quarantine life is strange. The past two weeks, I’ve been off Tuesday and Thursday, so I have mini-weekends sprinkled through the week. I almost wrote this post about my day yesterday/this morning as though it happened over an entire weekend and not just twenty-four hours. I’m still not sure how to handle not being at work four to five days a week, every week, for up to forty hours a week. This barely-hitting-twenty-hours stuff is a load, let me tell you. Not just economically/financially (and it’s VERY much a load financially), but mentally as well. I don’t know how to be at home every other day, with nothing on my plate outside the house.
Not to say that I haven’t been working when I’m not working. I’ve been doing some new embroidery projects, editing/revising Book 3 of the Abnormal series, outlining my new paranormal romance novella trilogy (getting ready to start the actual writing soon–maybe my next off day?), overhauling my website, arranging newsletter swaps with other authors, playing with photo editing apps on my phone, reading, planning on a live reading of Chapter 1 of ESCAPE THE LIGHT (Abnormal Book 2)…all this along with the usual housework and laundry and what have you. I did a little of all of the above between waking yesterday and waking today, and possibly a little more that I can’t quite remember just now.
Maybe that’s why it feels like two days passed, not just one. I’ve been busy. Yeah, most of this has occurred on ye olde couch, but still, it’s a lot for one person to do in one day.
Today will be another “normal” work day, so I have to switch gears again.
I’m much more concerned about the ramifications of this COVID-19 outbreak now than I was a couple weeks ago. (Was it two weeks? One? I don’t even know.) The reality of it is hitting closer and closer to home, and while I’m still not terribly scared of contracting the virus, I am scared of having services like phone or electricity cut off or getting behind on the mortgage. We’re having to rejigger the bills and triage what HAS to be paid right away and what can wait and what we can pay a little bit on…so much weight, so little relief from the strain.
But really, what do I have to complain about? I mean, just about everyone’s in the same boat–or worse–and there are those who are more social and outgoing than I who are suffering from the isolation. I, for one, can handle the mental fatigue of being stuck home alone whenever not at work, but I’ve got lots of friends who are not doing so well. Some people thrive on physical contact with others, on being surrounded by friends and family, on the connections between people. I may not be one of them, but it doesn’t mean I can’t sympathize. Empathize? Whichever. I always get those confused.
It’s all so surreal. Sometimes I almost forget that life has been upended for 95% of the population. Even those who aren’t sticking to quarantine/”social distancing” guidelines are affected in some way or other, whether it be the fact that some grocery items are scarce or that they’re having to work from home now if they’re not considered “essential.”
I’m “essential.” So I get to go in to work. Yay? I mean, I’m certainly grateful that I still have a job, that I can still work, but I’m tired. So, so tired, and not in a physical sense. Mentally, this is getting to me.
I theoretically have an appointment with my psychiatrist next week. Standard appointment, the usual three-month checkup, but I can’t recall if psychiatry was considered one of the “essential” healthcare fields, and even if it is, my doc may have just decided to self-quarantine and wait this whole fucking mess out.
I hope not, because I’ve been having problems dealing, and I just can’t tell anymore if it’s a bipolar thing, or part of coronapocalypse.