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Mar. 23rd, 2020 08:07 pmWelp. When the boy got his first COVID case at the hospital he works at, and I did expect that to happen sooner or later, I did not expect it to be a) this soon and b) a staff member. I was actually starting to think I would get through a significant chunk of this plague without him getting exposed to it and therefore exposing me! Or at least I did before it turned 11pm and suddenly I started panicking because that's what you do at Late O'Clock at Night, everything comes back to haunt you. But now it's a staffer, I don't know if I'm going to work tomorrow, and my sense that the World Is Ending and I'm going to be Broke like a Really Broke thing and we're going to be a one income household and lose the house and *screaming* ... that's getting painfully acute. I'm not happy.
And to make matters worse I don't know whether to write tonight off for writing because I'll have a couple weeks to quarantine and wait to see about getting back to work, or ... I don't know what the best call here is. I kind of want to push through it and get some work done so I have that to back me up, writing to sell, maybe even artwork, if the shit goes sideways. But I also know I should let myself freak out, need comfort, curl up with a book or probably the rest of Locke and Key that I started over the weekend. But ... but. I don't know what to do. Which is equally vastly annoying.
Also it's getting chilly again. I realize it's March and it does that but can we have a warm spring already?
I'm at the rattly edge of my nerves, is what it is. I'm shivering in my chair despite the space heater, I'm screaming in my own head, I don't know what to do and I'm freaking the fuck out even after calling Mom and saying "Mom I'm scared." I am so, so glad I still have a Mom. And a family I can go to to say hey, I'm freaking the hell out here.
Was there good news today? There kind of was, we had a lot of activity at the store both via mail order and through phone orders for pickups. I was pretty much doing actual day job work the whole day, and that hasn't happened in a long while. I started Locke and Key, it was engrossing enough to distract me from doing writer work although to be fair it was Sunday, I wasn't trying not to be distracted very hard. I'm enjoying it although it is pretty dark, there's an episode (3? 4?) where a kid gets tossed under a subway train by the bad guy. It reminds me a lot of John Bellairs' type horror, which a friend of mine pointed out the original author, Joe Hill, is about the right age to have read kids' horror in the 70s and 80s. Not wrong. So now I'm watching Locke and Key and re-reading my John Bellairs. That's some good entertainment to start me off, I'm also reading Lady Hotspur but I'm not sure I have the focus for that right now. I've got history to read, I'm not sure I have the focus for that either.
And I do have writing work to do, I have writing infrastructure to set up, I have a lot more avenues there than I used to, and that's not nothing. I'm just scared out of my mind. It's hard to work on building your defenses and shoring things up when you're twitching and shaking with fear.
So it goes. Take my own advice, I guess, take it one step at a time. For one thing, it's not certain that I can't go back to work tomorrow. I don't know that until I hear from the boy who was infected and where they went and who they contacted, and if the boy was a likely contact they prooooobably would have told him before I told him there was a case at his work? This is one of those times when my cynicism about bureaucracy and government systems does not work for me. I'm too morbidly dismayed by it all to believe that they would have told him if he was exposed. But. I still don't know until he tells me. So keep on operating, except for the spending of the money, as though I'm going to go to work tomorrow. That means getting a little work done, but also counting on the extra two hours of work tomorrow morning. Okay, self. We can do this. As soon as we post today's fear-dripping edition of the plague diary, we will take off the makeup, catch our breath, and get back to work.
Possibly with some guitar, that always calms us down.
I'm talking in the first person plural. Next thing you know I'll be eating raw fish and living in a cave.
ETA: More details in the morning after sleep but I have taken um no let me start again I have heard from the boy and it was not someone he came into contact with, he has not been exposed nor has he been queried about his contacts so he hasn't been exposed even to a coworker of a coworker and no I have taken a drug so I let the drug do its thing and SLEEP.
And to make matters worse I don't know whether to write tonight off for writing because I'll have a couple weeks to quarantine and wait to see about getting back to work, or ... I don't know what the best call here is. I kind of want to push through it and get some work done so I have that to back me up, writing to sell, maybe even artwork, if the shit goes sideways. But I also know I should let myself freak out, need comfort, curl up with a book or probably the rest of Locke and Key that I started over the weekend. But ... but. I don't know what to do. Which is equally vastly annoying.
Also it's getting chilly again. I realize it's March and it does that but can we have a warm spring already?
I'm at the rattly edge of my nerves, is what it is. I'm shivering in my chair despite the space heater, I'm screaming in my own head, I don't know what to do and I'm freaking the fuck out even after calling Mom and saying "Mom I'm scared." I am so, so glad I still have a Mom. And a family I can go to to say hey, I'm freaking the hell out here.
Was there good news today? There kind of was, we had a lot of activity at the store both via mail order and through phone orders for pickups. I was pretty much doing actual day job work the whole day, and that hasn't happened in a long while. I started Locke and Key, it was engrossing enough to distract me from doing writer work although to be fair it was Sunday, I wasn't trying not to be distracted very hard. I'm enjoying it although it is pretty dark, there's an episode (3? 4?) where a kid gets tossed under a subway train by the bad guy. It reminds me a lot of John Bellairs' type horror, which a friend of mine pointed out the original author, Joe Hill, is about the right age to have read kids' horror in the 70s and 80s. Not wrong. So now I'm watching Locke and Key and re-reading my John Bellairs. That's some good entertainment to start me off, I'm also reading Lady Hotspur but I'm not sure I have the focus for that right now. I've got history to read, I'm not sure I have the focus for that either.
And I do have writing work to do, I have writing infrastructure to set up, I have a lot more avenues there than I used to, and that's not nothing. I'm just scared out of my mind. It's hard to work on building your defenses and shoring things up when you're twitching and shaking with fear.
So it goes. Take my own advice, I guess, take it one step at a time. For one thing, it's not certain that I can't go back to work tomorrow. I don't know that until I hear from the boy who was infected and where they went and who they contacted, and if the boy was a likely contact they prooooobably would have told him before I told him there was a case at his work? This is one of those times when my cynicism about bureaucracy and government systems does not work for me. I'm too morbidly dismayed by it all to believe that they would have told him if he was exposed. But. I still don't know until he tells me. So keep on operating, except for the spending of the money, as though I'm going to go to work tomorrow. That means getting a little work done, but also counting on the extra two hours of work tomorrow morning. Okay, self. We can do this. As soon as we post today's fear-dripping edition of the plague diary, we will take off the makeup, catch our breath, and get back to work.
Possibly with some guitar, that always calms us down.
I'm talking in the first person plural. Next thing you know I'll be eating raw fish and living in a cave.
ETA: More details in the morning after sleep but I have taken um no let me start again I have heard from the boy and it was not someone he came into contact with, he has not been exposed nor has he been queried about his contacts so he hasn't been exposed even to a coworker of a coworker and no I have taken a drug so I let the drug do its thing and SLEEP.