My Beach, Your Beach, Their Beach–View from the Back Side
Everyone is doing their best to find their happy balance between news and ways to cope with the way things are right now. It’s a challenge, isn’t it?
I won’t go over all the things that could go wrong. I’m in information overload. I want to know about stuff, (yes, I said that, stuff), but I’m not sure I want to be the kind of person who has too much information, because there’s so much out of my control, and I don’t need to know how out of my control it is. Besides, what good would that do, anyway? Seriously. I’m actually serious here.
I’ve been doing a lot of social media with my readers, and other writer friends, which is enriching for me. Inviting other authors to join in things works. I’m not doing it just for sales, but because it makes people (including me) feel better to be doing something. Let’s face it, the happy talk or “I’m doing this so well” type of post is getting really old to me. We don’t have to tout how well we’re doing.
When we experienced the fires in 2017 and 2018, many people couldn’t understand how a community could survive after this kind of disaster. How people would recover after losing everything. But we did. Some left California, some started over, some found things about it that outweighed the negatives.
But this is different. With the California Wildfires, we were given a specific measurement, a fire is X percentage contained. How many acres burned, number of structures or lives lost. There was a beginning and end. We could follow reports of how many men and women there were on the front lines. The public could help donate food, clothes and money for relief organizations and to support first responders. We didn’t just sit around and watch TV or read or sleep all day–many of us tried to do something we could to ease the pain.
Now? And maybe that’s why it’s getting kind of old.
In the first weeks, we were posting stories about where you could buy TP, make your own hand sanitizers, face masks, what businesses were open we could frequent. We read to our kids, found puzzles that occupied us, and talked about which shows we binge watched. Families maybe got closer, as parents stayed home more with their kids.
But that didn’t work for everyone. We still posted funny pictures of the Covid, those memes that give us a good laugh, ridiculous ways we coped, and some inspirational ways we coped. We outed certain people who seemed to be tone deaf, made riduculous claims or solutions. We bemoaned the lack of testing. We thought testing and ventillators would save us all.
Now we’re arguing over what kinds of tests are working, which scientist to believe, whether we need immunity tests or tests for the active COVID. Some people are protesting the lockdowns, some are yelling to stay locked down. We see test kits being returned, ventillators and hospital beds going unused, and of course, looking for blame in all of it.
But this one is affecting all of us. It seems bigger, more invasive. Fires eventually go out, and eventually this will be behind us as well, but it will take longer. We have more resources than most the rest of the world has. It isn’t important how fast we bounce back but that we do. So here’s my top ten predictions for what will happen in the coming months:
- Babies will be born. Baby animals too. Crops will grow. Kids will get taller and bigger, and some will get wiser. Weeds will grow. Clothes will get dirty and need washing.
- There will be some huge mistakes made.
- There will be some brilliant solutions created.
- Not all the brightest minds will be the smartest at dealing with this COVID thing.
- There will be some cool halloween costumes created that will look like the COVID virus ball.
- TPing a house will become a felony.
- We will savor going out to the movies, dinner and drinks. Parties will be more fun.
- Handshaking may be gone forever.
- Hoarders or abusers will be outed and prosecuted.
- Your pets will still love you and they can’t wait to see you happy.
We may not get back what we started with, but then, life never promised that in the first place. As I always say, circumstances don’t make a person, they reveal a person.
We’re all in this together.
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The biggest mistakes have be e n made by this trying to be hidden by many parties but I agree with you. We will recover, God willing.
Yes, we will!
We will get through this God willing. One thing that has changed is that we Facetime more. My kids would always call, now they Facetime with us to make sure we are OK. They live in different states from us and this just reminds us that we need to get together more often. I sure hope hugs from our loved ones does not become a thing of the past.
Pamela, you’re right. We’re doing that too. I think I’ve had more contact than before all this happened! It makes me wish I’d known how to do this (was it available?) 10 years ago when my mother and father were failing…it’s a great feature. I’ve also been able to be more in touch with readers, through social media. Those are pluses…but I still get snarky now and then…and I hate all the politics of it all. Used to be I didn’t have to deal with it except around election time, now it’s non-stop. But I do feel strongly on things, and not saying our votes aren’t important, because they are…I just hear too much SHOUTING! Thanks for taking the time to stop by. I appreciate it!
The true tragedy of this time was seen today. I visited my husband at Calverton VA cemetery LI. NY They opened a new section in the past two weeks; there are more than 200 new graves. Oh the sorrow for these families. Decisions were made by officials ,that they thought were right, but hind-site will show them how they could have done better. I only hope that our elected officials will start to join together to get this country back on track. The American people pulled together for the common good why can’t they? A whole generation of medical people have been lost to this tragedy. They won’t recover mentally and will leave this profession.(I speak as a 40 yr.RN) NYC will not recover for a very long time and the medical centers have been devastated! The rest of the country will slowly come back because of the people and sound management practices. Many communities have been hurt needlessly because they were not epicenters. I pray for all of you and wish you safe times and a better future. Take care
I agree, Pat. So agree. What a heartache that must have been visiting the cemetery. And I also agree, pox on both houses, and all. I do wish people could find more in common than differences, because that’s the truth of it. We are one human family. Everyone is going to make mistakes. Even outstanding doctors make whoppers. But we’ll survive. I too wish our elected officials would take a page out of our general public’s book and start to behave. I feel strongly about voting and all, (not telling what side, but most people figure it out), but I don’t like to be SHOUTED at and I think a lot more do and less talk is needed. It is a trajedy. I think we’ll grow stronger out of it. Thank you for your years of service, and I do pray for those medical professionals and their families who have been in the trenches. It’s never easy doing things for the public good. They don’t get paid enough for what they sacrifice, just like our troops. Thanks for stopping by today. I appreciate it!