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bts-weverse-trans · 4 years

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201123 Weverse Magazine 'BE' Comeback Interview - Jimin

Jimin: “I’m the kind of person who likes to be loved” BTS BE comeback interview 2020.11.23

When he’s talking, Jimin often starts his sentence with phrases like, “I just,” “it just,” “they just …” But then he immediately goes on to open up about his feelings, always providing a sincere response.

On one V-LIVE session back in October, you wore the clothes that you had planned to wear at the airport if you were to go on tour. Jimin: I hadn’t really noticed, but I think I’ve finally come to terms with the reality of our present situation.

By “situation,” you mean how it’s difficult to meet your fans in person? Jimin: Yes. If we had to go on stage in this situation, or if we had to perform our songs, I’m not sure how we would go about accomplishing that. At the same time, It felt like something that was closed up and blocked was opened up again. There isn’t the kind of excitement we got from tour season, though, so it’s easy to feel worn out. But, just like when we’re making new songs, I try to do whatever I can.

BE feels like it’s all about taking care of your feelings and the process of moving forward. Jimin: I had the role of listening to what the members wanted to include in the album, but it’s more a record of the present than it is about our individual feelings. We talked openly about how we’re having a hard time and how we’re trying our best to get over things, and that became the album.

As the project manager for BE, how did you go about gathering and organizing all the members’ ideas? Jimin: I became the project manager because Yoongi recommended I do it, but I didn’t think I had to lead anything along, more just make sure the other members could do their work quickly and easily. Usually that meant asking about their opinions, or passing opinions back and forth with our company. So I would collect ideas, organize them, say, “These are some of the ideas we got back. What do you think?”—ask them again, if they said okay, pass it on to the company, and if they made a song, I sent that over, too.

How did you prod along the members who were taking too long with their ideas? (laughs) Jimin: I would mention them by name in our group chat, and that got them to reply. (laughs) Any time I said someone or other didn’t submit their idea yet, all the others would chime in with, “Hurry up, guys!” and then they’d give it to me.

Sounds like it’s great for one of the members to be project manager. (laughs) How did you accommodate all the different ideas? Jimin: When we first started, we sat down for about an hour and said: If you feel downtrodden, just make a song about feeling desperate; if you want to give others hope, go ahead and write a hopeful song. Let’s find the topic and work from there. And since there’s seven of us, and the album’s going to be about current events, let’s put in one skit to make seven songs; and let’s not put in any solo songs. Let’s make something that we can all work on together.

That approach must have been different from the way you worked on your other recent albums. Jimin: We never said anything like, somebody will make this song and someone else will make that song. We would just take a song and say, Who wants to do this? Who wants to do that? I became more ambitious, and wanted the other members to recognize the work I was doing. And because it was so fun working together, any time I made something, I wanted to play it for them right away. I also loved when they gave me compliments, so that added to the fun. When the songs are eventually finished, we hoped the fans would be able to pick up on all those emotions exactly as we felt them, although there are some songs that didn’t make the cut. (laughs) It was really fun.

You could say that, while it’s important to deliver songs to the fans, the process of creation itself is also important. Jimin: A little while ago, I learned something new about myself: I’m the kind of person who likes to be loved. Looking back, I realized I do what I do not just for the work itself, but to be loved by my friends, family, the group, and fans. It’s been really hard to hold onto those connections, but I felt a fullness once I was sure of that love and kept those relationships close. It was like getting something of my own.

Rather than simply being loved, is it actually a satisfaction arising from the effort involved and the deep sense of trust it builds? Jimin: I used to think more frequently about what I was getting from them than what I was doing for everyone else. Even if I don’t strictly owe our fans or group members anything in return, I feel a deep and sincere appreciation for all the things they do for me. I also saw some people for who they really are, some people who don’t really care about me. Rather than pushing those people away, I learned how to react less emotionally to them. Likewise, I was able to be more emotionally honest with people who are very considerate toward me.

It’s become difficult to express those kinds of feelings to fans these days. The only choice, really, is to talk to them through your songs. What is your message this time? Jimin: There’s a message in every album and music video we make; but you don’t have to understand the message, I just hope you enjoy listening and watching. That’s the first thing. I hope you really like the songs and videos I created while working to not become complacent, so I took great care and practiced a lot to present something perfect to you.

On that note, I think your singing and dancing are changing quite a bit. Your performances in “Black Swan” and “Dynamite” are completely different, but perhaps because of your changed body silhouette, the feel of your dance has become more consistent. As a dancer, what is it you want to express? Jimin: I just hope my emotions come across. I just want the emotions I put into my dancing, actions, and singing to be felt. So I got a lot of feedback, asked around, did some research and found that for each emotion you might express on stage, there’s a body most appropriate for the job. We all have different body types. In order to get the body that can best express my emotions at my age, I went on a strict diet, but I don’t stick to it nearly as intensely as I used to. (laughs)

If you watch your dance in “Dynamite,” your body, especially when you turn away, looks different from before. You look lighter. What effect did your new body have on your dance moves? Jimin: I look how I want to look when I’m around 58 kg, so I went on a diet and lost 5 kg. That’s when I found the look I wanted to present to everyone. I can’t be objective about myself, but there was a certain vibe that I wanted. In the past I tried really hard to be no-frills, and by focusing less on trying something new and more on avoiding mistakes, I prevented myself from advancing any further. But in “Dynamite,” I tried out expressions I’d never tried before. I wanted people to be able to tell that I was really concentrating on this when they watched the video, so for this song, I tried to be sentimental and—how should I put this—I even tried to look suave (laughs) and funny, too . I ended up focusing on painting a single picture rather than on each of the individual elements.

And what is it you wanted to show off? Jimin: We haven’t been able to put on a real show during COVID-19. I wanted to show that we didn’t waste all that time but rather have kept going through it all, that we keep working hard. But portraying “working hard” through dance would look really tiring, so I smiled and danced throughout filming “Dynamite.”

How was that possible? It couldn’t have been easy to keep the whole team motivated. Jimin: With the spread of COVID-19, it took us a while to really believe our rise to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. When we checked our phones and it said we got first place we were amazed, but it was hard to believe, although we were all crying. (laughs) But when COVID-19 first hit, we said, “Ah, it’ll pass quickly and we’ll be right back on tour.” The reason was that we had said, even if it gets tough, let’s give it our all for the next year. Give it our all and collapse.. That was the plan, but we were really disappointed. What was worse was, when I heard it would be hard to have any performances this year, my head … it sort of went blank. My mind was empty. We couldn’t just take a break either. Other people had it really hard but we could keep working. I didn’t know whether we should be happy or sad about it. There were no answers for anything. It was really tough.

How did you get over that? Jimin: If an interviewer or anyone else asked me what my goal was, I told them my goal is to perform with the members for a long time, and that is probably my biggest goal; but I was really saying that to the group: I want to be with you guys for a really long time. I think we conveyed that feeling well to one another. I seriously worried a lot that the group would get exhausted. But they’d be laughing with one another, cheering each other up. We had a lot more time to chat together, so whatever was going on, we could always talk about it over a drink at our home and work it out.

What makes you take your work so seriously? Jimin: I really want to love this job inside and out. If we just look at work as work, all we’ll be after is money, but I never once thought that our group’s dynamic, or the relationship we have with our fans, was based on that. But I think if you’re exhausted mentally and physically, the work becomes a chore, and then your relationships will inevitably suffer. That’s what I was afraid of.

The song “Dis-ease” is about how each member feels about working. How do you feel about your work? Jimin: I don’t consider my main profession, performing and singing, “going to work.”. But when I’m doing something else with the camera right in front of me,that feels like “work.” Singing and performing for our fans isn’t work—it’s something I really, really want to do.

You helped write “Dis-ease,” correct? Jimin: The bridge. I was recording with Pdogg and there was one part that didn’t have a melody, so—should I call it improv?—I was just singing something without thinking about it, and then he asked me to sing that again. So I asked if he was sure, and then he asked me to write the melody, so I ended up writing it.

Some of the other songs on BE have something like that too, but “Dis-ease” somehow feels particularly like old school Korean hip hop. Jimin: I thought so too. I thought of 20 years ago when I sang it. The majority of the song was written by j-hope, so that might just be my thinking (laughs) but I sang it when there was a question mark on who would sing the vocals. I was really doing whatever I wanted, so I sort of had to be restrained (laughs) but it was fun.

Was there any place the vocals changed while recording? There are a lot of parts on BE where you use almost a normal speaking voice. Jimin: I usually already have the big picture set in my mind when I sing, but this time it wasn’t like that. “Life Goes On,” especially—that song’s not about me, but I couldn’t help but empathize with it, so right from the beginning I performed it without having to think about how my voice should sound. I wasn’t thinking about some particular emotion of mine I wanted to express to you. I just recorded exactly the feelings I had as I sang.

There’s a song titled, “Telepathy.” When you streamed yourselves in production on YouTube, the group mentioned the idea of telepathy which made me think you were sending the song directly to your fans. If you could talk to them through telepathy, what would you say? Jimin: People have kind hearts, and I just hope they don’t let that go. You asked about telepathy, but I think we really do have a telepathic connection with our fans. It’s not crystal clear or anything, but I think if we’re sincere then they can feel it somehow. I think that’s why our fans support us and are always by our side.

And what about the other way around? What would you like to hear from your fans? Jimin: One thing I’m always curious about, about our fans, is what’s the hardest thing in their lives. What each of them is struggling with, what’s making them happy—I’m really curious to know. We face our own difficulties as well, so I always wonder if there’s someone in each of our fans’ lives to ask them if they’re doing okay. I hope things get better soon, that people can keep holding on, and that the adults will follow all the rules. Kids don’t have a lot of options right now to do the things they want to do. I imagine a lot of kids see this as something that’s being forced upon them by adults, so I hope the grown-ups will properly explain the situation to the kids so they can help each other too, to end the pandemic.

The news is saying that they’ve made a COVID-19 vaccine, so you might be able to meet your fans sooner than later. What are you going to say to them when you finally see them again? Jimin: I don’t think we’ll say anything. I think we’ll just look at each other for a very long time. And if I’m able to say anything, I’ll probably say, “You made it. Now let’s get back to having a good time.”

Trans © Weverse

#bangtan #jimin #be album #weverse #comeback interview #weverse magazine #201123 #2020

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snarksandkisses · 5 years

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What I think about COVID-19 this morning - Malia Jones, PhD, MPH

What I think about COVID-19 this morning

March 5, 2020

Maybe I'm the closest thing you personally know to an infectious disease epidemiologist. Maybe not--I'm not an expert on this virus by any stretch, but I have general knowledge and training from studying epidemics that is applicable, so here are my thoughts.

First and foremost: we are going to see a tremendous increase in the number of US cases of COVID-19 in the next week. This is not because of some new pattern in the spread of the disease, but rather due to a major change in the requirements to be tested. Until yesterday, if you had flulike illness but had not recently traveled to China, Italy, South Korea, or Iran, you could not be tested. This is just the way healthcare works, you get tested if you meet the case definition and the case definition included travel.

As of yesterday, you can be tested if you are sick and have a doctor's order to be tested. So expect things to feel a lot more panicky all of a sudden. We will see hundreds or thousands of new cases as a result of testing increases.

Second: is that panic legitimate? Sort of. This is not the zombie apocalypse. The death rate of 30 deaths per 1000 cases is probably a wild overestimate. (The denominator is almost certainly wrong because it is confirmed cases--and we only confirm cases when we test for them). That said, even at 3 per 1000 cases, this would be a big deal. A very big deal. By way of comparison, the death rate for influenza is between 1 and 2 in 1000 cases. So, yeah. Roughly 0x to 30x worse than a huge global flu pandemic? That's a problem.

Unlike flu, COVID-19 is not *particularly* dangerous for children, so that’s some happy news. It is dangerous for older adults and those with lung conditions, so we need to be extra careful to protect those populations from exposure.

Also, for millions of Americans, getting any serious illness requiring a hospitalization is a major problem because they can't pay for it. And our health care system is probably going to struggle to keep up with it all. And with China basically closed, our global economy is going to take a huge hit and we'll feel the shockwaves for years. Those are real concerns.

What can we do? Our focus should be on *slowing down the spread* of this disease so that we have time to get caught up. Here is my advice:

1. Wash. Your. Hands. Wash them so much.

The current best guess is that coronavirus is transmitted via close contact and surface contamination. A very small study came out yesterday suggesting that the virus causing COVID-19 is *mostly* transmitted via contact with contaminated surfaces.

I have started washing my hands each time I enter a new building and after being in shared spaces (classrooms especially), in addition to the standard practice of washing after using the bathroom and before eating. Soap and water. Hand sanitizer also kills this virus, as does rubbing alcohol (the main ingredient in hand sanitizer).

There is no need to be obsessive about this. Just wash your hands. A little bit more effort here goes a long way.

2. Don’t pick your nose. Or put your fingers in your mouth, on your lips, or in your eyes. Surface contact works like this: you touch something dirty. Maybe it's an elevator button. Virus sticks to your hands. Then you rub your eye. Then you touch your sandwich, and put the sandwich in your mouth. Now there is virus in your eyes and mouth. See?

You may be thinking, but I don’t pick my nose because I am an adult! An observational study found that people sitting at a desk working touched their eyes, nose, or lips between 3 and 50 times per hour. Perfectly normal grown-ups, not lowlifes like my friends.

2a. There was one note that came out suggesting that face masks actually promote surface contamination because you're always adjusting them--i.e., touching your face. I don’t know if that’s true. But face masks should not be worn by the public right now, unless you are the person who is sick and you're on your way to or actually at the doctor's office. The mask’s function is to prevent spit from flying out of your mouth and landing on things when you cough or sneeze. It flies out of your mouth and is caught in the mask instead. If you are the person who is sick and not on the way to the doctor, go home. Let the people who really need them have the masks. Like doctors.

[ETA on 3/6/2020 honestly people I am getting so much push back on the mask recommendation!! The world is running low on masks. If everyone wants a mask so they can feel ok about keeping their Daytona Beach Spring Break plans and then hospitals in India can't buy them anymore, shame on us.]

Coronavirus does not appear to be airborne in the sense that doesn't remain floating around freely in the air for a long time, like measles does. You are probably not going to breathe it in, unless someone is coughing in front of you. If someone is coughing in your face, feel free to tell them to get their ass home and move 6 feet away from them. (Yeah I know, if you have a toddler, you're screwed.)

3. Sanitize the objects you and lots of other people touch, especially people outside your family--like door handles, shared keyboards at schools (brrr), salad bar tongs, etc. Best guesses are that the virus can live on surfaces for 2-48 hours, maybe even longer, depending on the surface, temperature, and humidity.

Many common household cleaning products will kill this virus. However, white vinegar solution does not. You can make your own inexpensive antimicrobial spray by mixing 1 part household bleach to 99 parts cold tap water. Spray this on surfaces and leave for 10-30 minutes. Note: this is bleach. It will ruin your sofa.

4. "Social distancing." You're going to get so sick of this phrase. This means keeping people apart from one another (preferably 6 feet apart, and sanitizing shared objects). This public health strategy is our next line of defense, and its implementation is what will lead to flights and events cancelled, borders closed, and schools closed.

For now, you could limit face-to-face meetings, especially large ones. Zoom is an excellent videoconferencing option. If you spend time in shared spaces, see #1. Ask your child's school about their hygiene plan, if they haven't already told you what it is. If I were in charge of a school setting, I'd be hand sanitizing the s*** out of the kids' hands, including in and out of each space, and taking temperatures at the door. I am planning to email our school nurse right after this to ask if they need my volunteer help cleaning surfaces.

If you can telecommute, do that a little more. If you are someone's boss and they could do their job remotely, encourage them to do that.

Avoid large gatherings of people if at all possible, especially if they are in an area with cases OR places that lots of people travel to. If you attend group events and start to feel even a little bit sick within 2 to 14 days, you need to self isolate immediately. Like for a tiny tickle in your throat.

5. All your travel plans are about to get screwed up. If you are considering booking flights right now, get refundable tickets. ETA: most trip insurance will not cover cancellations due to a pandemic. Look for "cancel for any reason" trip insurance.

Considerations for risks related to that trip you’re planning: how bad would it be if you got stuck where you are going for 3 to 6 weeks? How bad would it be to be isolated at home for 2-3 weeks upon your return? Do you have direct contact with people who are over 70 and/or have lung conditions? If those seem really bad to you, rethink your trip, especially if it is to a location where there are confirmed cases.

