Pandemic yes, but...
(Pandemic Diary - day 23)
From my journal: 21 March 2020 (Saturday)
...but get over it. Don’t let it dominate your life more than it needs to. Stop the constant reading about it, stop compulsively checking to see the latest update, stop saturating your mind with it. It’s there, it’s building, it’s coming, and that will be so, no matter what you do. In the meantime, there are things to do that are within your control.
Do those things.
* * *
Last night I made the mistake of watching a recording of the NBC nightly news, and by the end of it I was feeling overwhelmed. I knew I wouldn’t sleep if that was the last thing I saw, so I stayed up even later to try to get something else into my head. I turned to music (and whiskey) and it helped, but even that led me back to the disease, as I couldn’t resist playing “Down with the Sickness” (and noticing how relevant the lyrics are to the now).
I did manage to sleep (though not nearly as long as I’d have liked), and when I woke I was resolved to stay clean of the news-about-the-virus virus for at least this morning. No newspaper on Saturday, and surely I could resist my email inbox, right? No. I went there, I drank from that fountain and it filled my head right back up with dis-ease.
I suspect I’m not alone in this.
I hate it that I spent time on Facebook today, but if I’m honest I’ll admit that there might not be a better place right now to see the varying reactions people are having, and also to see the intensity of emotion this is generating.