Don’t panic! I am fine. Just, you know, struggling.
And it’s a very small thing, in the grand scheme of the world. It almost feels silly to write about except I know a lot of other folks are struggling too, so at least we can all know we’re struggling together.
Kevin and I are physically perfectly healthy (mentally we’re what’s clinically called “messes,” but physically we’re basically perfect) and we’d like to keep it that way–plus, you know, helping everyone else stay healthy–so we’re maintaining quarantine and only going out when necessary.
The state we live was one of the first to open back up and even now is pushing hard to relax the safety standards designed to keep COVID-19 at bay.
Unsurprisingly, our infection and death rate has also been going up dramatically. So that’s a pretty good guard against the temptation offered by seeing all the people passing our apartment on their way to restaurants and shows and things.
But…how many months has it been?…of social isolation is starting to take its toll. Having to stay on guard and be responsible, not having the ability to freely try a new restaurant or explore a new thing on a whim is wearing. Canceling all our travel plans for the foreseeable future makes me a little sad.
There’s an extra barrier between me and new experiences, or even old experiences like “checking the mail” and “going to the corner store.” If you’ve got ADHD, you know why that’s upsetting. Fun stuff is harder!
And when fun stuff is harder, all that’s left is work stuff. Since I work from home, there aren’t any barriers to that. Work is still continuing apace, even if I don’t feel like I’m being particularly creative or pushing any boundaries there.
I know it’s worth it, on the grand scale, to deal with the depression & stagnation feelings that come with taking my potential-plague-carrier-self out of circulation to protect others, but I’d also like to come up with a solution to reintroduce fun back into my regular life.
Is anyone else feeling this? Have you come up with solutions for how to just have fun again? If you’ve got clever ideas, let me know!
Bess Carnan 
Yes, I’m very much so dealing with this, Bess! I’ve had enough depression in my life to recognize that this is what it is. I think I’m grieving for the life we may never have again. Knowing that the whole world is going through the same thing makes it less severe for me, somehow. I know that it’s not unnatural for me to grieve and be depressed right now. More natural, more necessary. I think you’d be crazy if you weren’t crazy while this is going on. We’re all in it together.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I wish you weren’t stuck in this mire too! At least I’m in good company. ❤
LikeLike
Thanks for writing this. It is really getting to us as well. For us, the “not having something to look forward to” is the hardest part. We’ve cancelled SO many plans. Our fun solutions have all been in service of making things to look forward to. So we do board game nights with family. BoardGameArena[dot]com is our platform of choice. (I’m “Mike Belsole” on there if you ever want to play games!) Grace and I worked on and then went on a full featured 8-day home cruise since we couldn’t go on our real one. That one was double fun because of the weeks long planning stage. Sometimes projects are fun – we keep coming up with other projects to work on and inject some good into the world. We’ve also been playing a lot of video games.
We are in Texas as part of our “save for a house” plan, and that is about to come to a complete standstill as both of us are not working anymore. This is the first time we really don’t have a good plan for what we are going to do next.
LikeLiked by 1 person