6. If you are sick, stay home. Please! For the love of all that is holy. Stay at home. Your contributions to the world are really just not that important.

7. There is a good chance some communities will see school cancelled and asked to limit non-essential movement. If someone in your family gets sick your family will almost certainly be isolated for 2-3 weeks (asked to stay at home). You could start stocking up with essentials for that scenario, but don't run out and buy a years' worth of toilet paper. Again, not the apocalypse. 2 weeks' worth of essential items. Refill any prescriptions, check your supply of coffee, kitty litter, and jigsaw puzzles.

8. I do want to remind everyone that when public health works, the result is the least newsworthy thing ever: nothing happens. If this all fizzles out and you start feeling like ‘Wah, all that fuss for nothing??’ Then send a thank-you note to your local department of public health for a job well done. Fingers crossed for that outcome.

9. Look, I think there are some positives here. All this handwashing could stop flu season in its tracks! We have an opportunity to reduce our global carbon footprint by telecommuting more, flying less, and understanding where our stuff comes from. We can use this to think about the problems with our healthcare system. We can use this to reflect on our positions of privilege and implicit biases. We can start greeting each other using jazz hands. I'm genuinely excited about those opportunities.

There is a lot we don't yet know about this virus. It didn't even exist 90 days ago. So stay tuned, it is an evolving situation. The WHO website has a decent FAQ. Free to email or text with questions, and you can forward this to others if you think it's useful.

May the force be with you.

Malia Jones, PhD, MPH

[email protected]

I’m an Assistant Scientist in Health Geography at the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I study social contact of humans, and spatial patterns of infectious disease, among other things.

P.S. The number one question I am getting is, did you really write this? Yes. I wrote this.

I didn't write it for professional purposes, so I didn't put my work email on it. It was really just meant to be an email to my friends and family in advance of what I expect to be an escalation in the panic level. But it was apparently welcome information and went viral on FB. I've decided not to edit out the swears, even though I wrote this with a much smaller audience in mind.

Thanks for checking your facts! Go science!

#COVID-19 #coronavirus #wash your hands #Social distancing #don't panic #but maybe just a little panic

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fyeah-bangtan7 · 4 years

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Jimin: “I’m the kind of person who likes to be loved”

#bangtan #jimin #m:weverse magazine #p:website #201123

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blazehedgehog · 4 years

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So rather than attach it to the last (rather large) post thread, I’ll start a new one. If you didn’t catch it on Twitter, friends managed to raise some money through nothing but sheer good will and I ended up booking a stay at the same hotel we should have gotten for free.

I’m starting a new thread because I want to ask a question, but first I want to clarify and provide a better timeline of everything that’s happened. This isn’t exact, but it’s as close as my memory can remember right now:

Late 2019/Early 2020: Whoever owns my apartment complex sells it to a new company in California. The complex is in Nevada. It’s a big apartment complex; it used to be two separate ones that were right next to each other and they merged to create a “project” that houses something like 150-200 units. If you consider families, somewhere in the realm of 300-700 people live here.

April/May 2020: We get a notice on our door announcing that our new owners want to renovate the complex. Every single unit. It’s such a big ordeal that they have to put in to get funding from the State of Nevada to do it. The initial claim is that they will move us out of our apartment unit in to a new unit for up to a month or two (at no cost to us) while they renovate. More information will come in summer 2020 during a town hall meeting we will attend in person. I expect that with the pandemic starting and “shelter in place” orders going out that there’s no way they’d be dumb enough to go through with any of this. The notice ends with them pleading with people not to take this as a cue to move out. In the months to follow, we spied at least four people who were smart enough to get out before the renovation hit. We considered it, but the housing authority we have to rent through went dead silent the moment the pandemic ramped up and have yet to say even a single word to us (even now).

Late October/Early November 2020: The town hall meeting finally happens, online, in a Zoom meeting. Three people in California dictate to the 40 or 50 tenants (maybe more) that attend the meeting how this is going to go. Plans have changed: the renovation will take place across ten days. Very tight schedule. In and out as fast as possible. In batches of 4-5 units at a time, going alphabetically across the complex, units will be renovated. New paint, new carpet, new cabinets, new sinks, new toilet, new shower, new appliances, redone balcony. Renovation teams will come in at 8am and work until 5pm. After 5pm, we will be allowed to return to our unit and sleep there. We will be allowed to keep one bed (per person) and one TV, which the renovation team will move out of the way during the day and return to our unit when they leave. We are also told we will be getting a sealable plastic tub to store personal items (toiletries and such) that the renovation team will also handle. We are assured they will be adhering to rigorous sanitization standards, with multiple temperature checks daily, masks, and gloves. During the day, we are free to go wherever, but the complex will be setting up what they call a “hospitality trailer” -- a communal space for everyone currently effected by the renovation to hang out inside, together. There will be port-a-potties and wifi. We’re told meals will also be provided, possibly in the trailer, but details are unspecific. We’re also told some landscaping will be done. All told, between renovating units and landscaping, they say the whole process from beginning to end will take 18 months or more. Tenants in the Zoom call ask questions -- if we don’t want to stay at the hospitality trailer, we’re told we should consider staying with family during the day. They ignore multiple questions from people asking if this will cause the rent to go up.

December 2020: Renovation begins, starting with apartments in the A block. We’re somewhere near the middle of the alphabet, and going by the ten-days-per-unit estimate, we’re expecting the renovation to hit us around March-ish, maybe even as late as April. I develop an ugly toothache; my face swells up. I do a phone visit with a dentist and he prescribes me antibiotics and schedules me for an appointment on January 18th to pull the tooth.

Early January 2021: Going to check the mail one day, I notice it feels like they’re spending a long time on the first few sets of units. Then, all of a sudden, renovations surge ahead, and units worryingly close to our letter start putting tarps up over their balconies, signalling they’re either mid-reno, or at least packing.

January 18th, 2021: Tooth is “fine” (big cavity, no pain) but we discuss options for pulling multiple bad teeth with this problem tooth, since a lot of my upper teeth aren’t in great shape. Will require multiple rounds of surgery to remove them all and set up replacements. First round of surgery is on February 24th. I immediately wonder if we’re going to get called early for renovation and it’ll land simultaneously with the surgery. I try not to think about it.

January 30th, 2021: We receive a notice that our apartment’s number is due. It’s post-dated, which means the notice is late. We’re supposed to have 45 days notice, and the move-out date listed in the notice is February 23rd. By the 45 day rule, this notice should’ve arrived January 9th. There’s also a degree of confusion: the notice was delivered to our apartment, but the notice is addressed to the apartment below us. Parts of the notice still mention our apartment number. We call the front office for clarification, and they tell us that the notice was indeed meant for the people below us. According to them, we’re in the clear for now. “You’re close...” tells us the person on the phone, “But it’s not your time yet.” We consider preparing early, but it sounds like we have to use the provided packing materials for organizational reasons when the movers come.

February 5th: I record my Patreon Podcast. I mention the renovation. If you consider 10 days per renovation, based on when the notice was actually delivered, I’m expecting we’re going to get our notice in the next few days.

February 8th: We get a knock on the door. A man from the front office is checking in with us to see how packing is going. Packing because the notice was actually for us. It was for all four units in this block. We tell him: we called. They said it wasn’t our time yet. He just kind of shrugs and asks if we need boxes. Of course we do. Our 45 day notice has been cut down to less than 14 days. On top of that, we’ve got doctors appointments and things coming up that’s going to eat in to this time. He says everything has to be in the office-provided UHaul boxes. Even if we have items already in cardboard boxes, they have to be specifically repacked in UHaul boxes.

February 13th: After days of trying to contact my dentist office via email, I finally get a hold of them via text. I try to reschedule my appointment, but the receptionist tells me it’s just another consultation, not surgery. I hope she’s right. The stress of all of this is making it hard to get packing as fast as we need to.

February 15th: My Mom tells me she’s managed to book an appointment for her first round of covid-19 vaccinations. Unfortunately, it’s on February 23rd, the day we’re being moved out.

February 16th: We talk to the people below us, an elderly couple. They’re panicking about packing because they have so much stuff. They mention that the front office booked them a hotel for the duration of their renovation. All they needed was a doctor’s note proving they needed it. Given that my 75 year old mother has a doc appointment literally the next day, this seems like extremely good timing. After doing curbside pickup for a grocery order that day, we pass the movers on our way back in as they are loading a unit in to their Ryder truck. None of them that I see are wearing masks or gloves.

February 17th: Doc visit happens, she implies that he kind of blew her off. She’s had chronic pain in her hands and knees for years, and in particular, the pain in her hands has been getting bad, fast. She wraps her thumb in sports tape because bending it hurts. She used to be a waitress, she used to be a cake decorator, she did data entry for a couple years, and now she’s dabbling with painting. Her carpal tunnel is severe and its accentuated with arthritis. Doctor just kind of shrugs it off, tells her if it gets worse to come back in a few months, even though arthritis can kill people if not treated properly. Still, he writes her a cursory note for the apartment front office. She talks to them and they’re very glad she contacted them about this; it sounds like the kind of thing that’s only available to people who ask, since presumably the owners don’t want to shell out $900,000+ rooming the entire complex in a hotel. Either way, we’re excited; maybe this renovation won’t be so bad. They tell us the name of the hotel and where its located.

February 18th: While doing laundry in anticipation of packing things up for the hotel/renovation, we happen to catch someone in the laundry room who just got back in to her apartment after her reno finished. She tells us a horror story: everything they told us in the Zoom meeting was a lie. They are renovating way more than 4 units at a time, they aren’t going alphabetically anymore, and she theorizes they’re going with a cheaper renovation team because half of her apartment straight up wasn’t done. The new tile was cheap plastic, which was already gouged by the time she got there. No new fridge, no new shower or tub, no new toilet. “Those will be happening this summer,” she tells us. Sinks got replaced, but the new sinks are apparently bigger than the old ones, leaving less counter space (a particular problem in the bathroom). Carpets were new, but already a dirty mess because of the movers. She had to go around and pick up nails stuck in the carpet that were left behind by the renovators. Since they didn’t take the fridge, she got to keep her food in there, which was important for her because she had special dietary food that needed to be refrigerated. The bad news? Some of that food was stolen. She had a broom and a dust pan stolen, too. She mentions how poor communication has been. We mention the hotel, and she lights up. She didn’t stay in her apartment either, they put her up in the hotel, too. So at least there’s that silver lining. Though she regrets it, because they damaged her TV while she was away. She finally helps clarify the food situation for us, too: we’ll be receiving a “food voucher” to pay for our meals, whatever that means.

February 19th: My Mom was supposed to call the front office to confirm we got the hotel, but in all the confusion, she didn’t get around to it. We’ll have to wait the entire weekend to get confirmation. But if the elderly couple below us got a room, and the lady we spoke to at laundry got a room, it sounds like we’re a lock.

February 22nd: The front office checks in on us again, shrugs their shoulders at how behind we are on packing, and offers us more boxes. They only give us large boxes; we need small, medium and especially rolls of packing tape. They mention they’ll have more later once they open the storage unit, but we never get any. Across this entire ordeal, we’ve only gotten a single roll of packing tape. We bought several rolls of our own after being tired of waiting. Front office guy says our fridge is being replaced, but we can still keep food in our old one and we’ll just “come in and change it out.” Whatever that means. Later, after getting off the phone, we learn we were rejected for the hotel. The doctor’s note wasn’t good enough and the head office in California denied our request. My Mom tries to contact her doctor again to get a more detailed note, but he doesn’t return her call. We’re going to be living out of the car for the next ten days. We talk about protesting this; by stopping packing right now and refusing to leave, but eventually decide that would be a bad idea. We don’t want to risk the movers breaking any of our things. A couple friends start spreading around my paypal.me link in the hopes of raising money for us to stay at a hotel. They raise a little over $200, but it’s hard to justify spending that on a hotel.

February 23rd, Morning: By this point, we’re running on empty. No sleep, physically exhausted, stressed out of our minds. Both of us on the verge of tears several times. With everything going on, we’re a little over halfway done packing and there’s no time left. We quickly move from “pack everything” to “pack what’s important so the movers don’t have to touch it.” Whatever we can’t finish, the movers will pack for us. At 7:30am the movers arrive, and they knock on the door at 8am. They are very polite. They are all wearing masks and gloves. We tell them they are nowhere near ready, and they offer to do our unit last. We do the best we can and leave the rest to them. On our way out, we talk to the elderly couple that lives below us, who claim the moving truck won’t be enough to hold everything in their apartment. It’s a big truck and a small apartment. I find that hard to believe. We go park somewhere and doze in the car until my Mom’s vaccination appointment at 10am. More friends, some of them with very large followings, start spreading the paypal.me link around. Momentum begins to build.

February 23rd, Midday: We get to the vaccination place only to realize we forgot some things at the apartment. We quickly jog back across town and plan to ask them if it’s okay if we can go in to the apartment and retrieve it. When we get there, they’re still unloading the couple below us, and I notice they aren’t just taking UHaul boxes, but regular cardboard boxes, too. Given it’s been almost two hours, this might be second truckful, maybe even the third. I grab the stuff we’re missing and we head back to the vaccination park. Afterwards, we hang out at my brother’s just in case my mom has an allergic reaction to the vaccine and she needs help. She’s fine, and by the time we’re through there, it’s getting to be time to head back to our apartment for the night at 5pm. Before we leave my brother’s, I use their wifi to check my Paypal account. I joke, “I’m worried that I’ll open my account and it’ll say $2000.” Combined with the little bit of money I already had in my Paypal, the donations have pushed my account close to $2200. I burst out laughing. “YOU WANNA GO GET A HOTEL?!” I shout. We agree we’ll spend the night in the unit tonight and decide what we’ll take with us to the hotel in the morning.

February 23rd, Evening: It’s close to 6pm and the movers are still there. They were supposed to clock out almost an hour ago. I browse Tripadvisor and Expedia in the parking lot and decide to just book the same hotel they dangled in front of our faces, since reviews specifically point out it’s clean and has extremely good quarantine practices. Expedia lets me pay with Paypal directly, but there’s a problem where it won’t connect to my Paypal account. As I go to transfer the money out of my Paypal and finish booking the hotel, the wifi dies. The movers just unplugged our modem and packed it up. They probably weren’t supposed to do that, and they picked the worst time, too. We spend the next 45 minutes driving around town trying to find free wifi so I can book this hotel. We end up parking at my brother’s place and leeching his wifi from the driveway. Hotel booked, check-in is at 3pm on the 24th. For now, it’s back to the apartment to decide what to take with us.

February 23rd, Night: Upon getting back to the apartment around 7pm, we find it’s... a disaster area. They spent so long unloading all the other units, they did not have time to finish packing and unloading what was left in our unit. There’s garbage everywhere, it’s mixed in with the stuff we want to keep, some of it’s broken, it’s horrible. It looks like they just swept everything off the tables on to the floor. TV remotes and mail are spread out all over the place. They didn’t leave us any lamps, so the only lights in the apartment are the front door light, the kitchen light, and the bathroom light. They might have left us our mattresses, but they didn’t leave us any pillows or blankets. Still, we spent the better part of the night sorting through the “trash” and separating it out in to the stuff we wanted to keep. We pack up most of the apartment with whatever materials the movers left behind, but we eventually run out of boxes and tape. We still managed to pack 99.9% of what was left. From 7pm to 2:30am.

February 24th, Morning: At 7:30am I'm woken up by the movers pulling up. I can hear them joking in the parking lot about who gets the honor of being called "papi" and cracking rude jokes about "assuming gender." They probably think nobody's around to hear them. We ask them for more time so we can wake up and get dressed. As we're loading up the car with stuff to take to the hotel, we overhear the movers complaining about how they are being made to wait because we were supposed to be out of here by 8, and it's close to 9. My Mom gives them an earful about how little time we had to pack compared to how long we should've had. "That's been happening to a lot of people here." one of them tells her. My whole body hurts after days of little sleep and packing extremely heavy boxes. I’ve had a throbbing headache for almost 48 hours. With the dentist appointment at 3pm that afternoon, we go to a park and I doze in the car for another five hours.

