A Year Under COVID

We’re coming up on the anniversary of when COVID changed our lives. Everyone’s anniversary looks a little different because of where they live, how soon they started taking precautions, and the like.

For me, it was the first day of Spring Break, March 9th, when my colleagues and I started hearing about states shutting down through shelter-in-place. The university decided it needed to do something, because we were about to receive 7000 college students freshly back from Spring Break.

By Thursday of Spring Break, we had bought a little time for decision-making with this instruction — “Do not come back for the week after Spring Break; we will let you know what happens from here.” Faculty were assigned to put their classes all online just in case. By Tuesday of that week, the university had decided that all classes would go online. The faculty had a little over a week to go fully online. And then the whole state sheltered in place.

My husband’s job at the library shut down at that time, and we found ourselves living in a changed world defined by the four walls of our home. I became frantic at that time, and my psychiatrist’s nurse assured me that I was far from the only one calling the office in a panic.

Photo by Yaroslav Danylchenko on Pexels.com

The world quickly adapted around us. Public spaces were disinfected and required masks to enter. Stores distanced their customers to six feet apart and established flow patterns. Many restaurants established carryout. The harder things to adapt to: the loss of family gatherings except over zoom, relinquishing my occasional spa writer’s retreat, not eating at restaurants weekly (although we utilized the patio at A&G, a local steaks and chops place, before the weather got too cold).

Although we quickly adapted, we didn’t adapt happily, and we didn’t adapt without fear. Twenty-three people have died in Nodaway County, Missouri; this is one out of every thousand residents; 2.3% of those who got COVID. That’s a large number for deaths. These are large numbers for a small and relatively isolated county with no big towns.

A year later, the landscape has changed a little. The vaccines have rolled out for the most at-risk people; I still wait for mine. We’re all wearing masks still and some of us have a mask collection. The university is back on line, but with reduced classrooms and Zoom for the students and faculty sick or in quarantine. If I ever get my shots (I’m neither old enough nor fat enough to be among the first wave) I might be able to have that writer’s retreat, although still with a mask.

Life might never get back to normal, or maybe we will balk at having to don protection forever. Maybe the vaccine will reach enough people for us to have herd immunity. I hope one thing that changes is that we are more savvy about the microorganisms around us and their potential to become deadly.

The Big Five Personality Test

One of the things I teach is Personal Adjustment, which is a poor name for what the class really is: a class in positive psychology. Yesterday, I covered traits and happiness. The whole thing about that is that we have personal genetic traits which might influence our happiness.

One way to measuring enduring traits is the Big Five Personality Test, which has been tested for correlation not only to the traits measured but to happiness. The Big Five mentioned in the title measures five dimensions (see picture below):

Some of these dimensions are linked to happiness as follows (Judge et al., 2007):

Higher openness to experience correlates to higher happiness
Higher extraversion correlates to higher happiness
Higher emotional stability correlates to higher happiness
Agreeableness and conscientiousness do not correlate to higher happiness

In other words, if you score low extraversion (i.e. score as an introvert), you will experience less happiness than someone who scores high in extraversion — and half that gap is unchangeable; it is a trait you have that won’t go away.

The good news, though, is the other half (on average) of that gap can be changeable. By pushing your comfort zones, you can recoup some of your happiness in openness and extraversion. By learning to manage emotions, one can increase emotional security.

So some people are happier than others, but it’s possible to approach a higher level of happiness through self-work, and that’s a good thing.

If My Cats Were Authors

Someone posed the question on Twitter: “What would your cat’s autobiography be titled?”

There are four cats running the household so I came up with the following:

Me-Me: It’s All About Me-Me
Chuckie: No, Skritch RIGHT THERE
Girlie-Girl: Confessions of a Grouchy Cat
Chloe: ZOOM! The Adventures of A Lucky Kitten

My readers met Me-Me yesterday: she loves paying attention to her favorite human because her favorite human loves paying attention to her. Weebles (as we call her) is 11.

