Clarity is out the disinfected window

I don’t know about you, but I am very overwhelmed at the moment and pretty much all the time. Leave it to a global pandemic to cause people to fundamentally reconsider how people work and communicate and live their lives.

I’m not personally leading a vastly different life compared to how it was two weeks ago: working remote in a farm town with no close friends less than a 45-minute drive away doesn’t really lend itself to lifestyle changes in the face of a highly contagious virus. I’m not even terribly stir-crazy, since our puppy Rosie is getting me outside four to five times a day to urinate, defecate and/or run around the yard.

But I’m feeling a different stir-craziness, one that is much more psychological. My mind is racing constantly despite multiple attempts to calm it down. I am exhausted at the end of every day, passing out in my bed but somehow waking up feeling poorly rested. It took something like seven attempts to even get this short and not-particularly-groundbreaking post together.

I referred back to my “clarity” note which drove my goals for 2020, and pretty much everything is out the window at this point: it’s a struggle to be intentional, I’m not reading, I’m not actively creating, breathing only helps for a few minutes before this weird reality sets back in. The only thing that is progressing is my ability to let anxiety about homeownership go, simply because it’s the last thing on my mind right now.

I am having visceral urges to create something but I can’t form a single complete thought around what I could do. It almost feels like the entire world is up for disruption, so there’s a need (or opportunity?) to create things in these trying times, but I can’t achieve the level of mental fortitude required to actually do it. It’s a struggle to come up with an original thought when everyone is seemingly feeling the same: either “I am terrified and confused” or “I refuse to acknowledge this reality.”

I don’t really have anything to share for insights, advice, or reflection that hasn’t been already shared. If this experience has taught me anything, it’s that the Internet is wonderful for not feeling alone, but it kind of sucks if you’re feeling the urge to do something original.

But mostly I thought the title of this post was cheeky, and wanted to post it for that.

Posted on March 9, 2020