February 24th, Afternoon: Dentist appointment goes smoothly; they offer to start surgery, but I explain to them what happened with the renovation and they are perfectly fine postponing until a later date. By now, my feet hurt where the soles of my shoes have been rubbing. My ankles and knees are hurting from being crunched up inside a car for two days. My back hurts from all the lifting. I’m beyond miserable and realize there’s no way I could bare to spend 10 days living in this car. Thankfully, with the dentist appointment out of the way, it’s check in time. The hotel room is nice, but given I’ve never stayed in a hotel before, I don’t have much of a comparison. But when I fall asleep that night, I sleep harder and longer than I have in years.

February 25th: The elderly couple that lived below us at the apartment are here at the same hotel we are, and we talk to them. Turns out, the lady has the same doctor as my Mom, and they were rejected from his note, too. The approval they got for the hotel came from her husband’s doctor, who wrote an extremely detailed note about his oxygen needs. They mention that people living in our complex with disabilities weren’t housed here and they don’t know where they are or what happened to them. They also claim that the food provision stuff from the apartment front office is apparently some kind of a $45/day meal credit we get at the end of the renovation. But again, it’s still not clear, and the apartment itself has never clarified. That night, we return to the apartment again to raid our fridge for stuff to bring to the hotel. Now, if you remember, we were supposed to be able to sleep at the apartment every night. The apartment we returned to was in such a state that it would have been impossible to sleep in. No sinks, no toilets, no stove, no running water of any kind, and all of the outlets stripped down. Literally the only thing we could have done was sleep there; nothing else was possible. And even then, remember: no bedding. No pillows, no blankets, and it’s still winter out there.

Update on things I forgot: Also on the 25th, elderly couple in the unit below us also told of how the movers had thrown their $950 couch outside and left it in the dirt for multiple days, asking if it was “trash” because one of the washable seat covers had a single pet stain on it. (When we visited the apartment that night to raid the fridge, we even saw it) Not only that, but last year, our bathroom tub had been leaking in to one of their closets. They had to shut our water off for several days and fix the pipes. Apparently this caused black mold in their apartment that wasn’t discovered until they started hauling boxes out. Upon bringing it up with the renovation team, they got told “there’s black mold everywhere! it’s in the grass! it’s fine!” The husband went in to take pictures of the black mold, but by the time he got over there with the camera, the renovation team had already painted over it. Apparently another tenant on the other side of the complex had mold problems so bad that she’s been paid to stay at this hotel for more than a month already while they deal with it.

Which brings us, roughly, to today.

Now, the question I mentioned way back at the top: what are my options here, legally? A lot of friends have told me up and down that this is either illegal, or should be illegal, but I have no idea where to start with any of this stuff and frankly I’m a little gun shy. I don’t know what Nevada housing law is like, what renters rights are, and I don’t want to risk being evicted. But I also know that the threat of being evicted is also what keeps people complacent.

All I really know is that basically everything they originally told us was a lie, and they never informed us of most of these changes. As for the rest, well... just read for yourself.

Whatever you know, I’d like to know.

#renovation #timeline

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qtakesams · 3 years

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When Life Goes On, Go with It

Two years ago this month, I moved to Edgewater, Maryland, to complete a summer internship with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. SERC, as we call it, is a branch of the Smithsonian Institution that specializes in climate, coastal, terrestrial, and various other types of sciences. Their campus is an hour east of Washington, D.C. They own hundreds of acres of land, on which they house their laboratories and fields.

It was just after my sophomore year of college ended. As with many underclassmen years, mine was turbulent. I endured a drastic shift in my social circle which had, even if temporarily, left me feeling stranded on a campus I was still learning about. I’d had a rough spring semester, finding a lack of motivation to complete any assignment.

Most undergrads face that year: the one where nothing feels right, and each path feels like a dead-end. I had applied for a SERC internship on a bit of a whim. Entering college, I’d seen myself as a fiction writer and editor, planning to end up in a corporate publishing house. Sophomore had shown me I desired other things, and I applied for SERC’s science writing internship completely unsure if I’d actually like the work. What if I didn’t? What if it felt worse than the previous semester? What would I do if I couldn’t bounce back?

All of this, I decided, would be worth the risk. When I got an email from the internship’s advisor in March, offering me the position, I accepted it. The rest, as some might say, is history.

SERC is a hard place to find until you’ve visited a few times. The brown sign is easily skipped by the eyes. Coming from the west, you approach SERC on the left side of the road. Immediately, you forget that you’re technically in the suburbs, less than thirty miles from the epicenter of political heat in America. After a few turns, you arrive at the gate. When SERC is publicly open, you drive on through. When you’re an intern coming back from the bar at night, you have to swipe your ID card. You drive a few more turns, watching closely for deer, before that final right turn that drops you into the parking lot of the intern dorms and the labs.

I fell in love with SERC within days of my arrival. There were the intimidating factors of the place: fellow interns at Ivy Leagues and respected colleges, scientific labs into which the government itself funded millions, no meal plan, and the stick shift vehicle I would drive all summer. I was terrified when my mom drove away. I explored the floor of my building, admiring the kitchen, perusing the book selection. By eleven, I was in bed. I was tried from traveling, but more so, I didn’t know what to do. I’d briefly interacted with the other intern already on my floor, but I didn’t know him well enough to go say hi. There were four interns moved in below my floor, but I hadn’t seen any of them yet. I suddenly seemed wildly out of my element, though I had felt comfortable at SERC the moment I drove through the gate.

Of course, I grew happier at SERC. The happiest I’d been in years. Within weeks, I made strong friends, adjusted to my job, and began to close my GPS when driving to the store.

My work felt good. The articles I wrote and the media I created reached thousands of people, many of which gave positive comments. My words were reaching people, and the people were responding.

I was raised by a scientist, but more importantly, by well-educated, empathetic people. Loving my planet was part of the gig when I was growing up. In high school, I began to see where my privilege in this education existed. My friends at school didn’t seem to care about the things I’d be taught to care about. Water consumption, electricity, knowing the landscape on which your house is built. I knew important moments in history, and how they affected me. I had early knowledge of politics, to the point where I knew who George Bush was before his presidency ended (when I was 10). Ignorance and empathy tend to go hand-in-hand, mostly because ignorance leads to apathy. We’ve seen this cause-and-effect equation hold catastrophic, deadly consequences in 2020.

When I arrived at SERC, it didn’t slip by me that I suddenly had access to information that most people only dream about. Many of us are ignorant (I remain ignorant to 99.9% of what happens on this Earth) by circumstance, not by choice. Accessibility is one of our biggest problems of a global society attempting to function in a digital, climate change-riddled world. Sixty percent of the globe now has Internet access, but that leaves 3.08 billion people without the knowledge they need to protect themselves from the setbacks of climate change. Most of those people, as it would turn out, are terribly affected most by war, poverty, hunger, climate, social injustice, etc. These things intertwine and cause one another. Not always, but often.

My position at SERC gifted me access to science occurring in real-time. When the Pandemic would hit a year later, it would be surprising but not shocking. On a planet where politics and science are brothers, and the population is soaring too high to properly maintain, containing a spreadable virus is like trying to hold a cup of water in your bare hands. Sooner or later, it’s going to slip between the cracks and go everywhere. If it slips far enough, you’ll never find a towel strong enough to collect it all.

In March of 2020, when I moved home to isolate, I knew the rest of college was trashed. Not my degree, necessarily, but the experience of college. I would lose that experience in its normalcy, and therefore the skills which develop from that normalcy.

I did soon realize, however, that we are not always fortunate enough to do something about mass-casualties or problems. There’s not always an answer, straightforward or not. When there is one, you should grab it with both hands.

That summer of 2020, I decided I wanted to pursue a master’s degree after college. Higher education is not unknown in my family; we boast high degrees from prestigious universities. I am the opposite of a First-Generation student (one of my great-grandparents also had a master’s degree). Graduate school had already been on my mind when I started college, but I didn’t know what for. An MFA in fiction had felt the most logical to my teenage self in 2017, but by 2018, that felt out the window. What I had realized by the summer of 2020 was that, in the midst of the chaos and absurdity, was that I could in fact do something about what was going on. I can’t solve climate change, or house the homeless, or save every polar bear, or even eradicate a virus, but I can help in my own way. On some level, I can do something about the many crises. This, in itself, is “doing something”.

Science writing is a polarizing subject, of this I have been aware my entire life. Unfortunately, we’ve made science political, though politics are generally opinion (with strong empathy) and science is fact. It’s a tough, competitive field, but so is everything else. If you want to “make it” in this world, you have to willingly shed blood, tears, and probably sweat profusely. As I watched the COVID cases skyrocket simultaneously to the people I knew who cared not to stay home, I could tell something was off. People weren’t listening. If they were, it was usually to the ignorant voices on television.

I could feel my cheeks burning as I watched the Johns Hopkins map. It seemed cruel that we, as a society, could do that to ourselves. That we could allow this virus to spread and kill, but also that we had put ourselves in this position. I had already been envisioning myself as a science writer every day since my time at SERC had begun. Finally reckoning with the knowledge that not everybody is a scientist, nor cares to be one, was the icing on the cake. I couldn’t fix it all, but I could offer my help. So, I would.

When I began this blog two years ago, it was solely for abroad purposes. It was a fabulous way to let anybody who cared know what I was experiencing and how I was handling those experiences. Studying abroad, no matter how or where or how long, is difficult. Studying in general, for any length of time on any subject, is mindboggling tedious. I give kudos to my friends and family who have any advanced, foreign, or nontraditional education.

What I discovered after I began writing blog posts and sharing my thoughts is that there’s always more to the story than the words on the page. That’s why I’ve added to this blog in the year and a half since my abroad semester ended; there is always more to tell.

In a few weeks, I begin my master’s degree at Northwestern University in Chicago. My degree is in journalism, with a specialization in Science and Health reporting. I’m nervous to my core, as I am with any new adventure. I just graduated college last weekend, so my emotions are running wild. Yet, I have a feeling I’m about to finally be where I’ve wanted to be for years. I love words. I love messing with them, shaping them, using them to fit whatever project I want. I also love science. I love knowing what is happening around me, and why and how it is. Combining them already feels like a dream come true, so I’m sure the next year will feel magical.

The classes of 2020 and 2021 are probably the most resilient in history. A Pandemic, racial and social injustice, wildfires, remote learning, wifi issues. We’ve seen it all, and it’s made us stronger every day.

I think I’ve worn this blog out for this phase of life. My thoughts on what I’ve talked about here are valid and important, but they don’t exist alone. For somebody who’s pretty much been writing since she could hold a pencil, I hate journaling. I’ve tried so many times, and never succeeded, with the exception of this blog. That said, it gave me an incredibly strong, consistent manner of getting my thoughts on the page, for which I am endlessly grateful. If you’ve kept reading my thoughts and words, you should know I’m endlessly grateful for you, too.

All of this is saying that, whether you’re ready or not, life keeps going. Life can be cruel, it can be challenging, it can be beautiful. No matter what, it keeps going. As my friend Ferris once said, if you don’t stop and look around from time to time, you could miss it. So much changed so drastically in the last year. I’m still processing it. I might always be processing it. Most importantly, I think, is that I’ve learned to flow with it wherever it goes. It’s harder sometimes than other, but the result is usually worth the grind.

You might read my stuff in the Times once day, or (my personal favorite dream) National Geographic. I don’t know honestly know where I’m going, but I’m okay with that because I do know that I’m on my way. I’m still going. When life continues, you should go, too. You never quite know where the climb will lead, but you do know that the view will be great.

#study abroad #science writing #thoughts #media #graduate school #graduate student #class of 2021

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sparrow-ink · 4 years

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covid diaries aka memoirs of the plague

trying to keep my thoughts organized and coherent has been a bitch recently, so i’m going to try to put them down more or less in order here and see where we end up. this is going to be heavy on personal covid content and might get long, so please skip if either distresses you.

so last tues, the uh... 24th i guess, i started feeling ill. mostly like allergies plus a bad headache. i had a feeling i was getting sick but didn’t want to alarm my spouse or housemate/best friend, so stuck with ‘could very well be allergies and dehydration.’ also it very well could have been, and it was very reassuring for us all to tell each other that. my company had already moved the majority of employees to work-from-home, including me, so i already wasn’t going to come into contact with anyone outside my home.

symptoms got worse over the next few days, congestion, headache, feeling feverish, cough started up. we didn’t own a thermometer, and my spouse and housemate tried every wal-mart, wal-greens, target, etc to find one. housemate said at one place they laughed at her when she asked if they had any. i tried ordering one on amazon with no luck. either they were $90+, out of stock, or not shipping until may. i settled on ordering on for shipment in may. the seller messaged me the next day and said they couldn’t fulfill the order and asked to cancel it.

from our last costco trip we had already (unintentionally) gotten stocked up on toilet paper, snacks, and some dry goods. at some point before I got sick, spouse and I bought a bag of rice and bag of potatoes, because I intermittently try to do mealprepping and seemed being stuck at home would be a good time to try again, what with national and state-wide states of emergency being declared. also seemed good to have them in supply. and we were still stocked up on cold and flu medecine from when i got bronchitis mid-dec to mid-jan. so we were/are pretty well-stocked on essentials? that was reassuring, as i was obviously, noticeably sick by last friday.

i was hoping i would get better over the weekend but i did not. still couldn’t find a thermometer anywhere. governor had issued the state-wide stay-at-home order on uh...thurs? weds? but already being sick, and already working from home, and not going out, it didn’t really affect me much?

i feel like i should mention at this point that since the state of emergency was declared and we started to transition to working from home, i’d been trying to ration my social media (tumblr/twitter/insta) time for my sanity. but also not having information makes me feel helpless, so i had the CDC covid page up and checked every day. and then the colorado state covid page too. seeing the numbers of confirmed cases double, and triple, from week to week was... hm.

also one of my younger siblings moved from colorado to arizona at the start of march, and presumably lost their phone because i haven’t heard from them since despite poking. that hasn’t been concerning during a global pandemic. not at all. they’re probably not dead. i mean, you’d think a bitch could call their older sibling to let them know they’re not dead, but whatever. i’m sure they’re fine. probably. anyway.

where was i. so by the weekend i was Not Feeling Well At All Actually. my cough had become “scary.” my housemate did all the dishes in the kitchen despite not being responsible for most of them. i felt, and sounded, disgusting.

i checked the covid testing requirements again, and basically found that in colorado you had to be dying to be tested for covid. cool.

monday rolled around, still not better. i ended up having work computer issues (their end, not mine) where i basically ended up laying on the couch in my office while IT did IT things. a blessing. i slogged through the rest of the day. just felt like i wasn’t tracking well, couldn’t focus on shit. that evening while watching shows with husbeast & housemate, i had a truly uncontrollable coughing spasm/fit that seemed to just go on. could barely talk without coughing. i coughed all night. i basically didn’t sleep.

tuesday morning i woke up, and started coughing again. i could hear a crackle echo up my throat when i breathed if i was in the right position. i sat up to try and get my breath. i think it was like 6 am. spouse creature (already awake from my coughing) gently rubbed my back. i started crying. i just wanted to sleep, and i couldn’t sleep, and i couldn’t stop coughing, and i felt like i could barely breathe, and things just hurt, and i couldn’t think straight. i felt so... defeated. i think it freaked out the spouse creature. i usually only cry during children’s movies.

i took the day off of work. i hadn’t taken a day yet because i was already working from home, and it was the end of the month which is the busiest for my team, and my boss had said last week that if i felt i could work, they needed me. by tuesday morning i was out of energy and also fucks. i got in the queue for a teladoc appointment. per the CDC and colorado covid websites, telehealth visits are to be the first option in order to help prevent the spread, etc. also i would have done teladoc anyway bc i don’t have a PCP.

it took a few hours to get connected with a doctor. i think i started coughing while he did his intro thing. he basically said, well i think i know what you’re calling about, but why don’t you tell me. i told him. and coughed some more. he said my symptoms are consistent with covid, and in a perfect world they’d be able to get me in for rapid testing, but they couldn’t. that basically people are only getting tested at this point who are getting admitted to the hospital. some people were able to access testing through their PCPs but even that was drying up. he advised me to self-isolate (already on it lol) and for my household to self-quarantine for at least two weeks from when i started showing symptoms. and i could un-self-isolate once the majority of my symptoms calmed down AND when i didn’t have a fever for three days straight with no meds. he prescribed me an inhaler and a cough suppressant pill, though he said the cough suppressant might not do much since it didn’t seem to be working for anyone else with similar.

