The One Year Anniversary of COVID

Today is the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a pandemic. And from here, our lives changed.

The day that happened, I sat at home during my Spring Break for the meaning of this proclamation to develop. It developed quickly, starting with shelter in place notices, businesses shutting down, and toilet paper shortages at the store. The leadership at my university deliberated on whether they would open back up for the students coming back for Spring Break or move all classes online. When they declared that everything would go online, I was already in the middle of making that adjustment.

Masks became a normal part of our lives, along with avoiding public places and standing six feet away from each other. Group meetings were strongly discouraged, even with masks. All our precautions, however, seemed to be not enough as we watched the cases with COVID, and the deaths, tick upward in reports from the County Department of Health. Too many people got sick; too many people died, particularly (but not always) the elderly. Because of my husband’s preexisting condition, I worried quite a bit. However, I should have worried about myself, as a little-known study found that people with severe mental illness (such as my bipolar) have increased chances of both contracting and dying of COVID.

Now, a year later, businesses have been open for a while with precautions, but many are still (as in the case of restaurants) not necessarily safe. The first tier of vaccination (over 65, those with severe obesity or diabetes, some other disorders, medical personnel) is close to done, with teachers and essential workers next. Even so, vaccinated persons are being instructed to continue to wear their masks in indoor spaces. So COVID is not gone from our lives yet.

I still look forward to getting vaccinated so I can go to restaurants without (much) fear and have a vacation like I haven’t had for a whole year. I dream of a writing retreat somewhere, my favorite place being The Elms. Most of all, I dream of life as normal, which it will be, but not normal as it was last year. It will be a new normal.

Restless and Tired = I Need a Break

How can I be restless and tired at the same time?

This would be Spring Break week if we were allowed Spring Break this year. But yesterday was my Spring Break and I had to do two internship observations.

I need a rest. As faculty, I can’t take a vacation, and even sick days consist of doing all our actual work at home (but we don’t have to count it as a sick day unless we’re too sick to work). COVID and Zoom has changed the life of a college professor.

But there’s nothing that can replace a complete break from work Being able to focus on something that is not homework. I’m not going to say “going places” because we’re all still on COVID restrictions, but the moment I get my second shot and do my two-week immunity wait, I’m going on a writing retreat.

I wish I could sleep all day today. I need to keep an eye on this given that it could be a sign of a depressive episode. I think it’s just lack of break. But I’ll keep an eye on it.

Everything, Anything, or Nothing?

My horoscope says my brain is worth of chatter. It is, if what you mean by chatter is “I really should doing this/that/the other thing” instead of coming up with any sort of new story ideas. And to some extent it’s right, given that I have an important assignment to grade, two interns to visit and two classes to prep for tomorrow. I will be busy today.

But I will manage some time for — what? I have to come up with an idea for Camp NaNo in April. Camp NaNo is like the training wheels version of NaNoWriMo — you can set a minimum of 10k words for a goal, there’s a lot more acceptance of doing something other than a novel during this time — it’s overall just a good warmup to a major project.

I have some back projects I could work on, if I can get engaged in them again. The main one is Gods’ Seeds, which deals not with gods per se, but the immortal Archetypes who have held societies’ cultural memories. The death of these memories will kill the people they represent. And now, as their leaders want to give cultural memory back to humans, a civil war between Archetype factions threatens widespread extinction across the Earth. One woman, one who touches mortality and the deity of the Archetypes, must realize her role and stop the immortals from fighting.

The other one would be fascinating, if I could spend six months in Krakow. This is not going to happen.

Part of my lack of ideas is this frustration with the idea of traditional publishing. I am beginning to consider self-publishing the rest of my catalog — fantasy and romantic fantasy, even as I struggle with the whole “your stuff will be considered better if you go through the gatekeepers.” It’s a big issue in the publishing industry, because self-publishing is confused with vanity publishing. But many famous authors started with self-publishing. I don’t think I will be famous, but I don’t want these books languishing in my computer files.

Or I could resubmit one of my works to another set of agents (or the same set of agents). That will take some work.

I don’t know what to do right now. Everything, anything, or nothing?

All dopey on pain meds

I’m going on my second week of pain meds after more brutal dental work. The meds don’t affect me much except for:

emotional lability — I feel weepy right now, and I’m sure I will be giggly later
sleepiness — I’m staring at my screen with my eyes half-closed
inability to type (or tipe or twpe as I’ve had to try three times to type that word)
babbling. Lots of babbling. So much babbling I wonder if I’m making sense.
decreased social filter — goes with the babbling. I try so hard to seem other than scatterbrained because I’m A Professional, but when taking pain meds I’m all “golly gosh shit shit shit” and I love it
shakiness

So definitely not ready for primetime. Good thing I’m working at home today. Hope you enjoyed this vicarious glimpse into my life while I’m still babbling.

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.