April 8th, 2020

It became pretty obvious, pretty quick that there wouldn’t be much more I could add to the global conversation in terms of appropriate novelty. This is not self deprecation, it’s real point of fact. Information is widely accessible. Sardonic commentary on that information is even more widely accessible. Am I gonna be the three thousandth one to vent about our president’s petulance or our populace’s vapidness and self absorption.  And I realized, too, that the need for an audience was not only mentally taxing but also kind of gross. Dehumanizing in its own way. To be non-essential is one thing but to feel compelled to prove, whether to yourself or others, that you really are essential…on one hand there’s the possibility that the evidence will be flimsy…but, barring that even, to feel the need to make that kind of justification speaks to a profoundly grim outlook of self and all that exists outside of self.  That not only might one be inutile, but further that the world in which he lives has no time for temporary inutility.  When I started to feel a little sore with myself for not keeping up on my COVID-19 journal, I examined the reasons why I was sore with myself and it all came down to my perceived lack of utility. Failing to keep a record of a hopefully short-lived but countervailing epoch would be a dereliction of one of the only possible means of my having a function.  And there is some validity to that. I might regret later that I didn’t keep up with my musings through the first three weeks of this historic funk.  But to future me I say,  “You weren’t there, man. You can’t possibly understand how futile it felt”. And future me will say, “Well, yes I was there, actually.” And I’ll say, “Well, YOU should have taken notes, then.”

I’m beginning to think that scientists, journalists and comedians should be the only people we’re listening to right now.  Real ones, though.