husbeast had run out to get some more supplies by the time i got on the vidcall with the doc, mostly liquids and electrolytes. he went back out once i gave him the rundown, to fill my prescription and get me the good costco chicken soup once they were open. he also, miracle of miracles, managed to find and buy a temporal thermometer at costco for like $45 i think. a true champion. my temp seemed to be fine in the afternoon, a touch above normal but fine. i’m not actually sure what my personal base temperature is. i should also say that i’d been consistently taking dayquil and sudafed since the previous weds.

that evening my temp started to go up. and up. or at least i think it was tuesday night. maybe it was weds? freaked out spouse, i got up to 102 F even with sudafed and additional acetaminophen. i basically had a fever from tues through this morning (friday), while taking pills like clockwork. always seemed to get worse in the afternoon/evening and be better in the morning. today at least it’s stayed below 100F, even mostly below 99F.

the cough and difficulty breathing has been the worst part. i have delicate baby lungs to begin with, and i have allergies and a history of childhood asthma. so i’m already paranoid about my breathing even with a normal cold. but to hear that i would have to immediately proceed to emergency services should my symptoms progress to: can only get a few words out, can’t stand up or walk across the room, can’t maintain conciousness, to hear that was... something. because then it’s basically like, okay, if I get pneumonia and my lungs are filling up, then i can go see a doctor in person. cool. and i know it says on the websites that there’s no approved treatment for coronavirus, that treatment for less severe cases will be the same at home as it would be in person, but shit. i woke up so many times last night feeling like i was fighting for air, waking up because i was coughing so hard i had to sit up all the way to breathe, and i kept thinking, what if i just stop breathing in my sleep? not like i would notice, right?

it’s been scary. i’ve been trying not to freak out my people with more crying and whatnot, but i’ve already got anxiety and this shit aint helping. i’m trying to stay relatively calm and not make them deal with me losing my shit on top of already taking care of me and bringing me soup and water and pills and asking what they can do for me. i’m tired of being sick. i want a new pair of lungs. i want to not feel like i’ve been hit by a truck. my ribs hurt from coughing so much. my chest hurts. my whole body aches. the headache keeps coming and going. i can’t stop fucking coughing. i don’t want to die, i just want to maybe go into a coma and wake up when this is all over. once the line of dump trucks has stopped running me over.

and i’m just so mad at the lack of preparedness in the US. i’m so pissed that i can’t even get tested, i can’t know for sure what the fuck is happening to me. i’m so mad that the cheeto is president during this. i hate this fucking timeline. i hate that we don’t even have clear numbers on cases because of mismanagement. i hate that i keep feeling like i’m about to throw up because i’m coughing so fucking hard. real fucking reassuring to know that the symptoms i’ve been told to watch for, to know that i need to go to the hospital, are the same ones that constitute an emergency and would mean that i would basically have to be rushed there. wearing a facemask if we can find one.

ugh. the other worst part is that i haven’t even been really coherent enough to write. and i’ve only been able to settle on a few things to read and watch. being sick makes me picky and like, impossible to please. so i’m spoiled for choice with 4+ streaming services, but nothing sounds good. and my people are working from home, but they’re still working. they can’t spend all their time with me. i’m bored, and everything is garbage, and there are only so many times i can rewatch the princess bride. i have been napping quite a lot, but even that doesn’t take all day.

maybe i’ll write some crackfic. then it doesn’t have to be coherent. and it would be in the spirit of covid to write some real absurd shit i think.

anyway. i might delete this later. i feel better for getting events put down and venting. also i apologize, i have no idea how to do a readmore cut on tumblr anymore.

#long post #covid diaries #plague memoir #meatspace recollection #meatspace adventures

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sobdasha · 4 years

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"I definitely updated my list of books I was reading on tumblr so it's all good" -me, a lying liar, right before spending several months finishing my reread of All The Discworld Books I Own But In Chronological Order For The First Time Ever Which In Fact Makes A Difference.

(and then I did it again after the libraries closed)

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin Hm, so. I definitely read this. At some point. It was not really for me, not bad, but not really for me. This particular edition had various notes before and after the text, all of which I read, which made it an experience I got more out of. It's important for me to know that the author is aware that the protagonist is a raging misogynist who's stupid, and yes this was on purpose so you'd realize how really incredibly stupid he is and thus maybe be tricked into changing your mind yourself. It is a legit tactic, but one I tend not to enjoy, so if I hadn't been forewarned I'd have been UUUUGGGGGHHHH MAKE HIM SHUT UP ALREADY and probably rage-quit. As it was, I was able to better appreciate what Le Guin was doing here, even if this book didn't win a place in my heart and I probably won't reread. I definitely preferred Ancillary Justice's take, with the feminine pronouns. For my brain, masculine pronouns = they might as well all be men = business as usual = I didn't really get any gender queering from it. I can't really remember much else now. Oh, it was also part "survival in the wilderness" story, which they're big on making you read in school (which I find very suspicious), and which I tolerated and read a few classic ones on my own until they kept assigning these kinds of stories for us to read and now I get nothing from them and mindlessly hate them. Anyway, as I said, not bad at all but not really for me.

Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin This one's a reread--I picked it up from the library during college because we were doing Titus Andronicus in class and it didn't occur to me that there might be more than one Lavinia???? But hey it worked out because later in college we did the Aeneid and then I had Background for rereading Lavinia. This is the book that is lyrical and beautiful and pulls me in and makes me care deeply about the world and the characters. This is the book of Le Guin's that makes me feel the way everyone else feels about Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness and etc. I would like to find more of Le Guin's work that makes me feel the same way, because as I've said you can really tell from her other stuff that she's a solid writer who knows her stuff. I just…don't enjoy any of the other things. Anyway I recommend. I always forget about this book, and then when I reread I'm like "wow why don't I read this more often?????"

How Long 'Til Black Future Month?, N. K. Jemisin I liked every story in this short story collection. I should just reread it and try writing this up again tbh but also tbh I'll probably do the rereading and then just not write anything up again. Just read Jemisin's stuff I love her writing so much okay. ETA: that’s exactly what I did, I reread this during my covid rereads and said “I should do a proper write-up this time” and lo and behold where is it

Tehanu, Ursula K. Le Guin Okay, this last Earthsea book treated me much better than the others. It's probably not for everyone else, which might be why it's for me. It's much more domestic, much less "plot" happening, full of introspection, and centered on women rather than men. This novel acknowledges and confronts the rampant internalized misogyny in the previous three books, engages it in a way that the misandrist in me finds satisfying even though it never comes to a good solution for the problem. This book is more like a reflection. Earthsea has never been about "light is always good, dark is always bad; be a hero, fight evil" etc. But this one I think shifts the tone a little farther; it's less about balance, and more...I guess I'd put it as, "actions have consequences." It's not concerned with right or wrong, it's concerned with people getting hurt. It's pretty somber and serious, without any humor to balance it out, tons of bad things happen to people, lots of PTSD...but this time I really cared about the characters, and I feel like it was all handled really well? In addition to critiquing internalized misogyny, it also critiqued victim blaming. Seemed like it handled disability pretty well too--was honest about how people are jerks about it in reality, while still being optimistic and treating Therru as valuable; made occasional mentions of considering work-arounds for having only one fully-functional hand, while mostly just having Therru go about living and doing chores and being capable and assuming she did find those work-arounds without having to draw attention to it; and Therru's terrible scars didn't get magically healed at the end, the whole book makes a point all the way through that her physical scars will always be with her the same way her emotional scars will be, and she's simply learned how to go on living with them. Tehanu: a book full of trauma happening to people, where what would normally be the plot in a fantasy novel ended up not even getting started to be resolved, but Le Guin's writing and handling of the subject matter helped heal my jaded soul.

Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee A quick summary of my experience: Chapter 1 - ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh what is going on what even Chapter 2 - no, no this is just, this is what sci fi is like, right? Just give it a few chapters and then by the end of the book everything will probably make sense. I'm sure that's how it works. Remember how even in Ancillary Justice I ended up with two separate Battles of Valskay, but now everything is fine??? It's. Fine. Chapter 4 - (ohhhhhhh I still don't know what's going on) Several Chapters Later - still no clue what's going on, but hit my stride with the terminology, my foreign language instinct kicked in where words stopped sounding weird and while I could not for the life of me define any terms for you, I had a vague comprehension of how the words operated In Context. Sort of. And by then I had, without realizing it, begun page-turning and binging, so I guess I liked the book lol! Another serious-but-not-funny one, but with an extra dose of War Memoir and all the gruesomeness that entails (but probably, like any good War Memoir, probably not actually gratuitous and actually in fact the necessary amount of gruesome). Jedao was turned into a woobie at the last minute and, well, damn, guy knows the way to my heart. The novel apparently gripped me enough that I don't even mind that it only came into play at the very end of the game. And hey, there's two more novels to deal with that revelation, which I have picked up from the library to read immediately! Yay! Current personal theory: based on the heavy math references that made me want to cry at the start, but the almost entire absence of actual numbers, and a reference to "there's no way actual physics works like that, it was obviously a calendrical effect" or something…I'm going to throw out a wild guess that the calendar stuff (and all the social structuring that goes with it) is so that they can break and reinvent math. So they can effect a universe where 2+2=5 and therefore a bunch of people standing in this exact position makes a force field or bullets of rose thorns or whatever and some other dude can make himself immortal. This sounded like a pretty terrible theory already and it sounds even worse now I've typed it up but oh well.

Raven Stratagems, Yoon Ha Lee Guess who didn't write this up back when she read it!!! Also, I returned Ninefox Gambit to the library right before the libraries shut down for covid. So, I had Raven and Revenant on hand for months but I didn't have Ninefox on hand to do an immediate reread to see if that made the sci fi make more sense. (It probably wouldn't have, but I would have liked to do a rereading while the ending was still fresh.) By this time there is a lesser degree of visceral viscera. Lee is brutal, however, about continuing to be honest about what war costs and whether war is worth that cost (which depends, really, on whose lives you think matter. Very relevant for these times. Very much prepared me to shut up and not whine about the inconveniences of protests and their fallout. There is no pretty and clean way to have a revolution, since it involves destroying a particular [terrible] way of life, so we're all just gonna have to sacrifice together). Also I think by this point all the character development from the first novel paid off in the form of character dynamics being hilarious now despite, y’know, the gruesome shadow of war.

Revenant Gun, Yoon Ha Lee Continues to discuss the honest price of war and the messiness of fallout. Shuos "The risks I took were calculated, but boy am I bad at math" Jedao. Oh I think this is also the one where every so often one of the characters thinks, "Okay so this person is a tyrannical murderous dictator but he is ensuring that there will never again be food shortages and no one in the space empire ever goes hungry." And then Lee turns around and is like, "Haha but don't forget this same person invented a form of vital infrastructural technology (and also immortality) that is optionally based off ritual human torture sacrifice. Like he didn't have to do that to make it work. He just decided to anyway. And that's always bad :) " (Also useful in our current climate of "Okay but we should consider the other person's circumstances and point of view" and also "Yeah but that doesn't apply if they're literally Nazis tho.")

Hexarchate Stories, Yoon Ha Lee A collection of short stories set in the universe of those three books. There's one story at the end that does satisfy the "But I wanted another sequel!!!" urge. And there's a bit of backstory for Jedao and Cheris. But by and large what you should be in the mood to read is flash fiction snippets that simply happen to be set in the same universe but have no bearing on the plot. Which is pretty cool and interesting if you are in the proper mindset! Even better, Lee includes author's notes at the end of each story to talk about the story, or the influences, or the context of his life at the time, etc etc. That is always my absolute favorite part of a short story collection. Also these notes told me everything I needed to know about why I liked certain things about his writing. "I wanted to write my own AUs," "If I get stuck I go on TV Tropes," "My only regret is that I had to cut the scene where Jedao goes to ~Halloween~ dressed as himself and trolls people" ahhhh that's also a regret I share.

Dragon Pearl, Yoon Ha Lee This one is YA! There is a lot less gore although I guess there was still genocide! Read this when you are in the mood for something that doesn't attempt to hide the fact that the plot is completely, conveniently contrived to give you fast-paced action and fun. Min sure has a lot of coincidental meetings that should stretch my disbelief but I don't care. Also, I am enjoying reading books with girls as protagonists that do what I'm tired of being told to love about boy protagonists--just keep barreling along with complete self-assurance that you are right and, if you run into trouble, you can egotistically figure your way out.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin Gods and mortal ruling family's messy soap opera sexcapades is not exactly my favorite genre, but luckily it is handled by Jemisin so it's all good. Lots of Souma Family Values. I'm really appreciating how Jemisin considers choice of narrator very carefully and uses it to brilliant effect in this trilogy. Stories are things told by a narrator to an audience; why should we rely on the artifice of an "impartial" "reliable" "omniscient" 3rd person narrator writing into the void? This trilogy was Jemisin's first, I believe, so it's a little awkward coming back to them now, only because Jemisin is such a powerful writer that the themes she's begun working with here have only gotten stronger with each successive work.

The Broken Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin This one I rated as I read for Protagonist Is Blind based on the scale of a sighted person going "but some of my best friends are blind!" In that regard, I think the book does really well! Blindness doesn't define Oree's life and value; Oree doesn't get magical powers that make her a blind person who isn't really blind; Oree moves away from home and gets a job and lives on her own which seems very accurate to me based on my knowledge of one (1) person who is blind; instead of being ~cured~, Oree actually gets more blind at the end of the story and this is considered a Good Ending. Also personal bonus points are awarded for references to her stick being handy for hitting people with. Some stuff was stereotypical, but Jemisin's intent was not. A+, will read again, please support including way more characters who are blind in media. Anyway I enjoyed this one.

The Kingdom of Gods, N. K. Jemisin First off, Jemisin directly up front critiques the narration choices she made in the first two books and then pays it off like a boss at the end. Like holy crap. I admit by now I was getting a bit bored of the genre, but the book was still very engaging because Jemisin is a master. It may also have been affected by how much increasing pain I've been in lately.

The Awakened Kingdom, N. K. Jemisin I'm dead. This one was way more my speed and you need the other three books to understand this novella but ohhhh my god it's perfect. I read a lot of choice passages of this aloud to my roommate because how could you resist. It's still heavy but it's hilarious. Bless Shill.

