August 21, 2020
These are unquestionably the dog days of August. Not because people are rushing to find pups for companionship, often acting on impulses that both humans and pooches will regret. (Hint: Be sure you’re not dealing with a puppy mill, and if you don’t like early-morning walks, you’d best forget the whole thing).
I’m talking about gloom and ennui,* the creeping, sometimes galloping pandemic fatigue that’s shadowing everybody. The soundtrack of my life, which used to segue from “Kick Out the Jams” to “No Surrender” to “I Feel Free,” has abruptly gone country, as in “My Give A Damn’s Busted.”
I still care a great deal about staying well, keeping others safe, and electing people who will lead us out of here. I just can’t muster the energy for much else, even writing, which should be the ideal job for an introverted grouch with time on his hands. (Of course, I don’t know anyone like that. Do you?)
There’s a lot of chatter these days about resilience, which is in danger of being co-opted by the marketing mob, like “empowerment.” As this article says, “resilience” is often code for, “You’re on your own.” (See Iowa derecho, Hurricanes Katrina and Michael, etc.) Of course, this interpretation also could sound like shaming: Are you being strong, or just letting the slugs take advantage of you?
Like most of us, I’ve seen enough adversity to become reasonably tough. The trouble is that I’d have to be 102 years old to have lived through a pandemic. We’ve lost our home field and the goalposts aren’t just moving, they’re doing sprints every time things seem to be settling down.
It’s no wonder that, as another article points out, our mental and emotional surge protectors are fried. This piece suggests several ways to stay sane, like “Focus on maintaining and strengthening important relationships,” and “Expect less from yourself.” That’s a hard one, because I still live by the advice I got when I started out in journalism years ago: Be your own toughest critic.
Said critic is already roasting this post and telling me to do something more productive, like binge-watching 1970s British TV. I can’t shut him up, but I can cut through the murk and end today’s chapter on a more positive note. Take care and be safe.
*My candidate for most overused word of the year. I promise not to use it again. Hopefully next year’s MOW will be something like “cure,” “vaccine,” or “recovery.”