Girlie-Girl (or Girlie, or Twirly Little Whirly Girl, the calico, is our oldest cat at 14, which is 72 in human years. She grouses at me when I pet her; she grouses at me when I don’t.

Chuckie (aka Chuckie Monster) is a long lean orange cat of three years. He’s mostly settled down into a mellow lounge-around-the-house cat except when he gets into mock fights with the youngest of our crew.

Chloe (Little Girl), the youngest, is 10 months of age. She still has the zoomies and pounces on things, has almost learned to open doors (the lack of opposable thumbs is the only thing saving us all). She’s a tortoiseshell.

This is Girlie, the oldest (Calico in front) and Chloe, the youngest (tortoiseshell)

I probably write too much about my cats, but that’s because I love my cats, and because they’ve asked me to ghost-write their autobiographies.

Guest Blog from Me-Me (Weebles) the Cat

I’m hanging out with my human. She sits on the cushie place with the light box she stares into and moves her fingers in patterns. Sometimes I sit beside her and beg for pets; other times I sit behind her and clean her hair.

She always sits at her place, and I consider it my place too because she’s there. Sometimes the other human (the one who walks loud) walks by with something foul-smelling in a tall dish. Notice I said “foul-smelling” and not “fowl-smelling”. I like “fowl-smelling”. I don’t understand the tall dish with the loop on the side nor why my human drinks out of it. I tried once and got my face stuck in it.

Oh, there’s other cats. I don’t pay much attention to them because of my undivided attention to my human. They don’t pay much attention to me, even the spotty black demon who joined the household most recently. I have another sister who tries to sit in the same place as I do, but she takes one look at me claiming my space and plods away.

It’s naptime now (it’s always naptime) and so I need to curl up into a comfy space now.

Looking at the Clouds (when there’s nothing else I can do)

I am still on pain medications because I’m still in pain. I cannot be trusted to operate machinery — cars, forklifts, and maybe even this computer. Is typing under the influence a misdemeanor or a felony?

I would like to do magnificent things today with writing — continue revising Reclaiming the Balance (fantasy romance with a female and non-binary main character), contemplate what I should send out for querying, play with the short stories that have been sitting in a metaphorical drawer. But my thought processes look like this today:

Today, I would like … this music is putting me to sleep … oh, look, that song is called Northern Town … I haven’t heard “Life in a Northern Town” in ages. Let’s play it … what was I doing again? I was typing … Why was I typing? Oh, my blog? I don’t know if I want to write this blog today … Let’s listen to some Bread …

It’s like the world is too big and I want it to be tiny right now, a blanket fort with warm milk and familiar music. Writing is part of that big world outside that I feel ill-equipped to deal with. This is not me, not really. If I have any free time, I want to write.

Right now I just want to curl up under my blanket and follow my thoughts into the clouds.

#PitMad

I will be participating in #PitMad again on Thursday.

#PitMad is a semi-annual Twitter pitch contest for writers. Writers pitch their books in one tweet, and they get three tries to tantalize agents and publishers with their pitch. Hopefully, an agent/publisher sees a pitch they like and send a request for a full manuscript, which is the first step to a pathway that may lead to traditional publishing.

I have three different books I will be pitching right now, and I hope that I will have luck this time. I’ve rewritten the pitches from past #PitMads, so they’re fresh and new.

Here are my pitches:

Adam and Lilith, star-crossed lovers in a 6000-year-old play, meet again at the brink of apocalypse. Humanity’s fate rests on a collective of pacifists facing immortals and their armies. Lilith’s life is at stake – and if she dies, so do all women on earth. #A #F #FTA

Anthropologist Anna Smith crosses the war-torn remains of the US to chase a legend. Amidst attempts on her life, Anna finds her past entwined with the story she found. Who she is – old and new – could be the key in stopping genocide. #A #F

Dr. Jeanne Beaumont’s life escapes logical, scientific notions – there’s a monstrous vine in her lab and a man half her age courting her. Josh Young sees his crush naked in a vision of a riotous garden. Together they find things don’t have to be logical to be true. #A #R #CR

#PitMad happens four times a year, so there’s plenty of times to participate.

