(Pandemic Diary - day 250)

From my journal: 3 November 2020 (Tuesday)

The election — what else could I possibly start today’s entry with? It feels huge, it feels like the only thing that’s happening today or this week. It feels like the drama and trauma and darkness of the past 4 years has all been leading directly to this day, and the anticipation (and dread) is almost paralyzing.

And it’s all-consuming, if I allow it to be.

I want to watch something, I want to listen to something, I want to read the Facebook posts and the news clips and all the rest of it. I want to know what happens, and how this turns out. I don’t want to hold things together any longer, I want to just cave to this pressure and not even try to fight the urge to abandon the day to the election.

I also very much don’t want to do that. I don’t have a day to waste on this. I have far too many better ways to spend my time. There is nothing I can do to change what will happen with the election (we voted weeks ago), and knowing the moment-to-moment details of the day will do me absolutely no good. Neither will seeing the moment-to-moment posts of my Facebook friends as they make their ways through this day.

I need a better strategy. I need music, and I need a task that doesn’t have me sitting here just a click away from all of that temptation. I could bundle up and go outside to blow leaves and clean up blowdown from the wind storms we’ve just had. I could bundle up and go outside to do my run in the daylight for a change. I could bundle up and go work in the garage.

Or I could go to the liquor store to stock up, just in case things do get ugly.