Focus

It’s hard to do right now. Focusing. Prioritizing. Thinking straight.

What a day, huh? The NBA is shut down. Dozens, if not hundreds, of universities and colleges have shut down. The NCAA’s March Madness, if played at all, will be played in empty arenas. The Mango Mussolini stumbles his way through a teleprompter speech that wouldn’t get a C- from a fourth-grade composition class, makes at least three world-class errors or misstatements in it, looks like death warmed over, and instead of rallying the country it causes a drop of 1,000 points in the overnight futures market, which means that tomorrow’s opening is expected to be a blood bath in a market already over 20% off of it’s highs of just two weeks ago.

Oh, yeah. And people are starting to die. There are worst case scenarios that have over a million dead Americans, and people already arguing over whether or not they’re actually the worst case.

It’s hard to focus, to act, to think, to not be paralyzed.

A few years back, when I was becoming unemployed for the first time in my life and not sure what the hell was coming, one of my biggest fears was the potential for ennui, for depression, for falling off the planet and not knowing how to get back on. So I started keeping track of the simple things and forcing myself to hold myself accountable. I still might fall off the planet, but at least it wouldn’t be a surprise when it happened. And the process itself, the data, the lists, helped to steer me in the right direction and not lose my way.

Somewhere early in that process I started this website. It’s never been profound, or popular, or whatever else it might have been supposed to be, but it has been an anchor. In the almost seven years since I’ve started, I’m not sure there are ten days in which I’ve missed posting something. It might have just been a picture or a lame observation or something incredibly witty and clever that no one on the planet ever noticed or read – but it got posted.

At about 03:00 last night I woke up and realized that I hadn’t pushed the “Publish” button on yesterday’s article. Nor did I get up at 03:01 and go do that. And I missed posting about four days ago just because…I forgot.

That’s one symptom. There are plenty of others. None fatal. Not super critical. None involve the fate of the world. But they’re bothersome.

As the shit hits the fan, if I get sick, or if others around me get sick, there may be days I don’t post because of that. That’s okay – I’m not Superman. But while I and my family and friends are still not sick, it would be nice to still be on top of things and in control (yes, I’m well aware that it’s a “control issue”) and not seeing little cracks in the dam.

Yesterday’s post?

It was about the thunderheads roaming the area.