Everything has stopped and everything is still going. I still have just as much work to do but I feel like I don’t because I am no longer going to the places where the work lives. It feels like I’m outside of everything but actually, the expectations and obligations are the same. Social distancing when you’re not really sick is weird, it’s hard but a really easy kind of hard. I have food and wifi and credit cards if I need to order more of anything and friends and family and I really like being at home. But this dissonance. SHOULD I stay home? Should I go out and spend money in the community (but not cash money, that’s gross). Should I see people and do things now before the enforced isolation is mandated? Is it true that I am being helpful and doing the right thing by staying in? I feel anxiety over not knowing what I should be doing and thinking it’s probably a lot but then doing none of it.
I also have the strangest FOMO. I’ve done so much less in my social life and hobbies lately because of grad school. I didn’t miss the things much, at least not after I adjusted to their absence, because I was busy being a grad student. Now I am getting emails from every organisation or business I’ve ever brushed up against and experiencing something like FOMO, like being reminded of absent lovers I had forgotten I was missing. “It’s been months, I know, but I just wanted to reach out and let you know you can’t see me.”
What day is it? What time is it? Is there a Zoom I should be on? When did Zoom become the go to video conferencing app? Did I feed the dog? It’s just a surprisingly bewildering time.