#sobdasha booking

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wallbrat · 4 years

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Felicia

I Intro I read a lot. I research. I pay attention to the news. I do a lot of fact checking. I have 10 to 15 news sources and the news I pay attention to is domestic and international. I spend hours fact checking because people lie. I also make mistakes. If you can prove to me, logically, that I’m wrong, I’ll admit it, apologize and write a retraction. Keep all of this in mind as you continue. II History I’m a student of history. My favorite periods are Ancient and Medieval, however, I’ll read about any period. I spent a few years digging into WWII because my Grandfathers served then. For the last few months I’ve been focused on WWI and the Spanish Flu. The H1N1 virus got it’s nickname not because of where it originated. Spain was neutral and wasn’t under media censorship like the countries fighting the war. Anything detracting from the war effort was not allowed so the news you saw then was not impartial. Spain, however, reported on a disease that was killing people. While H1N1 impacted us in 1918 and 1919, there were reports of it back in 1915. Yes, our government knew about it and restricted the information because of the war effort. The H1N1 virus hit America in three waves, the second wave being the worst. A deadlier strain of H1N1 surfaced and was spread by the massive troop movements of the war. It’s been said that the dropping of the quarantine restrictions are what caused the second wave and that’s incorrect. While it was a small factor, the troop movements are what spread the new strain. The cramped conditions and the malnutrition among the soldiers hastened the spread. It’s estimated that 500 million people died from H1N1. While that doesn’t sound devastating today, in 1918 that was about one third of the world population. The transmission vectors for H1N1 and Covid-19 are similar and a century of time doesn’t tend to change that. While we lack the troop movements and the conditions of WWII, we more than make up for that with our transportation technology. If that technology had been present in 1918, the death toll would have been much higher. We’ve been extremely lucky so far, yet stupidity is attempting to alter that. III Rampant Stupidity Why do we refuse to learn from the mistakes of the past? We have people protesting, with loaded guns, because they want a hair cut. Instead of throwing these morons in jail, they are allowed to continue in their stupidity. I have a few questions for these paragons of questionable intelligence. Where did you get your medical degrees? What? You don’t have medical degrees? OK. Then your Google Fu must be strong. What? You didn’t use Google? Where are you getting your information then? Ahh, I see. It all becomes clear to me now. This is not about politics and it never has been. These shining examples of American arrogance are simply angry because they’re being told what to do. They think they know more than the experts and they rage against any kind of restriction. Instead of doing what they need to do to protect their families and themselves, they prove their stupidity by endangering everyone around them. If people are still wondering why I view humanity as a failed experiment, this is a perfect example. IV The CDC I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on TV. They have advanced degrees that qualify them to advise us on disease, contrary to what some might choose to believe. Science is fact. Disbelief of science does not invalidate it. In the middle of a pandemic, these are the people I'm going to listen to. Our politicians have no more training in this than I do and out President is less than worthless. To the idiots protesting: No. Your Google Fu is not strong. You're not a scientist or a doctor of anything. If you won't protect others by doing what you're told then stay away from me an mine. I'm 54 years old with a stressed immune system. I follow what's been laid down because I refuse to put you at risk. I could be asymptomatic, meaning I could have the virus and have no symptoms. Having no symptoms does not entitle me to disregard the advice of the experts. Your Pastor or Priest is no more an expert than you are. Some churches ignored the restrictions and what happened to them? Many got sick and others died that may not have if they had done what they were told. V Trumpus Defectus To be clear, our president is neither insane or damaged. He simply doesn't care about you. As long as you vote for him, you could die immediately after casting that vote. He's a billionaire and you're not therefore you're beneath his notice. You don't care about the feelings of a bug when you step on it and that's all you are to him. He's been trained that way since birth. Most of the other billionaires are just like him, he's simply in the public spotlight. Most of the older politicians are no better than he is. They've been bought and paid for decades ago. The sooner we realize that we're nothing more than voting numbers to them, the sooner we can actually make our votes mean something. VI The Economy Money is nothing but ones and zeros in a computer. The dollar is worth what those computers say it is. The economy should have been shut down completely, No money, no revenue, no bills yet everything continues. We could have stayed home, ordered what we needed until this virus burns itself out. Afterwards we could have restarted things, there would have been no penalties and everyone would have been fine. If we had done that it would have restructured the economy, which is exactly why it wasn't done. Another option would have been to turn all of the billionaires into millionaires. Take everything that the filthy rich have, above $500 million, and use it to pay the American people to stay home. We don't need billionaires or the class distinctions they create. It's obvious why this wasn't done. VII Mental Restructuring Since I can't give our country the mental ass kicking it so desperately needs I have to focus inwards. While I'd like to say that this is by choice, it was forced by recent events. Few things are more painful than discovering, or feeling, that you're insignificant in the scheme of things. During a pandemic, our focus should, understandably, on our families and ourselves. Survival is paramount. Understanding that, with the exception of two people, I've done all of the reaching out to make sure that people are OK. These are the same two people that poke ate me if I've been quiet for too long so I wasn't surprised that they reached out first. I'm not a needy, whiny bastard. I'm fairly self-sufficient, I can order what I need and I'm a fairly good cook. Pumpkin, Onyx and I are fine alone, especially since I'm not a big fan of humanity in general. I love certain people but humanity, as a whole, is a lost cause. I didn't reach out for personal connection. I did it see how my friends were doing mentally. The Covid-19 situation has been tough on everyone, especially those of us with mental illnesses. I'm 54 years old with ADHD, Anxiety, Depression and three hernias requiring surgery, which explains the stressed immune system. If it wasn't for the fact that my meds had been increased a month or two before this happened, this situation would have broken me. Two people checking up on me would not have been enough to stop me from imploding. I would have been reduced to a gibbering mess because of the stress or I'd be dead. I'm fine because I noticed a couple of things about five months ago and I consulted my doctor about it. Most people in this situation aren't as lucky as I am, which is why I reach out. Having only two people that bothered to make sure I was OK was eye opening. I'm forced to reevaluate why certain people are in my life and who remains. VIII Bye, Felicia This has honestly been coming for a long time. There are people that only contact me when they want something, usually money. There are others that don't do anything. It's past time to do some pruning. I don't like giving up on people which is why I've avoided this for so long. There are some that are immune to this. My three adoptive sisters in my local area and the ones I love who are out of state. CA, WA, CO, UT, WI, WY, LA, TN, TX, GA, NJ, NY, NH and MD. Wow. Apparently I love more people than I thought I did. They know who they are. If not then they aren't paying attention. If I contact you or interact with you, in any fashion other than work, then I probably love you. Toxic people are leaving as I can't afford to keep them around. Stupidity is also making an exit. Stupidity is Willful Ignorance so why would I want them around to begin with? I have a perfect example of both. There's a post circulating on Facecrack. This one states that the plight of the jews in the Nazi concentration camps is comparable to the Covid-19 quarantine. An old friend shared that on my timeline. If he had been anyone else, I would have deleted and blocked him without hesitation. The only reason he remains is that I've known him for 38 years. I'm waiting to see what he does next. Student of history, remember? I studied WWII in depth so that means that I know more about the concentration camps than most people. The jews were herded there a variety of ways, primarily by train. They were tortured, experimented on, starved, brutalized, a huge number of them were gassed to death and those are actually the high points. It was much worse than I'll ever be able to properly describe and in no way is it even remotely similar to our quarantine. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence. We're all free to say anything that we want to. We just need to be prepared for the repercussions that arise. If anyone else is stupid enough to share something like that on my timeline, or share it any other place that I can see, they are gone. No questions asked. All anyone needs to do to understand the difference between the two situations is to read a US history book that covers WWII. Posting crap like means that you're choosing to ignore basic evidence. I have no room for anyone like that so Bye, Felicia. IX Best vs Worst This situation can bring out the best or worst in people. You can rise to the occasion or you can sink into depravity. There are plenty of example of both around us. I'm working from home. My bills remain paid. My cats and I are fed and safe. I choose to help where I can. While it's true that I have little faith in humanity, that doesn't mean that I have to circle the drain with the rest of them. I will always try to help those around me. I've been extremely fortunate during this and that should be shared with those that are struggling. This is going to get worse before it gets better. I hope I'm wrong yet there are reports of increases in the infection rate where businesses are being reopened. The last thing we need is a second wave but I'm afraid it may happen. X Dystopia I look around and I have to wonder if we're ever going to grow up as a species. We keep making the same mistakes decade after decade. It's a wonder that we haven't blown ourselves off of the planet. The truth is that this is already a Dystopian society. It's not as bad as the examples we see in movies and on TV yet we are moving towards that. Compared to 20 years ago, we have less privileges now than we did then. We gave them away in exchange for the illusion of safety. We have privileges, not rights. Rights don't exist and are simply an invention to make us feel superior. If it can be taken away, it's a privilege. XI Conclusion While that last part was a little darker than I intended, it is true. I write, primarily, to relieve stress and to clear out my head. It gets pretty cramped in there otherwise. While this won't win me any friends, I may actually post this. My life needs some simplifying anyway. Namaste

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years

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The 30 Minute Experiment: Fear

Probably the hardest part of doing this experiment is that I consciously have to ignore everything else going on around me to make 30 minutes of uninterrupted time to write, so we’ll see how that works out, knowing how bad my ADHD can be at times. That said, let’s do this...

So anyway... today’s topic is “FEAR” and it’s actually the topic I wanted to write about that started this whole project experiment since I wanted to write something titled, “How to Overcome Fear,” because I felt that it was something I could handle to maybe help others out there. You see, I have a lot of people I know and love, as well as good friends, people who I admire for their strength and ability to handle anything, succumbing to the worst possible fears that anyone could possibly deal with. It’s surprised and shocked me and even saddened me a bit, because suddenly I find myself being one of the most calm and reasonable people in my immediate circles... and yes, THAT is something that people should be fearing.

I’m sure some people think that i’m taking far too cavalier attitude about this pandemic, but in fact, I’m always super-careful about germs and stuff since I spent most of 2013-2014 being in that exact same place where I was so worried about getting germs or getting sick since in that case, I literally could have ended up back in the hospital or even dead. I won’t get too much into my diagnosis with leukemia in 2013 or the stem cell transplant or my year back in New York City in 2014. Some of you already know about it. Some of you don’t. It’s a topic I can cover in full sometime down the road, even though it’s something I’ve written about a lot. But it’s very much related to this FEAR I talk about and that i’m seeing all around me right now. You see, after I got my stem cell transplant in October 2013, my immune system was reset back to zero. I literally could catch any possible disease I encountered from polio to measles to anything that anyone someone may have an immunity to due to vaccines we’re supposed to get as children. I didn’t get my new vaccines until October 2015. Even though I was in this state and was already dealing with the possibility of getting sick while being treated in Columbus, Ohio, I was hell bent on getting back to my life and apartment in NYC. (And if you saw my apartment then and even now and realized that part of my leukemia may have been brought on by the conditions I was living in for 20 years, YOU would have been fearful of LETTING me come back to that apartment let alone lived there yourself under similar circumstances.) I had to come back to New York. Living in Ohio with my mother (mostly being sequestered as most of us are now) was driving me crazy as was my lack of independence and inability to go out to do the things I loved so much. If I was my doctor, I probably wouldn’t allow it, but we made a deal and that was that I would spend 100 days after my transplant before even asking about returning to NYC.

Knowing what I knew about my condition, I relented and though my planned return was sidelined by a week, I came back to NYC at almost 107 day and while I didn’t come into my apartment (my brother and a couple hired hands spent a couple days cleaning it up and putting things in boxes, etc.) I was absolutely PETRIFIED of getting sick while being in NYC. I was wearing a mask and gloves everywhere but I was also worried that I might forget something and I had lists that I was checking and double-checking regularly. God bless my brother for putting up with me cause every time we left the very small hotel room that I had rented for our stay, I was taking forever to make sure I was ready as I checked and double checked everything, made sure i was being safe, etc. etc. I should also mention that in the week when I returned, my brother and I went to see the Pixies out in Newark, and I’m pretty sure we took a busy rush hour train to get out there and I probably wore my mask for a lot of it. Mind you, I hadn’t seen a concert in over 10 months and that was part of what was driving me crazy.

But the point is that I had this incredible fear that had been put into me from the doctors and everything I read, and that fear was much about having to go back into the hospital as it was of getting sick. I spent so much of 2013 in hospitals and for someone who had spent 20 years avoiding doctors and hospitals, it was not a fun experience. Sure, I did get sick a few times in the couple years since I got back and I did have to go to the ER for a few less-than-fun experiences, but the important thing is that A.) I pushed myself to overcome my fears and B.) I allowed my new immune system to do what it was meant to do... build up its immunities and the anbibodies needed to take on any germ or virus or disease that was thrown at me.

Part of this may have seemed reckless to some and maybe still does, but you know what? IT WAS NECESSARY. Because the only thing worse than actual death is FEAR.

Think about it. What is the worst thing that can happen to you if you get COVID? Yes, you will die. What is the second worst thing? You will get very sick and be miserable, maybe you’ll have to go the hospital and spend some time in a ventilator and the... you will die. Or maybe you’ll contract it, not know it, not get any symptoms, and then give it to someone you like or love and then they’ll give it to someone they like or love and then maybe they’ll be put through it. Those are all viable fears to a point.

A little bit of fear is good, but what’s bad is the completely out-of-control and unreasoning fear of everything and everyone that has become even more contagious than the virus that everyone is afraid of. The stuff I’ve heard and read in the last couple weeks from people I consider reasonable, logical and yes, STRONG, makes me wonder whether FEAR really has won.

Let’s think back. Remember when 9/11 happened and everyone was suddenly afraid of terrorists and every time there’s been a mass shooting and everyone was afraid to go to movie theaters, concerts, etc? But somehow, we got over those fears and we went back to movie theaters and concerts and trust me, getting blown up in a high-rise building or being riddled with AR-15 bullets would probably be a LOT worse than suffering from fevers, the inability to breathe, hacking cough and some of the worst aspects of COVID (and I say this only to those of you who are healthy and young... not my older friends and those who are currently fighting other conditions or immuno-compromised). Being in or around the World Trade Center on 9/11 meant a much faster death and for the 3,000 people who did die that day, they probably had no time or warning to prepare at all. They were just going about their everyday lives when the first plane hit and then the second... and you probably know or have heard the rest.

Make no mistake. It was a horrible day and so have been all the other days when people died from senseless violence, and in most of those cases, they didn’t have a way to prepare or fight back.

With COVID, we KNOW how to defeat it, we have the tools. We have the weapons, and we have the knowledge. Sure, there are still many unknown aspects to it that scientists and doctors with bigger brains than you or I are figuring out, but ... and I’m going to try to put this as nicely as possible... WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU FEARING THE UNKNOWN?

That is exactly what is going on right now. People aren’t sure of what is happening right now, what is going to happen tomorrow or a month from now, so they’re spending all their time worrying and fretting to a point where they’re unable to function. I’m not saying that I’m better than that, but I’m also being a realist here. The chances of me walking out my front door after taking all sorts of precautions and contracting COVID are probably less chances than me actually winning the Powerball the few times I’ve played it over the years. The chances of me having a pizza delivered and the COVID-infected delivery guy passing it onto me are only slightly higher.

I live in New York City... in CHINATOWN, no less... and I was doing a lot of stuff just before the governor closed the valve that totally should have had me infected but other than a small cough that lasted maybe an hour and some dry eyes, I haven’t shown a single symptom in the three weeks I have now been quarantined. But when I need something from outside, I either go out to get it or I order it (in terms of food delivery), because the other option is sitting in my own filth like Howard Hughes (without his money) and worrying and fretting and being fearful of the unknown. (Heck, New Yorkers generally do this every day ANYWAY, so this time should be no different than any others.)

The thing is that if I chose to live my life in fear, I would still be living in Columbus, Ohio with my mother, not being able to get out and do the things I love to do. I wouldn’t be able to read comics or go to concerts, let alone the movies that I like to watch and write about.

As I end today’s 30 minute experiment, which I hope hasn’t come across more like a 30 minute lecture, think abut this for yourself. (Yes, there will be some home work for those who choose to read this far.)

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF? WHAT IS THE FEAR THAT IS OVERWHELMING YOU?

Are you afraid to die? Fair. Are you afraid to get someone else sick or possibly kill them? Also fair. Are you afraid of getting yourself sick? Sure, that’s also fair.

But don’t let that FEAR rule your ilfe and every decision you make because the reality is that as long as you’re not going out and hanging out with hundreds of people you don’t know or going out and randomly French kissing anyone you meet on the street. (I wouldn’t put that past some of you!!!) Then guess what? You’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine as long as we’re careful. Don’t let the FEAR of whatever you’re afraid of be worse than the actual virus. My time is up now (I actually forgot to set my time) so until tomorrow....

This has been today’s 30 Minute Experiment.

#30MinuteExperiment FEAR

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maximuswolf · 4 years

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A Story with Uncertain Results via /r/ADHD

A Story with Uncertain Results

Hey everybody, I’m new to this subreddit for a similar reason most new people around here are, which is that I was recently diagnosed with ADHD (age 18……. Better late than never I guess). I noticed a distinct lack of full stories on this subreddit, and I thought it would be interesting to talk about mine to compare.

I consider myself pretty smart. At least, that’s what I’ve always been told. I suppose I could be placed in that class of student who frustrates the “good students” by doing as well as them without studying or even paying attention. I never needed to. Elementary school is strange in that it is exceptionally boring from a schoolwork perspective for those even slightly above average in intelligence. I was the “smart kid” in elementary school, and American school systems do a pretty shitty job of identifying problems in students who aren’t failing. For you see, sustained attention problems do not present themselves when assignments take less than 10 minutes. Task switching is not a problem when you finish tasks so early you get a full 30 minutes between them. Emotional regulation problems aren’t considered when you are a boy (boys will be boys… ok boomer). Now, something that’s actually kind of funny about this is that I absolutely should have gotten lower grades than I did. There was a test I took in 3rd grade where I answered the correct letter for the previous question for the middle half of the test and skipped a question, and my teachers only counted the one I skipped incorrectly. According to them, I just went too fast and that was the only problem.

