The World Is Whirling

The world is whirling around me and I know historic changes are happening. I know people are still dying in huge numbers, and the disease is even more infections than before. I remember the reporter in California weeping through her story about the death all around her. I remember hearing about a family with young children whose father died a few days before Christmas. I know — I remember — I know. I pray for people — not very well, with no serenity or confidence — when I remember, when I can make myself. I feel like a fake, but I do it.

I haven’t left my house in days. I live in my keyboard and monitor, in rare phone calls and a very few text chats, and in obsessive conversations with people I miss so terribly who aren’t here. I talk to them in my imagination. They don’t reply, but they are with me in my mind’s eye. I can almost see them in the chair beside me.

My nerves are stretched tighter and tighter as my project’s first customer ship date approaches. A week’s reprieve flew by. I don’t know how everything can be done. By me, I mean, the things I’m supposed to get done.

People are talking about revolutions, insurrections, the dying of churches, the failure of my generation, who struggled so hard – not me, but others. If I started crying about the closed churches, I would never stop.

I work and work and I can never get enough done, and I’m not smart enough or fast enough, and my attention flies out the window, or I dive into my conversations. It is impossible to concentrate. How long does this go on.

January 24, 2021 COVID-19 Infections and Deaths