I know it’s been a couple of weeks and I don’t expect this blog post is going to wow anyone or cause massive social change. It may not even get read, after all, I’m not here to give you the latest updates and numbers and calamity that’s been shouting, ceaselessly, in our faces for the last few weeks.

I’m here to tell you I’m not ok. As my friend sid says, my “give-a-shitter” is effectively broken and I haven’t been able to write much of anything. I swing from anxiety for my parents and at-risk loved ones to rebellious trips to the grocery store for an onion and a bottle of shampoo.

It shouldn’t make sense that I’m not writing, I have so much time, right? So much freedom to not go out and just hang in my pajamas. An introvert should be ecstatic that she no longer has to find excuses to not attend social obligations. But this introvert is also distrustful of the institution that has so easily taken the choice. This introvert has gone from someone who had at least a few hours alone time in the day for free-thinking, to someone who is a full-time-stay-at-home-mom-teacher-comforter-researcher-scientist-gym teacher-housekeeper-spanish teacher-stoic-source-of-calm who feels inadequate at all of it and obligated to keep being the ideal citizen. I should be able to thrive under any condition you put me in and raise a fine bunch of kids while doing it.

But I’m not thriving. Not creatively. Not in any way.

I sit down, in front of screen or page and the ideas that I know are bundled up inside feel trapped, covered by a very particular sense of gray and a heavy blanket of anxiety. I don’t have the luxury of this time. Shouldn’t I be planning a lesson or getting my kids out for a walk, or writing some cheery optimistic chalk bullshit on my neighborhood sidewalks so we don’t forget ‘we’re in this together!” Of course we’re in this together, we’ve got no other choice. It’s like walking into a prison and have some lemon-sunshine blond smile with perfect teeth and giggling “Welcome to Camp! We’re gonna have loads of fun! Just go with it! Oh, and if you complain you’re a vile piece of shit who doesn’t care about your neighbors! Here’s your pajamas and a set of sidewalk chalk!”

Overall, its as if my mind is holding in all of this beautiful stuff, interesting threads of story and plot in its sweaty, clenched hands and it looks at the world shouting the same repetitive rhetoric around, shrugs and says, “why bother?” Then pretty soon those ideas fade under the weight of gray around them. Until they disappear completely and all that’s left is the repetitive rhetoric.

So this lesson has no title. It has no direction. Except to say this, these are strange and harrowing times. You can argue there is hope in the social solidarity we are forming from six-feet away. But something feels off about this and I don’t know how the history of it will be written. So, I’m journaling every day. Words others will probably never see. Thoughts that can be as dark and complex or stupid and shallow as I need them to be on that particular day.

So that’s your assignment for the remaining weeks of this thing. Journal. The thoughts, fears, anxieties, joys (if you can find them good for your sunshine-blond soul), that change in every moment with the wobble of this event. Someday you may come back to it, read and remember. Or you may chose to burn it and hope never to go back to the person you were in those moments of dark. History is going to be written from these events, don’t let theirs be the only version.

Oh, and get outside. Its the only thing that’s saved me from some severe physical/mental damages (minor ones are still fair game). It’s actually quite pleasant when you can catch nature on her own.