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someplace-that-is-else · 4 years

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‘That Damn ‘Rona: Small Tales from the Zombie Apocalypse’

When it happened…I remembered being excited.

Here in San Diego, it fell on St. Patrick’s weekend. I had been excited. I’ve been steadily working. My new job had given me a sense of appreciation that I had not felt from the job that I left in a long while. Meanwhile my other job at my postal place had been going swimmingly. Best of all, I had been putting finishing touches on my forthcoming novel DARKENED TABULA.

I felt on top of the world. I had been on a journey of self-discovery, and I wanted to see how far I could go if I applied myself better. If I focused on what I felt would make me happy. But what was happiness to me? It had been a funny path to go down. One of the advantages was being reminded of how much writing met to me. It had always been the dream, but I was not pursuing it nearly as much as I did when I relocated back to San Diego in 2013.

But self-discovery was not just about my professional life. It was also about my personal life. It was something that I had not been focusing on as of late. And it was about time I got back out there. And for me, it was relearning the act of the flirt. St. Patrick’s was the perfect weekend for that. So I was excited.

Then the reports started coming in. The reports were about people falling ill. It was about news telling people to stay in. It was about something coming out of China called the Coronavirus. I remembered seeing memes and whatnot online, paying it no mind since I was excited about getting my drink on.

Little did I know that my life…as I knew it…was OVER.

Losses: For Want of Toilet Paper

I was worried.

There I was at work. News reports had been coming in. There was a virus in the air. It was important that people stayed in. It was important that if people could not that they wore masks and gloves. Be sure to stay a certain distance away from people. Meanwhile, there I was at work thinking about one thing.

Toilet Paper.

I thought it was funny at first. There were these reports online and all around in other states about toilet paper. For some reason, people were buying toilet paper in bunches. I could not comprehend why since from what I heard some were doing it a dozen of a dozen at a time. Food I could understand, but TOILET PAPER??? It was probably a good idea if I got myself a pack.

Meanwhile, I looked outside. My new job was at the mall. So far, all the workers in the mall were worried. It appeared that this virus was spreading. However, the mall was STILL open. So, what did it all mean?

It started small though. First, the mall reduced everything to To-Go orders. That was shocking enough. But…manageable. After all there were still tables outside. They could open their food and eat quickly.

Then…the janitorial team started to take the seating away. I remembered walking into work one day, shocked at how empty the area I worked in, looked. To make it more funny, there were people who still sat in the seating that was still available. If a table was nearby, some customers actually would take a table, lifted it, and connected tables. By this point, there was a crowd limit…and they were over it. Arguments ensued between them and the janitorial staff.

Days passed by, me standing waiting for a To-Go order. ANY order. Then…the mall shut down completely. We were already starting to shut down earlier because the governor had already started to tell people to stay home. And…people listened. Well, I got a lot of cleaning done. Suddenly, security showed up with a note. And then we were closing.

Well…my thought was 1) I could get some more toilet paper which I decided to put off and 2) at least I got to work a whole pay period. I had no idea how long this would go on.

And then…the state went on lockdown. And that…got extended an extra month.

Man in a Cage: New Realities

I waited on the bus, mask on face.

Thankfully, my postal job was labeled essential by the state and the government. While my hours had been greatly reduced from what I was used to, at least I had a job. There were people all over San Diego who did not have one, applying for unemployment. Or they were waiting for as Nene Leakes would call them a

In the pursuit of self-discovery, I had become responsible enough to have some budget though I had been slipping pre-outbreak.

I got on the bus. My eyes took in everyone around me. Usually it was the Express bus I got on. And today…was unusually thin of crowd. Okay, maybe not so unusually.

The governor had officially announced a stay-at-home order. Unless you were getting groceries, had a job, etc, you were supposed to be at home. So work done, that was where I was heading.

There I was usually doing workouts from home. Or I was working on something writing related. Or I was caught in a bingefest of some TV show.

That 3 Day Battlestar Galactica marathon on SyFy for example was deliciously exciting since I had not seen them since they first aired 10 years ago, and they were relevant given what was going on in the world today.

Too many naps.

Which brought me to downsides to this stay at home. For one, my sleep pattern was now all over. And with reduced hours at work, there were stretches of time where I did nothing but sleep. There were some exercises I missed at my gym that I could not do at home. Being short on hours, trump check or not, I had to start questioning everything. I had immediately put a hold on DARKENED TABULA’s cover because I was not sure if that was money that I could be using on something that I might need in the immediate future with reduced money coming in. There were times I got lonely, finding myself looking back over my life. Nothing made a person think of their morality more than a virus that could take you out, your mind on missed opportunities…or even if you might get a chance to do something about it.

I walked out the door with mask on. My liquids at the house were low. I always tried to have orange juice, milk, and water on hand. One had to always stay hydrated. I headed out because I wanted to beat the 8pm Yelling. To show appreciation for the hard-working essential workers out there dealing with Coronavirus, the Stay-at-Homers usually yelled from their balconies.

Downtown San Diego…had A LOT of balconies. Not to mention loud stereos.

As I went about my errands, I saw them. People in crowds that were not couples. People walked about without masks. A few of the people even acted like they did not know what 6 feet (the average a person should be from someone) was. I kinda suspected that was how this week was going to go down. After all, the weather service had said that after a long period of cool weather that the temperature was going up again. Warm weather meant hard for virus contamination, right?

Better question…why take the chance? After all, the news had been out for a while that the virus could hit or cause the death of people under 50? That it could hit quickly. If not for yourself, people did care about whether other people die or not, right?

Wrong. These were not people heading to a grocery store. Some were walking pets which I understood. A few were actually heading to house parties.

I stayed in for the rest of that weekend. I…just could not.

And with no vaccine forthcoming…I wondered.

Would it always be this way? Feeling like a man in a cage who could not get out of? Was this the new reality?

Change That Energy, Change Your Path?

I found it again.

The cover for DARKENED TABULA. I had looked through a lot of covers. I had presented them before my ‘committee’ of close associates. They had given me feedback. And I finally decided on it. And then Coronavirus hit. But…life went on.

Perhaps that was the problem. People now protested. Some were protesting for the right to go back to work because not everyone got a trump check, or it was not coming fast enough or it was not enough. Then there were people protesting for the right to get a haircut. Some were out there waving symbols that reveal more about them than they thought. In any case, watching the world turn into a zombie apocalypse made me come to a conclusion.

Vaccine or not, I did not think the world would be the same after all of this. And like it or not, people were going to have to accept this new normal. This new reality.

My mind knew given how people were acting, especially in opposite of a stay-at-home order and in ways that endangered people if they did not go directly home after they protested, that this might be long term. As a Gemini, I was going to have to think accordingly. I was also going to have to act accordingly.

One thing that I did not like about the Lockdown was how it set me back. A lot of what I wanted to do I could not do because my access was denied. The best internet as people knew WAS NOT at my house. My need for new knowledge was reignited. Part of that included relearning languages. I had so much knowledge in my brain and could not access it consistently. I wanted to relearn language again because it would help with customers. Another thing that had been reawakened due to Lockdown: a long ago promise I made about a very long overdue trip that I would need Spanish for.

Thoughts. Sparks. New turnings in my path. Nothing like a virus to make one think about what they wanted out of life. And how they might go about living it.

So there I was. My potential cover in front of me. A question formed in my head.

Would I continue to wait with no end date in sight? Or…would I go for it?

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