Fast forward to middle school, which I think is the point that a lot of undiagnosed kids crash for the first time. I bombed the second quarter of middle school with possibly more unsubmitted assignments than submitted ones. It took a ton of work to get back on track, but this wasn’t much of an issue either because, even though I had 30 assignments I needed to complete, none of them took more than 10 minutes and I had 3 weeks to do it. Now, had I been unassisted, they simply wouldn’t have happened, but my history teacher used her own class time to force me to complete my missing assignments for other classes and told my parents that it was just a “boy in middle school” thing. Apparently nobody bothered to note that this was not something that happened for literally any other middle school boy. I did fairly well in the rest of middle school, and now we reach the point in my life where all those emotional skills ADHD doesn’t come with kick in. I never had good friends. I’m sure you could’ve picked this up by now, but as a younger child I was extremely arrogant. In 8th grade though, I actually met some people with whom I spoke. Often. The most important person in this group to include in my story is my future girlfriend, and future future ex-girlfriend.

I was vaguely aware of her crush on me for a long time in 8th grade, but I am not a naturally emotionally available individual, and expressing feelings and physical touch made me extremely uncomfortable for a number of ADHD and non-ADHD related reasons. However, this girl was attached to me, and my lack of emotional tact steadily wore down on her emotional state. When I finally decided that I would actually date her in 9th grade, she had depression for reason both under and not under my control (her relationship with her parents was…. strange to say the least). Over time, it became difficult to talk to her and we both decided it would be better if we parted ways, but that started the long chain of persisting mental health problems that I struggle with today.

Low self esteem was a new experience for me, and anxiety wasn’t something I was used to either. They both hit pretty hard. Hard enough that I quickly also became depressed. My grades suffered, and so my mental state suffered, and so my grades suffered further. At the time, I attributed the grades dropping exclusively to my mental state. I barely ended that year without a C, ending with an A and 6 Bs. One B was a for a class in which I had 11 zero quiz grades throughout the year and a 44 test grade. In this class, we were expected to make 30-70 detailed notecards each unit for the subject we were on. Each one could take 5-10 minutes. And they were incredibly boring to write. Sounds like a great assignment for someone with ADHD. Ironically, I remember trying to force myself to write the notecard about ADHD (it was a psychology class, actually).

I struggled with depression off and on over the next two years and anxiety was a problem that just kept getting worse. Junior year went pretty well, and then Covid hit. I lost the ability to do anything. My anxiety prevented me from asking my teachers for help with anything, and I absolutely needed the help. The primary contributor to my anxiety was an inferiority complex developed through my math classes. I just could not do as well as my peers. I would carry our table through problems during units, but when we got to the test, I would do a good 10 points worse than anyone I thought I should be equal to or better than. I also worked to the time limit on every last one, frequently not finishing them.

My grades were shaky at best for every year of high school other than the first, and this wasn’t something anyone, including my parents had seen from me before. I was constantly bombarded by my parents’ assumption that I had just ceased to care and just didn’t want to do any work. It was destroying me. At one point near the end of sophomore year, I genuinely considered offing myself for about 5 minutes at midnight sitting on the couch of my pitch black living room. I didn’t, but it was closer than I’d like to admit.

Back to senior year, and my depression had mostly subsided. I’m dating again, a rather tomboyish girl who I love dearly (she’d cringe at that sentence). My anxiety ever worsened. I procrastinated asking for college recommendation letters long enough that I had to wait to apply regular decision because my teachers would only write recs if given that extra time, and I don’t even know why I couldn’t get myself to ask. Logically it would be a fear of rejection, but I have no idea why that would be as I’ve never really been rejected in a meaningful situation.

My grades have been ok in online school, but the more important part of this final year of the story is finally talking to my pediatrician about my anxiety…. at 18 years old. Some of the problems I mentioned were apparently inconsistent with anxiety, so I was also referred for a psych eval for neurodevelopmental disorders, but I immediately started therapy for anxiety and depression, which had been alright.

I was evaluated in mid-December, and on the 17th of January I had my telehealth appointment for the evaluation. Fuck. When asked by my therapist what I thought might be wrong with me, I responded “social anxiety and mild ADHD.” Boy was I understating. Apparently feeling as though you are far behind your true potential for several years and being constantly bombarded with others telling you you aren’t good enough does a thing to a person. About that off and on depression I mentioned earlier? BAM cyclothymia. Generalized anxiety disorder wasn’t a surprised, but what did surprised me was my diagnosis of not mild, not even just moderate, but moderate to severe predominantly inattentive ADHD. I’ve actually got the scores from the WAIS-IV I took to compare sections that are heavily impacted by ADHD and those that are not. The section least impacted by ADHD is Verbal Comprehension, on which I scored a 127. My other scores are the real kickers though (I sound old here don’t I…. fuck…. I blame having old parents): Perceptual reasoning: 96, Processing Speed: 89, Working Memory: 80.

Anyways, that was something of a shock. Today was my second day on the minimum dose size for Concerta, and….. I feel exactly the same. I might be a little more awake than usual? I’m also noticeably more tired around 6 pm, but that might just be that I have to wake up earlier now.

So anyways, that’s where I am right now. I’m sure this is difficult to read and I apologize for dumping my life onto this post, but I thought it would be interesting to hear some other peoples’ more detailed experiences, thanks for reading if you got this far.

TL;DR Honestly I don’t think I can really TL;DR this but basically, slightly worse version of stereotypical 18 y/o diagnosis of inattentive type

Submitted January 21, 2021 at 10:22PM by Most-Hedgehog-3312 via reddit https://ift.tt/3p6Yeh3

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iwatchedyougoinghomeeveryday · 4 years

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Gonna make good use of Tumblr and write a post about my trauma!!!

tw: death, depression

It’s 3:00 am and I’m just gonna dive in... there’s no denying that everyone has had a difficult year and in a way that makes me feel better and worse? Even though I wish I could take away everyone’s pain... better because I know people can relate. Worse because I feel guilty when I go on and on in my head about the unfairness of it all when I know others are dealing with things far more overwhelming and traumatic. Still... these past two years have made me feel numb in a way I could not have predicted.

I never, ever wanted time to move forward. As a child I questioned why everyone wanted to grow up and resisted the changes in my life. I felt wiser and also lonelier with the perspective that time passing meant taking steps closer to an inevitable end. I never thought about myself - I was fortunate enough to not have to question my own mortality - but I worried endlessly about my loved ones. I felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop - everyone around me was well and I had never experienced major loss before. Things had to end. So while everyone was actually healthy and present, I was spending time panicking about the future. Worrying that it would be the last time I saw somebody or picturing the day when I got that big, bad news. Sometimes it was too painful to even imagine - I simply couldn’t picture it - but I’d torment myself with the thought anyway.

All of this to say... I’ve been so nihilistic. That might be dramatic, but it’s how I’ve felt, especially since I entered this depression episode seven years ago. I don’t think it was a coincidence that my depression got bad my junior year in high school when everyone was excitedly planning for the future. I didn’t care about school or jobs or anything superficial - I just cared about my family being alive. And couldn’t everyone see how pointless the other stuff was? It was a distraction, or worse, an endless routine with a predictable end. I hated it.

I haven’t done any of that stuff - there’s nothing I want from the future. I think if I had a dream or passion, I would accept it as a distraction, a goal to alleviate some of that darkness. But I genuinely don’t want anything. And that’s a whole other story, but it’s where I’ve been stuck these past five years - telling myself that if my family was secure and my mental health was better, then the rest would fall into place. That never happened - the other shoe dropped.

Here was my family: my mother, my sister, my grandmother and grandfather, my aunt, my four cats. Those were my people - my tiny circle of people that I held closely. A few months out of school... I found out one of my cats had cancer. I got him when I was seven. (I pretty much got all my cats when I was seven/eight.) He was my best friend and, after eight months, I lost him. And that broke me a bit. I drove myself crazy that year (2016) with worry and my OCD - that was my worst year with anxiety. I spent so much energy caring for him then suddenly... nothing. I feel like I can’t properly express how much my cats meant to me. They were all my best friends, really. They were always there and I understood them so deeply and I felt so responsible for them - it was unwavering. When I was ten, and dealing with my aforementioned fear of death, I remember thinking that they were “it” for me - they would be gone one day but I vowed they were the only pets I was ever going to have. It was the only thing that was right and fair.

Flashforward a year and half from my cat dying... my aunt’s boyfriend died from a heart attack. Sudden, no warning - just get the call that he’s gone. And even though it wasn’t official, he was like an uncle to my sister and I. He’d been in our lives for over ten years. It was difficult to categorize or even comprehend this loss. But I consider this the start of everything going to heck. Something happened at the end of 2018 that I can’t even talk about because it’s too painful and sensitive, but it was one more major trauma.

Early 2019... another one of my cats died from a random attack. We let him onto our back porch for the morning - we have a fenced backyard and he just liked to sit on the porch - and there was a stray cat that had gotten inside and attacked him. Just like that, two days later, he was gone. Once again having to accept a sudden and senseless death. Leading to August 2019, two days after my birthday, my grandfather fell from his porch steps, hit his head, and died. Just like that. Nobody got to even say goodbye or see him because my grandmother was visiting my mother, sister, and I for my birthday. Only took us two hours to drive there and in that time he was gone. Two hours to worry about my grandfather, who was in great health, then just accepting that he was dead. This was the biggest, most awful thing to happen to my family. I still haven’t coped with it.

Didn’t even mention that in 2018 I found out that another one of my cats had kidney disease. He was second closest to me when my other cat was alive, but in his absence, my bond with him was stronger than I had with any of my cats. Stronger than I had with most people, tbh. He was needy and around me 24/7 - he really only loved me. And I couldn’t fathom losing him. There were ups-and-downs, but he was doing good with his fluid treatments. Then November 2019, because I was so intuitive with him, I got the feeling that he was getting sick and for real this time. He was only eating just a little bit less than usual, but I knew. Just a look in his eye... I knew. And this really sent me on the deep end. November 2019 my depression deepened when I realized that a year from that date, I might not have my two cats, or my grandmother, or who knows who else. This was not some faraway fear - this was real. I was actually living in the time that I feared. I was there. So badly I wished 2020 didn’t have to exist. (God, if I only knew what was to come.)

I was a basket case November and December as I watched my cat slowly get worse. On top of this, my mom was feeling ill and she went to the doctor several times with no explanation for her pain. That sickened me - I had pictured losing so many people, but I couldn’t picture losing my mom. It was too big, too life-shattering. She was superwoman, invincible. And now I had to consider that, too. She thankfully started feeling better, but my cat got worse. I was lucky if I got any sleep or ate anything during last January. At the end of the month he passed away and, out of everything I have experienced, that destroyed me the most. He was like my child - I was supposed to protect him. And instead I watched him suffer. I’ve now lost people close to me and I know it sounds bad, but losing my cat was the worst.

But guess what - trauma is not over! Exactly one month from my cat dying... I witnessed a fatal car accident. Directly in front of me. Never even seen an accident before - not even a fender bender - and this one was fatal. It was unnerving because the actual collision didn’t seem that bad, but suddenly there was an unconscious old woman laying in the road. I didn’t see it happen - thank God - but I’m assuming she was ejected from her car because she was not wearing a seatbelt. I called 911 - first time doing that, too - and watched as she lay there and all I could think was that I was on the opposite side of what happened with my grandfather, six months ago. He had a fatal head injury and we got the call and got to the hospital to get the news that he died. Some family was going to have that same experience. That messed me up. In so many ways. I don’t have my license because I am scared of driving - now I’m scared to ride in cars. I had nightmares for months. This accident never made the news, which actually made me angry because it felt like something that happened and was immediately forgotten about. I obsessively wondered about the family and victim. The accident happened at the entrance to the library - my one safe place. I volunteered there every week before covid. I only got the chance to go two times before everything shut down in March, but I had to drive by the place where it happened and when I was in the library I tensed and panicked every time I heard an ambulance. It was awful.

July 2020 - I lost the last of my kitties. Fifteen years of taking care of them, loving them... I really didn’t know how to exist without them. We didn’t have any closure on this cat’s death, either. Never knew exactly what was wrong. But I was so numb at this point - my whole view shifted. I just didn’t want anyone to suffer anymore. So losing her was numbing - she was gone, but she didn’t suffer like my last kitty. Numb numb numb numb numb.

Then Thanksgiving... this news would’ve absolutely destroyed me a few years ago. Right now I can’t comprehend it. I’ve been expecting the worst anyway. We found out my grandmother has cancer and is already in the final stages. That damn theme again... no warning. She went into the hospital for another reason, leaves learning that she has three cancerous areas. And I see her at Thanksgiving and all hope is gone... I see the effect on her. Because I’m robotically dealing with grief now, I tell myself that I don’t expect her to live to 2021. I saw her end of October - she seemed fine. If she can go from fine to awful in three weeks, then I expect the same for her passing. And it is so selfish, but I do not want to see it. I do not want her to get any worse. She had a biopsy and she gets results tomorrow. I already know it will be the worst case scenario. Everyone, especially now, says to appreciate the small things, make the moments matter because you don’t know how many you have left. BS. I just want it to be over. I don’t want the in-between - there’s nothing to appreciate. Losing my grandmother... that’s unfathomable. I love everyone in my family, but it’s always been me, my mom, my sister, and my grandmother who has been the closest. My family couldn’t function without my grandfather. I don’t know how we go on without my grandmother. It doesn’t matter what news she gets from the doctor tomorrow. One month is the timeframe I am giving myself. It is cold and calculating to think, but that’s what I expect. And I’m so used to people dying suddenly... there’s nothing romantic about last moments and words. I don’t want them. Maybe I’d regret that in the future, but right now, it’s how I cope.

This is not even mentioning that my mother has always had SO much stress and trauma in her own life and this past year I have noticed it take a huge toll on her. I’m worried about her health - physically and mentally. She’s seemed different this year - I can’t blame her, but I don’t know what to do. And my sister’s mental health is always so fragile, and her relationship with my mother is awful - I feel like I’ve lost them, too. It’s not hopeless, but I’ve been trying to fix things and they don’t improve. And I know my grandmother’s passing will affect them most of all - she’s my mother’s mother, after all, and my sister has always loved my grandmother the most. She has unconditional love for her, a love I wish she extended to us but I was always glad she had that relationship with my grandmother. We’re going to be completely broken.

So now I’m submerged in that future - I’ve lost all four of my cats, my grandfather, my grandmother soon. My mom and sister are all I’ve got, and that would be reassurance if I wasn’t so worried about them, too. If sixteen-year-old me couldn’t see a favorable future... you can imagine how helpless I feel now.

#ma post #life #my cats #i don't even want to tag my old tags i remember using because it will hurt to go back and see the posts #this was a really long depressing post but i just wanted to write everything out #since tomorrow is going to hurt like hell #i don't even want to go to sleep because that means i will have to wake up #that's emo but true #well #i'm glad i'm allowing myself to be truly depressing on my blog #back in high school i just masqueraded it as smaller problems #like school stuff getting me down #no savanah you are depressed!!

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Some Restaurant Owners Want to Close. The Problem Is, It’s Not That Simple.

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Confronted with growing losses from the pandemic, restaurant owners face personal ruin

This is Eater Voices, where chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and industry insiders share their perspectives about the food world, tackling a range of topics through the lens of personal experience. First-time writer? Don’t worry, we’ll pair you with an editor to make sure your piece hits the mark. If you want to write an Eater Voices essay, please send us a couple paragraphs explaining what you want to write about and why you are the person to write it to [email protected].

Earlier this month, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced a four-phase approach to reopening our state’s economy. For restaurants in Seattle, this means a couple more weeks of to-go and delivery only, followed by an undetermined number of weeks at 50 percent capacity, then 75 percent capacity, and so on until full service is allowed.

Similar announcements are being made throughout the country. While we can debate their logic and safety, what isn’t being addressed is what will happen for the number of small, independent restaurants that won’t be able to make it that long or have already closed permanently. These closures will not only shape the culture and community of the cities they inhabited, but also the lives of their owners, who could face personal financial devastation as a result of closing their businesses.

This isn’t fair.

When I started hearing about a potential global pandemic and began to see mandatory restaurant closures in China and Italy, I knew exactly what many of these restaurant owners must be feeling. As a two-time (now ex-) restaurant owner, I can still feel the visceral dread in my stomach of what one weekend’s lost sales would mean for our bank account — to say nothing of being closed for weeks, or even months. As I watched the situation unfold, I felt an immense amount of guilt for how grateful I was to no longer own a restaurant, but I was resolute in my commitment to help owners get support in any way that I could. In addition to brainstorming solutions for the restaurant group I now work for, I was thankful to be asked to join the advisory board for Seattle Restaurants United, a coalition of small, independent restaurants in the Seattle Area.