Sorry I didn’t write yesterday, but I have been struggling with a catastrophic tooth infection (as in half my lower jaw) and I’m on hydrocodone to deal with the pain.

In short, I am seriously out of it.

I thought about leaving the typos in here to show how seriously out of it I am, but I can’t stand leaving spelling and grammar errors in a piece, so I’m revising errors as I go along. Believe me, there are many errors happening.

I hope to be out of pain soon, after which I’ll see whether I have any teeth left from this.

Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast

I have once again discovered my favorite internet radio station — Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast. The station pumps out lowkey ambient 24/7, and I like to play it all night as background music to sleep by.

I first started listening to Sleepbot in the late 1990s when I had first moved to Maryville and I was racked with chronic insomnia. (I should note that I was much later diagnosed with bipolar II, which explains the periods of insomnia). I would lay on the floor with my laptop and listen to the vague waves of music. I don’t know if it ever made me feel truly sleepy back then, but I would half-sleep, drifting among the motifs.

But then there was the wolves. One night I was half asleep again, only to hear wolves howling. Not the pretty howls we think wolves make, but shrieking yelping group howls. I slammed awake, thinking I had dreamed them, but the wolf track was real. I’m not sure why anyone thought that was restful music, but okay.

Photo by patrice schoefolt on Pexels.com

So, it’s years later, and I’ve discovered Sleepbot again using a wonderful iPhone app called Radio Garden (which, as you can see from the link, has an online presence as well). It’s now my nightly serenade and now I fall asleep to it.

Last night, I was vegging out listening to Sleepbot convinced I must have imagined those wolves howling.

I. DID. NOT. IMAGINE. THOSE. WOLVES.

There they were again with the most nightmarish howling by sheer coincidence.

Did I mention I love sleepbot?

The Meaning of This Website

This is not my official book/author website. That’s here and I haven’t done anything to it since the launch of The Kringle Conspiracy. I’m not promoting The Kringle Conspiracy right now because it’s past Christmas (is this the right thing to do?) My official website is where I’m a totally together person as a writer and I have no qualms about recommending my really great book.

This is my personal blog, and I suspect it’s more interesting to read. This is where I explore what it means to be a writer, the misgivings and triumphs. This is where I try to turn my life into essays as necessary practice for writing, and where I let you know who I am. This is where you find out that I’m jealous of my cat and that the day after Valentine’s Day is the real holiday.

I believe that it’s good to see the human side of someone. In the age of COVID and the Internet, it seems the best way to get to know each other is in the written word. So I offer this website as a way to get to know one particular writer and fellow human being.

Thank you for reading.

In Need of Some Serendipity

Oh, folks, I am not in a very good mood today. I have a toothache. It’s not as bad as it was yesterday, when the hydrocodone wasn’t even touching the pain, but nonetheless I had a doozy of a toothache.

Then there’s the fact that my husband got 500 likes on a picture of a cat. Five Hundred Likes.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he got — no, I’m jealous. I’m jealous of my cat.

If I sold 500 copies of a book, I would be ecstatic. If I had 500 people visit this blog, I would be doing cartwheels in the living room (Do not mentally envision a 55-year-old overweight woman doing a cartwheel). I’m jealous of my cat (and by extension my husband) for effortlessly managing what I’ve been busting my butt trying to do.

That is the nature of serendipity. We can’t predict the capricious nature of audiences, nor the dominant culture references that fuel the next big thing. We can try to sell our stories, our ideas, our art as the next big thing, but audiences will balk if they feel you’re selling too hard. But so much of success is serendipity — writing about the right thing, being in the right place, stumbling across the right feeling.

I could use a bit of serendipity right now.

Out of Commission Today

Abscessed tooth and pain meds. Sorry.