I was freaking out at the office.
No one was wearing a mask or respecting social distancing. When I pointed it out, everyone ignored me. Like I wasn’t there.
In fact, I wasn’t really there. I was dreaming it.
It’s not the first time I have had such a dream. It’s a recurring nightmare, one of a few with the same theme: I’m out and about, and no one is wearing a mask, including me. I’m terrified. I’ll surely catch COVID-19 now, I feel in those dreams.
I’m sure I’m not the only person having pandemic nightmares.
Thing is, in real life, I doubt I will ever be able to return to my office. I could retire, though I don’t really want to. But if it comes to making a choice between returning to the office or leaving it for good, I’ll choose the latter. I bet others of certain ages are thinking the same thing.
It’s not that I don’t want to be in the newsroom with my colleagues. I do want to see them. But with doubts now being cast on the efficacy of a certain vaccine, no real data on long-term effects of COVID-19 and virus variants seeming to multiply, any hope we had of resuming normal lives by September seems to be fading quickly.
And if any of the variants turn out to be resistant to vaccines in the pipelines, we’re back to Square One.
Indeed, I’m not sure we ever left Square One.
Meanwhile, we live in fear. And some of us are having nightmares.
How about you? Any nightmares related to the coronavirus?
— Jillian
Jillian Page 
Retire? I am surprised. Your posts sound like they are made by a much younger person. 30s or 40s. Young at heart, I guess. 🙂
I don’t have bad dreams about it. I’ve made my peace with it and am a a natural stoic. If I weren’t I would have been dead many decades ago.
I’m mostly bored with staying at home and a little ticked that the few public events I participate in won’t be back for many months. I just became a docent at the local nature center but the docenting has been shut down for 10 months now. I had a modeling gig lined up for life drawing classes at the community college and that’s a bust as well. The poppy preserve is looking for interpretive guides but I don’t think there’s any chance it will be open by May for the season. Hollywood Fringe was cancelled last year and will probably be much smaller and “virtual” this year. And so on for other activities and events I might have participated in.
What I”ve done is substituted home based activities, online activities and solo adventures for what would have been social activities. I’m not so good at social, so that may be for the better.
OTOH I can spend days on end happily blogging and reading blogs, watching YouTube videos about science and technology, watching anime and bad Netflix shows, and building maginificent schemes and plans for things I know I’ll never do. I have my wife, my adult children, my animal companions and that’s adequate, though not ideal.
It’s just how I am wired.
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Did I mention that you are my best friend today, Fred? (Smiles)
I like to think — actually, I believe it — that the spirit inhabiting our mortal coils is timeless, ageless, immeasurable.
The spirit is beyond time itself.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Am glad you are not experiencing nightmares. Maybe I’m having them because I am seeing so many news stories about the pandemic every day. Comes with the turf in journalism these days.
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Aww shucks! (Blush)
If you’ve read much of my blog, you know there’s not much I’d blush about.
Involuntary doom scrolling. Yeah, that could do it. I don’t pay a lot of attention to the news. I skim the headlines and rarely bother with the content unless it really is something new. Most of it is just repeating yesterday’s bad news or last week’s or last month’s. My favorite news source is BBC America.
If doctors and psychologists and cops can stress out because of all the bad things they see on a daily basis, I can’t imagine a journalist would have it all that much better. Made much worse by the “If it bleeds, it leads.” policy of most media.
The problem is that even in a crisis, for every horrible story there are a thousand good stories. Most of those good stories are never mentioned but all those bad stories become “news.” It is obvious to me that if the good stories didn’t greatly outnumber the bad, we’d have gone into a downward spiral millennia ago and the species would be extinct. “Mr. K molests little girls.” gets all the press while “Mr. H tries to be a good father to his children” counts for nothing. Yet which do you think happens far, far more often?
Elon Musk just set up a competition for devising the best carbon capture system. The prize is a hundred million dollars. Why isn’t that the headline?
I guess catastrophism gets more clicks. it certainly benefits the people who gain from having a frightened populace.
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Actually, I ran the Elon Musk piece on my newspaper’s website. I think a lot of papers ran it, because he is such a controversial character.
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I think it was in a story by Forbes Magazine. He also said he was planning to give half his fortune away. Very big and very good news but I’m don’t believe that CNN even touched it. It may be that my news viewing is skewed in some way that I missed it.
Musk is not an easy to pigeonhole guy and manages to offend a lot of people here on both sides of the spectrum. So of course I like him. The only reason I knew about this at all was a YouTube video on SpaceX.
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I’m interested in Musk’s satellite internet service. But it is very expensive! It’s not available here yet, though. I am also a little concerned about his plan to fill the skies with low-flying satellites to provide his internet service.
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