But it wasn’t until I was on a Zoom call for that advisory board, discussing how we could help restaurants pay (or avoid paying) their bills in the upcoming weeks and months so that they won’t have to close forever, that a board member pointed out what should have been obvious to me much earlier on: Some of these restaurants owners want to close, but can’t. Tired of living on razor-thin profit margins for years, they simply cannot accept being thrown into further debt that they could possibly never escape. They don’t want to pivot to delivery or takeout or whatever model we agree is the best. Some of them cannot reconcile reopening their restaurants with the knowledge that they could be putting themselves or their employees at risk. They want out.

The problem is, it’s not that simple. What very few people realize is that when restaurant owners open their businesses, many of them forfeit their exit plan. They collateralize anything they have to get a little more cash. Margins are so thin that they end up putting up their houses, their cars, anything for a lease or a loan, and sign personal guarantees for all contracts. In some cases, walking away can mean personal financial ruin.

And so right now, in this time of chaos and terror, our local, state, and federal governments must do what is right and pass legislation releasing these small business owners from their business liabilities, namely their commercial leases, SBA business loans, and any past-due sales or business taxes.

I say this having lived through something similar myself, twice. Having narrowly avoided the same issues so many restaurants face right now, I am in the unique position of knowing not only how much they truly need our government’s help, but also why.

Restaurateurs are seen as cowboy entrepreneurs with glimmers in our eyes who have no one to blame but ourselves when we fail.

Over the past decade I opened, operated, and sold two successful restaurants with my husband. When people ask about it, I usually give them the nice version: We had a beautiful dream that we made happen with equal parts hard work, perseverance, and faith, and then eventually our priorities changed, we decided to sell, and we’ve lived happily ever after. It’s what people generally want to hear and it’s much easier than telling the truth.

Telling the truth would mean talking about the pit that lived full time in my stomach, churning over how we would pay for this week’s payroll, or this month’s sales tax, or rent, or a broken sink. It would mean talking about how I cried in my office after an employee called me a bitch for requiring that he know our wine list, screaming profanities at me as he left the building. It would mean talking about how I felt like I never got to see my kid.

My feelings sound like complaints, because they are, and I can tell you from experience that no one wants to hear a restaurant owner complain. There is a special disdain reserved for dreamers who complain about their dream. Restaurateurs are seen as cowboy entrepreneurs with glimmers in our eyes who have no one to blame but ourselves when we fail. After all, this was my choice, and everyone knows restaurants are hard. I knew that going in, didn’t I?

Even now, writing this, I feel shame for admitting how much I struggled. The fear I felt constantly is a secret that we restaurant owners keep hidden. In public, we share it with each other through subtle glances and knowing smirks. In private, we text each other that we don’t know how much longer we can keep it up. We all know better than to say it out loud and potentially invite the ire of the public or even worse, somehow give the words the power and make it all worse (restaurant owners can be very superstitious).

Let me be clear: Restaurant owners love what they do. There is no other reason to do it; they certainly don’t do it for the money. Their restaurants are most likely the loves of their lives, and fear and anxiety simply come with the job. If anything, the fact that they live with so much discomfort and yet still wake up and go to work every day is a testament to how much they love their restaurants.

But sometimes, love isn’t enough. About a year into opening our second restaurant, Mean Sandwich, I found myself sitting on my couch at home in the middle of a beautiful day, having what I thought was a heart attack. It was our one day off, the day we were supposed to use to relax and spend time with our 3-year-old daughter, doing crafts and going on walks. Instead, as I felt my chest get tighter, I laid down and yelled to my husband, “Babe, it’s happening again. It feels like I’m going to die.”

It was a panic attack, one of many I had during that year. I felt trapped in our restaurant, which wasn’t making enough money to support our family despite its outward success, and on whose income we relied to pay the mountain of debt we had signed on for in order to open it. We had maxed out all of our personal credit cards because we still couldn’t afford to pay both of our salaries, as well as our business cards to pay for improvements to our little restaurant’s backyard. Our business lease was iron tight and personally guaranteed by both of us. We had taken out an SBA loan to open the restaurant, and the monthly payments were nearly as much as our rent. We had no savings whatsoever, so closing the restaurant almost definitely meant having to declare bankruptcy and immediately move in with my parents. It had also taken a toll on our personal life; sometimes it felt like the only things holding our marriage together were inertia and denial. I could feel the noose around my neck tightening every day, and the tighter it got, the less energy I had to find a solution. So I drank and cried and panicked.

My story has a good ending: Eventually, like we had with our first restaurant, Thirty Acres, we put Mean Sandwich up for sale and found a buyer, through a friend, who wanted to keep it alive. I cried when we finally sold it, but they were tears of pure relief and gratitude. We had escaped by the skin of our teeth, neither unscathed nor debt-free, but we got out, and I could barely believe it. Although I still grapple with how to move beyond the shame of the mistakes I made, we are better every single day.

Restaurant owners do not deserve to go bankrupt over this. Faced with that as their only option, some will choose a more dire one.

But while I may relate to what restaurant owners are experiencing during this nightmare, I also recognize the ways that we are different. You see, I got myself in my predicament with our restaurant. I chose to open it and I chose when I was done, and thankfully, it worked out for me.

These restaurants aren’t closed because their owners fucked up. Most of them were doing everything right; they were working harder and under more pressure than any of us can possibly imagine. Before they saw their sales start to dwindle and were told to shut down by the state, they were paying their bills and their employees, often providing health care and sick pay, creating places for their communities to congregate, and everything in between. They do not deserve to go bankrupt over this, and trust me when I say that faced with that as their only option, some will choose a more dire one. We can’t let that happen.

Instead, these restaurant owners deserve to be told this wasn’t their fault. And then, if they want one, they should be given a way out.

What would that look like? First, restaurant owners must be released from being held personally liable for their commercial leases if they have been impacted by COVID-19. While these leases represent private contracts in which the local government does not usually have the authority to intervene, this pandemic clearly represents an abnormal circumstance for which exceptions must be made. We’re already seeing this in the form of proposed bills such as New York City’s 1932-2020 (which the city council passed last Wednesday) and California’s SB 939. Both bills prevent landlords from holding commercial tenants personally liable in the event that they have to close due to COVID-19’s economic impact. They are a good start, and we need to see this type of legislation nationwide.

Small-restaurant owners cannot be expected to pay for these leases for the entirety of their terms or even until the landlord is able find another tenant, whenever that is. Even those owners fortunate (or wise) enough to have “good guy guarantees,” which release them from having to pay out the entire lease term as long as certain conditions are met, are still usually beholden to paying landlords a minimum of three to six months of rent in addition to any rent they are behind on.

Second, in addition to their current offer to defer loan and interest payments for six months, the Small Business Administration must forgive all existing business debt for restaurants that decide to close. There is no reason a restaurant owner should face bankruptcy when those loans are supposed to be secured by the SBA.

And last, federal grants should be provided to restaurants that are unable to open — without concern for how likely they are to reopen — so that they can pay any employees they have been unable to pay for past work as well as pay for any unpaid sales or business taxes. To naysayers who might say this is too far-reaching, I would point out that just as it is unfair that restaurants were told to close indefinitely without any imposed fixed expense relief, it would also be unfair to let restaurants close without ensuring support for the rest of the ecosystem that relies on them. Now is the time to consider holistic approaches to the problem, rather than solutions that simply shift the problem onto others.

These restaurant owners haven’t done anything wrong. They stepped up and closed their doors for the safety of their communities and it ruined them. It isn’t fair that we leave them to deal with cleaning up the mess on their own. But they don’t need a handout, or your pity. What they need instead is a large-scale solution tailored to the restaurant industry. They are hard-working and creative entrepreneurs; give them an inch, they will make it into a mile.

But for those who are done, who don’t have any energy left to pivot, who are facing down months of bills and debt while they wait for a workable solution that may never come, we need to offer an escape hatch. Trust me: They will figure out what to do next.

Alex Pemoulié is a Seattle-based writer and the director of finance for Sea Creatures restaurant group. She previously owned and operated two restaurants, Thirty Acres and Mean Sandwich, with her husband.

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Confronted with growing losses from the pandemic, restaurant owners face personal ruin

This isn’t fair.

Restaurateurs are seen as cowboy entrepreneurs with glimmers in our eyes who have no one to blame but ourselves when we fail.

Restaurant owners do not deserve to go bankrupt over this. Faced with that as their only option, some will choose a more dire one.

Instead, these restaurant owners deserve to be told this wasn’t their fault. And then, if they want one, they should be given a way out.

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#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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thesearebobsthoughts · 4 years

Text

March 29, 2020

I don’t know how much longer paramedics can keep this up. Via The New York Times:

One New York City paramedic described responding to a suicide attempt of a woman who had drank a liter of vodka after her cancer treatments had been delayed, in part because hospitals were clearing their beds for coronavirus patients.

Another paramedic said she responded to so many cardiac arrests in one shift that the battery on her defibrillator died.

“It does not matter where you are. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. This virus is treating everyone equally,” the Brooklyn paramedic said

***

Three weeks ago, the paramedics said, most coronavirus calls were for respiratory distress or fever. Now the same types of patients, after having been sent home from the hospital, are experiencing organ failure and cardiac arrest.

“We’re getting them at the point where they’re starting to decompensate,” said the Brooklyn paramedic, who is employed by the Fire Department. “The way that it wreaks havoc in the body is almost flying in the face of everything that we know.”

In the same way that the city’s hospitals are clawing for manpower and resources, the virus has flipped traditional Emergency Medical Services procedures at a dizzying speed. Paramedics who once transported people with even the most mild medical maladies to hospitals are now encouraging anyone who is not critically ill to stay home. When older adults call with a medical issue, paramedics fear taking them to the emergency room, where they could be exposed to the virus.

***

The husband frantically explained that he had tried to stay home and tend to his ill wife, but his employer had asked him to work because their facility was overrun with coronavirus patients.

Grudgingly, the man told the medics, he went to work. When he returned home after his shift that day, he found her unconscious in their bed. For 35 minutes, Mr. Almojera’s team tried to revive the woman, but she could not be saved.

Usually, Mr. Almojera said, he tries to console family members who have lost a loved one by putting his arm around them or giving them a hug.

But because the husband was also thought to be infected with the coronavirus, Mr. Almojera delivered the bad news from six feet away. He watched the man pound on his car with his fist and then crumble to the ground.

“I’m sitting there, beside myself, and I can’t do anything except be at this distance with him,” Mr. Almojera said. “So, we left him.”

Speaking of poor, non-white people getting the toxic end of this lollipop:

The numbers in the above map represent positive tests. The next one, showing the differences in deaths from COVID is going to be truly grim and absolutely divided along race and class lines, because America. Specifically, because poorer, browner New Yorkers have less access to well, everything: heath care, information, jobs that can’t be performed from home. All those people working in supermarkets and making deliveries, the “essential workers” are disproportionately poor. Social distancing? Sure, try that when you’re living on the streets or still trapped in Riker’s or even a huge public housing project with one or two goddamn working elevators.

Even those who do have insurance are about to be royally screwed. “No insurer, no state, planned and put money away for something of this significance,” Peter V. Lee, the executive director of Covered California, an state exchange that’s part of the ACA, said. Well then, maybe the insurance providers shouldn’t have eaten so much avocado toast at brunch. Ha ha. Just kidding. The current admin has decimated the ACA, which was a laughable excuse for a healthcare system to begin with, and has only grown worse since. 2010

Here’s a fun/funny story. I was running low on Juul pods and with the next shipment not scheduled to arrive till Monday I had to do something. So, scribbed my hands raw, I put on clothes that I’d feel comfortable incinerating if need be, strapped on a pair of brown leather gloves, and tied a scarf around the entirety of my face as if I were a Black Bloc anarchist. And then I stepped outside the front door for the first time in... ten days? I’m going to say ten days. It was stressful and enraging with some light terror tossed in for variety’s sake.

I scoped out the block for people like I was on a goddamn recon mission, and let me tell you, wealthy-ass Brooklyn Heights residents were not maintaining social distancing. Dads breezily lazily walking their dogs, unconcerned (somehow) if someone trotted right by them. Gaggles of people, laughing, chatting, shooting the shit as if nothing had changed. On more than one occasion, I had to sprint across the street to maintain proper spacing. At my local bodega—the only bodega anywhere within walking distance of my apartment which sells pods—a hand-drawn sign had been taped to the shelves containing cigs and e-cigs. “Please make your selection and leave as quickly as possible,” the sign read.

I did so, bolting back out, ticking off the seconds till I was back at 108 Pierrepont. My neighbor was idling at the front gate, trying to coax her large labrador retreiver up the steps. I waited till she’d gotten to the front door and asked how she was feeling.

My neighbor said “better.” Which, sure. The dry cough of hers seemed to echo through our shared (thin) wall less frequently now. Oh and her sense of taste and smell was slowly returning.

You have got to be fucking kidding me. I tried to gently explain that she fucking has it without flipping my shit at her for not immediately telling everyone in the building. I sent out a mass email the instant I started feeling under the weather and unlike her, I’ve never had two of the most common fucking symptoms. Standing outside the building, paralyzed, unsure how long I needed to wait to sprint into the building and up the spiral staircase. She wasn’t even wearing a scarf, let alone a mask. Every exhale was flooding the lobby with infection but somehow using a Clorox wipe to open and close the door was enough of a preventative measure in her mind.

So grabbed all the packages that were waiting for me and galloped up the staircase. (Stalling for two days before going downstairs to pick up my deliveries accomplished nothing, what with the co-op’s own personal Typhoid Mary going outside twice a day to walk the dog. I’m still livid, two days after the fact. It’s insanely irresponsible of her. ) l kicked off my shoes outside the door, then stripped naked and deposited every item in a plastic garbage bag, tying it as tightly as possible. After scrubbing down my hands like Hawkeye Pierce, I then scoured the packages themselves with a wipe, followed hard upon by every surface they’d touched. I washed my hands a second time, belting out two consecutive particularly antic versions of the Happy Birthday song. Then I opened the packages, wiped down the contents, and washed my hands for a third time before jumping in the shower.

70 percent of the tests run by Northwell Health are coming back positive, and thousands of people will likely die. "I don't see how you look at those numbers and conclude anything less than thousands of people will pass away," the Governor said on Sunday. Vulnerable parts of the population will be hit particularly hard. "I hope its wrong, but..."

This is the Jacob K. Javits Center now. Soon, the beds will all be full:

In the hopefully not-too-distant future, someone’s going to write a book detailing the ongoing failures at every level of the Federal government. (Who am I kidding? Everyone is going to write that book.) At least one will probably toss in a bit of color about the Javits Center: It’s where Hillary Clinton was on the night of November 8, 2016, getting ready to deliver her victory speech. The one that never came. Once the election was called, she sent John goddamned Podesta out instead. Ha ha.

On Wednesday, I spent a frantic afternoon getting epidemiologists on the blower to talk about ballplayers going under the knife and feeeling generally flu-ish and tired while doing so. [Editor’s note: stop trying to sound like you’re not incredibly fucking privileged and have less shit to deal with than the vast bulk of people in this city alone. You blogged whilst sick. Hero-type stuff, truly.]

It’s not in the article, but yeah. All these high-paid orthopedic specialists should be barreling toward the front lines and turning their top-shelf sports medicine facilities into something fucking useful.

Per Mom, on Facebook:

It doesn't just "look like" special privileges for the rich and powerful, it is just that. Doctors, nurses, technicians, and other healthcare resources are currently being diverted to parts of hospitals and other locations where they are needed. They are being called back from retirement to help fill the need. These resources could be used with urgency elsewhere and are not when such elective procedures are being done instead. Excellent article, Bob.

Thanks, Mom.

Mike Francesa has been radicalized. Back afta this.

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stellahibernis · 4 years

Text

Writing life

I haven’t done regular writing updates in a long while, so here’s a bit more comprehensive one just because. Mostly about writing (it’s been an unusual half a year for me), and something about life in general and the half a year of relatively minor but continuous health challenges, which are a big reason why the writing has been what it has, albeit not all of it.

When it comes to writing, I’ve been much less productive than in previous years. Mostly due to lack of energy (due to the aforementioned health problems), but I’ve also had something of an inspiration problem. Good news for me is that the inspiration problem seems to be dealt with (although possibly less good for my regular readers, since it comes with branching to new fandoms even though I’m not dropping MCU), now I need to rebuild the writing habit that suffered during the spring. I’m on summer vacation now, and will hopefully get a good amount done.

(Rest behind a cut since I got characteristically wordy)

The first weeks of the year were pretty much business as usual, including that I finally wrote the Captain Marvel fic, A New Year, that I’d been mulling over for a while, but never got done until then.

At the beginning of the year my company moved to a new office, and after a while it became obvious there was something there that caused an allergic reaction in me. It wasn’t great, but we managed it best as we could (including working partly from home and at the office I sat at least part time in one of the smaller rooms, which worked better than the open space where our desks are). It was doable, but left me with considerably less energy than usual after the work days, which obviously affected my writing.

The first few months of this year my writing efforts were mostly spent on love’s not controlled by the weather, which was a funny process, because I like the story and was inspired to work on it, but it didn’t quite feel like that because of the general fatigue going on. The whole time there was this weird disconnect between what I thought of it and the general feeling about the process. I’m happy with the end result, and also that I managed to post it when it was still early spring (it being a winter romance, sure would have been ironic to post in June, for example :D).

Anyway, starting from March, I’ve obviously been living in the same limbo as everyone else. Since March 10th, I’ve been at the office exactly once, otherwise working remotely (for reference, I live in Finland where things never got completely out of hand). I’m one of the really lucky ones who can do so relatively easily and our company was very good about it. We had a policy that we can work remotely or come to office (and rules on how to be careful if you do), but since my getting there involves public transport and I have less than great lungs due to late diagnosed celiac disease that manifested mostly as respiratory problems (hence the difficulty in diagnosis, it’s gotten better since my diet was fixed), I’ve stayed at home as much as possible.

Turns out, I most likely had the virus in March (it was very, very mild so I never got tested or even saw a doctor for it). At the time it felt like a somewhat weird cold with fatigue and indigestion, but in retrospect it was probably Covid, the biggest giveaway being that once spring came and I got more active, I noticed my lung capacity is dismal these days. It’s in fact worse now than after the bronchitis I had in my early adulthood that lasted a whole winter, and I was nowhere near that sick this year. So that’s what I’m dealing with now, although I’m getting back to my regular energy levels, just need to take it easy when walking up the hill, for example.

Unsurprisingly the general fatigue affected my writing, and I went literally the whole of April without writing a single word. The bright side was that I managed to actually deal with it in a constructive way, and gave myself permission to not even try if I couldn’t which took away much of the mental load, and probably helped me get back to it in May.

The non-writing April was also a big reason why I decided not to take part in a big bang this year. I’ve had a good time (and been extremely happy with the results) over the last couple of years I’ve participated, but at the sign up time I had no idea what I should write or if I even could get back to writing any time soon, so I decided it was better not to force it.

In May I started to feel much more inspired again (also healthier, it’s amazing what a little additional energy does for your creative drive), and at first it manifested in the form of a bunch of new ideas. My idea list is even more terrifyingly long than usual at this point, although I know realistically not all of them will get written, not even all of those for which I have more than a vague idea. I think I have about 30k of one story written that won’t be finished. Some of the themes have and will be translated into other stories (including a current WIP which definitely will get finished), and the rest of it was good practice, so no regrets even though it’ll stay in the unfinished limbo.

Before the writing break I started a Stucky fic, and it was the one I came back to in May when I started writing again, albeit slowly, in fits and starts. Over the last handful of years I’ve developed a pretty good writing habit, but apparently a month long complete break during an otherwise challenging year does a lot of damage to it, and I’m still getting back to it. Slowly but surely, and I’ve adjusted some of my process starting early this year, because focusing for longer periods doesn’t work as well as it used to. Nowadays I write more in short bursts here and there rather than all at once, but the daily word counts are getting to the similar level, which I’m very happy with.

The aforementioned Stucky fic (which still has no title, the constant struggle to come up with those!) is about two thirds done, and it’s mentally in the category “would like to post it in July” even though it has had a couple of big breaks, first the non-writing break and then my very sudden detour to other fandoms. Steve and Bucky are currently hanging at the beach with some unresolved issues, so I should get back to it :D

Generally this year I’ve had several instances where I might have branched toward other fandoms than MCU, which is quite a big indicator that the focus of my interest is definitely on the move (the laser focus of over five years is pretty unusual, tbh). I still have a lot of ideas for it and will keep writing them, but I’ll also write other stuff.

First potential branching out, one that didn’t produce anything concrete and probably won’t in anywhere near future (for the pretty obvious “creator being a despicable human being” related reasons) was to finally write the post canon HP fic I’ve been toying with every now and then ever since Deathly Hallows was released. I considered starting it early this year, but never got there (although I have a rough idea what the story would be like, if I were to write it), and now I’m again soured even at the thought of it.

Second branch, again nothing concrete has materialized yet, mostly because it came to me during April, is a Kingdom Hearts fic set post game three. I used my low energy time in getting to know what happened in KH3 and I have mixed feelings but also there was a hook that would turn into a pretty interesting story. This is in my idea pile, in the very back burner currently, but a lot more likely to get written at some point (probably not in 2020, though).

Third branch, I’ve been meaning to write a fic in the Wicked + the Divine canon, and actually started one in winter, but then I got sick. It should be a short one, so I’ll get to finishing it one of these days (tentatively places it also in the “would like to post it in July” category, but it’s the last one in that pile).

Fourth branch, which actually produced a finished story, and not only that, it was the easiest, most joyful writing process of the year (so far! Hopefully more to come), was that I got reminded of Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising books, read all of them over a couple of weeks, and got hit by a major case of feels. Hence Light from the Lost happened.

And the fifth branch started from where I finally watched the Untamed, promptly fell deep in that hole and now the muse is terrifyingly bountiful and demands I write all the things (I have no less than eight fic ideas already!) The one currently at works is just condensed pain when it comes to rewatching scenes for research :D

Also I have a terrible tv show hangover from it, which is very inconvenient since I want to watch the last season of Dark but just can’t invest myself into it right now.

So that’s what’s been going on for me, the current plan in life is to enjoy the vacation, get less stressed, and hopefully healthier. Writing plan for immediate future is:

Finish, edit, and post the Untamed fic on top of that queue, and hope that the muse allows me to work on other stuff after that

Finish, edit, and post the Stucky WIP, preferably in July

Decide what to write for the traditional end of year fic (look at me planning ahead!)

This has been over 1700 words of writing about writing fic, so maybe I should get to that now. On the other hand, writing this definitely helps me in building the regular writing habit, so we’ll count it as a win.

#writing process #life stuff

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goldeagleprice · 4 years

Text

Industry Insider: COVID Business Landscape

By Tom Michael

Sometime in April I received a mistaken call from an old colleague at Educational Coin Company. She had dialed my number by accident and left no message, but when I called back to check what was up, we ended up having a nice conversation. I was pleased to learn that the company’s wholesale business was doing well and that the staff was all in good health. After disconnecting, I got to thinking about other folks in the industry. There are many people with whom I keep in close contact, but also many more that I only hear from occasionally. “How is everyone doing during the pandemic?” I thought.

Like everyone else, I had been keeping in touch with family, reading the news and doing my part both to distance from and support my friends and neighbors. Like many in our industry, I was watching the coin market change across the globe and piecing together in my mind where it was all leading. But within our hobby, I really did not know how everyone was faring.

My good friend, Numismatic News Editor Maggie Judkins, and I discussed the matter, and she pointed out that if I was wondering and concerned, perhaps our readers might also want a better view of how people in the hobby are faring during the pandemic. I began compiling a list of people to contact and a short series of questions to ask them and sent them out during the first week of May. Responses have been coming in, and the news has been enlightening and generally very good.

This will be the first of a two-part article relating what we learned about our friends and our hobby under the pressures of coronavirus and subsequent COVID-19 concerns. Because we were not able to contact everyone, I encourage you to write in and let us know how you are and what you have been doing to pursue your hobby interests during the pandemic.

After fielding a good number of replies and enjoying many conversations, there are a few basic conclusions we can draw about how work-from-home and stay-at-home policies designed to slow the spread of coronavirus have affected the coin market. The first and happiest news is that most people we spoke with thus far have remained healthy. That includes the personal contacts, their working staff, and families. I was extremely pleased to hear this but remain painfully aware that not everyone has been so blessed. In New York and New Jersey, we were told of some relatives having the virus and recovering slowly.

Collectors and dealers alike are missing their favorite coin shows, canceled due to the pandemic. (Photo by Andreas Schoelzel, courtesy of World Money Fair.)

From a business viewpoint, the pandemic has affected the coin market in two major ways. First, the absence of coin shows after February has made it very difficult for some dealers to secure supply of coins for their customers.

Jeff Garrett, owner of Mid-American Rare Coin Galleries, told us, “The biggest change for me has been the cancellation of coin conventions around the country. I have traveled to a coin show every few weeks for 45 years without interruption. Coin conventions are an important part of the rare coin supply chain.”

This is very true with the rare coin market, being a secondary market in terms of supply. But we are buoyant folks in this hobby and often have to redirect to new avenues as times change.

“We have been selling more ancient coins and mass market coins to companies who have holes in their sales calendar due to the shut-down of Mints around the world. Rare coins are selling but in a somewhat diminished number. Bullion sales have been brisk, however.” Garrett commented.

Garrett’s mention of mints reminds us that, with some remaining operational and some closing for periods to reorganize, supplies are hit and miss.

Ola Borgejordet of the Royal Scandinavia Mint, a distributor for modern issues relayed, “We’re ordering less because we’re more careful with inventory during these times. Collectors need to react quicker if they want timely delivery of products. If not, they could be pushed back to second-round delivery some weeks later. As an online retailer exclusively of foreign coins, we are experiencing delays from mints worldwide as they operate on limited schedules or delay shipping until certain dates. This is frustrating both to us and to our customers.”

We hope to bring you more news of pandemic challenges at the world’s mints in our second installment.

Some folks working in the primary supply chain of new issue coinage are experiencing some advantages.

Longtime distributor Arthur Friedberg of Coin & Currency Institute had this comment on pandemic business: “Since we don’t deal direct with the public, it has hardly changed at all, except for the fact that we are going to pick up the mail and drop things off with less frequency. We are working the same as normal. One thing we have noticed in the last few days is a marked pick up in internet and telephone orders, with this past weekend being one of the busiest we have seen in a long time thanks to the announcement of the opening of the order period for the 2020 Netherlands Gold Ducats.”

Altering their way of conducting business has been a challenge for many dealers, but the pandemic has proven to be an especially daunting business challenge for those who operate without a brick and mortar store and for dealers who have not been able to open their stores due to non-essential business designations in many states.

“Our office is now closed to the public, and for the last 5-6 weeks my employees have been working from home,” said Garrett. We are trying to catch up on long put-off chores – sorting coins, filing, marketing, etc. My wife and I have been coming to the office throughout to answer the phones and receive shipping.”

Those whose primary source of supply that came from shows are experiencing the most severe downturns in business. They have strong customer demand, but do not have the coins to sell them.

Longtime gold dealer Robert Steinberg, owner of Steinberg’s, Inc., related that, “we do 90 percent of our buying at coin shows and since all of the shows have been cancelled since the Atlanta ANA in February it’s been difficult to find new material. If we could find fresh material we could easily sell it on our website – as people have more time to check out coin dealer websites during the quarantine!”

Steinberg is one of the best world gold coin dealers around, and shortly after hearing from him I saw that he had circulated a list of newly acquired coins for sale. Goes to show, you can’t keep a good man down!

Those who had already built a customer base online and maintained it through active updating are positioned well for business during the pandemic. Author and coin dealer Bob Reis did just that.

“My website, anythinganywhere.com, had been operating since 1998 and had got in a rut,” said Reis. “We opened a new website, goldenruleenterprises.org, last August and things started moving more or less immediately. When COVID hit I got precisely two avisos from overseas clients to the effect that, you know, the situation, they’re out of the collecting business for the time being. A steady stream of new and returning customers are more like: well, I’m stuck here at home and I’m not broke yet, I’m going to buy some coins. Apparently there’s always a market for quality and value, as it were. We’re historians, us numismatists. The 14th century was in every way worse.”

Dealers and auction houses that had already developed a larger online presence prior to the pandemic are faring better, even on resupply. The cost of resupplying stock is rising, particularly on silver and gold bullion, which is becoming very difficult to obtain against increasing demand.

As Robert Mish, owner of Mish International Monetary, Inc, explained it, “premiums have increased because existing minted product has been bought out and resupply cost is driven up.”

Mish’s shop remained open in the Bay Area of California, considering their business an economic necessity. They have been doing plenty of commercial bullion trading, but the premiums have risen. While an ounce of gold used to be bought at about 2 percent over melt value and would be resold at about 3 percent over melt, current market has a buy of roughly 6 percent over melt and is selling around 8 percent over melt. The demand is definitely there, but supply can be a problem.

Kenneth Lewis, CEO of APMEX told us, “Our biggest challenge outside of adjusting to the new norm related to the pandemic has been the availability of inventory. We have had to be super creative to get inventory. One example is we have actually had to fly over 1M ounces of silver from Switzerland as it was impossible for us to meet our needs with inventory in the U.S.”

APMEX has seen huge increases in volume but has been happy to be able to maintain delivery, while still protecting their staff.

“In March, we made the decision that all non-operational employees would start working from home,” said Lewis. “We would use products like Microsoft Teams, VPN, IP phones, etc. to help stay on top of the business. Our customers who call in will not notice a change. For our operational areas and anyone else that enters the building, we have implemented many of the CDC recommended guidelines.”

Almost everyone who responded to our first round of emails has been able to maintain nearly all their business services, with some shifts in approach.

Lee Crane, owner of L&C Coins told us that, “The only service we are not able to offer our local customers is in-shop showing or purchasing of coins. We have been able to pretty much operate fully in regards to our mail customers. The interesting thing is that we are discovering ways to streamline our processes. We will also be adjusting our inventory in the future to carry coins that are more popular with our customers.”

Unfortunately, those whose businesses had been structured primarily on face-to-face contact through travel, shows or open shops have been the most affected due again to the cancelation of coin shows, closing of shops and banks, and the near total absence of overseas and even interstate travel. As a business based in personal contacts, numismatics is now having to change.

Mitchell Battino, owner of Hudson Rare Coins, expressed to us, “This business model had been in a slow but steady decline, it’s viability in question long before COVID-19 abruptly halted it. The ability to buy and sell online, already well-developed by auction houses and dealers large and small, has enabled them to not only survive without physical interactions with clients, but to thrive in the current climate of strong demand for physical gold and numismatics.”

In sister publication, World Coin News, I have touched on the subject of auction houses shifting entirely to online auction sales. From my personal observations, those businesses that had already established online auction sales, both in live and timed formats, have made the transition to doing all their sales that way much more smoothly.

Daniel Frank Sedwick, owner of Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC, let us know that “Our day-to-day business has remained mostly unchanged. We have a private office and can focus mainly on online, eBay and phone sales, which have been steady if not slightly higher than usual. Our next Treasure Auction is coming up on May 27-29 and we’ve had around 50 percent more bidders register compared to the same point in our previous May auction. Since we were unable to show lots in person at the Central States coin show, we’ve posted additional photos and even videos of lots in our auction so bidders can have a better understanding of the material.”

Quick adaptation to circumstances seems to be the best asset anyone in the business of coins can have during the pandemic.

Coin dealers who depended on shows and shops for sales have also transitioned to online dealer trading pages and have done so quickly if they were already familiar with the format. We have seen on Facebook dealer trading networks and even a few live auction sales pages. We hope to cover this aspect more fully in our next installment.

My personal observation is that everyone will have to move more in these new directions in years to come. On the plus side, I believe that many collectors have already become accustomed to searching for their hobby collectibles in online locations, so those skills and that mindset have already been developing. I look at it as just another change in our hobby and one that can lead to a bright future if we follow the path that has been laid out for us.

The post Industry Insider: COVID Business Landscape appeared first on Numismatic News.

#Precious Metals

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