What have you learned from going through a pandemic?

One thing I learned is about keeping in touch with people you care about. Talking to people regularly is important, and if they're willing, this can be scheduled and done remotely. As an example, my wife and I have a regularly scheduled video chat with with some old friends of mine. We talk every two weeks. Either of us might delay for a week (if we have a conflicting appointment or aren't feeling well) so sometimes instead of two weeks it's a month, but either way, it works.

I learned how great face masks are. I have a car so don't need public transit anymore but have gotten sick from the bus, and people are just generally gross with their coughing everywhere, shoving gum on the windows, etc. They're great for airplanes and trains, as well, if you're going to be stuck in dry air conditioning for a few hours, regardless of a pandemic. I'm simultaneously fatigued with wearing face masks in places, but scared of not having one because I don't want to get sick, which wasn't much of an issue before the pandemic. It doesn't bug me to have it on, my concerns are usually thought about outside of a mask-required situation.

I also learned that the US as a whole, beyond politics, is not ready for a catastrophe, considering the amount of things that went wrong with this pandemic, from our government outright lying to the population to save face masks for medical facilities to the inability of our government to respond to public health crises (see: the depletion of the Strategic National Stockpile after Ebola in 2013-2016 leading to many issues early in the COVID pandemic). None of this was caused by the administration in office when the pandemic started, or at least landed on US shores. I'm not trying to take potshots at anybody, but this really shook my confidence in the ability of the US to manage itself in hard times.

I miss the pandemic.

The extent of my social ineptitude is much greater than I realized. I am not suitable for public consumption. I consistently misread social cues and respond incorrectly as a result. I'm never sure whether someone is being literal or sarcastic, a lot of times I'll just pretend I got it, but, deep down, I'm still suspicious and uncertain.

I could fake much better before, something got lost in this process. Maybe I grew tired of masking.

Being silent is boring, so I talk. But I often say inadequate things that are not in the flow of conversation. Most people — normal people — will automatically ascribe some kind of negative judgment. It's inevitable. As humans, that is what we do: we judge. Most times, there are no second chances.

I don't cherish being around normal people, but, even among the abnormal, only a subsect has the patience to accept me. It takes a certain kind of diagnostics or at least a certain kind of life experience. Years ago I learned that users of drugs, especially psychedelics, really got me, which is funny because I never really did any drugs (other than the mandatory alcohol years ago).

Truthfully, I just wanna be left alone, but that is not really possible.

I've been meaning to write a post on how conversations work because I think a lot about that. But just thinking about writing makes me anxious because that is something that caused me a lot of pain.

I'm a little concerned with how much I enjoyed the social distancing, less people being in stores, hiding behind a mask, increased self-checkout, not being expected to leave the house often, and just the general drop in required socializing the last couple of years. It made having social anxiety feel normal for once.

Granted I have a wife and kids at home, plus work (I'd been fully-remote for years before COVID), so I was getting about as much socializing in as a I needed. I think if I had nobody at all, I'd probably go insane and start talking to volley ball to keep me company. Thankfully my kids were too young to do much socializing in the early days anyway, so they didn't miss out on much. In the last year or so we've done birthday parties, get togethers with cousins, and since vaccines for their age group got approved we've taken them out on errands more. They seem to have developed a healthy ability to socialize for their age, and I'm really glad about that.

Self care and the importance of community. I attended a wedding right before the pandemic where the father of the bride - one of the most sensitively in-touch older men I've ever met - asked them to be kind and empathetic to themselves. When people brought this up during the pandemic, I always imagine him saying it. I really appreciated it. Feeling overwhelmed? Don't worry about those emails today. The state of the world a little too much for you today? Just push it off for another day. It was great! We really let people take the space they needed and I don't think much suffered for it. Fast forward to today and it doesn't feel like many of the anxiety inducing issues we faced during the pandemic have change, but the attitude about personal wellbeing has. Urgency and productivity have once again usurped understanding and empathy. I'm fortunate enough to be able to create a small cocoon in which I can still have patience and understanding for myself and my coworker/friends/partners/family but I'm sad it doesn't feel more common. I was really hoping that attitude would be one of the things we carried out of covid, at least for a little while.

The second big one was community. At the beginning of covid I had a very strong "distance" community but a weak local one. A lot of friend and family that lived 30min-2 hours away. I didn't see them often but we also never had awkward moments when we caught up. I moved during the pandemic to an area that turned out had many like minded young folks in very close proximity. I was able to find a big community I saw very often in a way I hadn't had since my early 20s. I forgot how supportive it can feel to know that a chat, a pint, or even help moving something heavy is a literal shout away. Even if it seems like as a society we are taking very few positive things away from this pandemic, I'm going to try as hard as I can to cultivate a strong local community wherever I move. Though I might have just gotten lucky with the move.

Oh, and last one, outdoor eating. I live in California, why the fuck is there such limited outdoor seating?!?! Also - complete side tangent - why do old people love antique stores?!?! And why are they using their love of antique stores and need of access as a justification for reopening the downtown back to cars?!?! Sorry, slightly bitter.

I'm a very social person. I knew this, but the pandemic really drilled that into my head. I was meeting up with people 2-3 times a week pre-pandemic, and that sudden change from that to zero was rather hard on me mentally. I thought that because I also had an online community (several, in fact), I'd feel okay with it, but it's just not the same for me. I need that human interaction, and not being able to hug my friends for months was a huge bummer.

The stuff I learned and how I changed is... honestly mostly negative.

I've learned that the US government really doesn't care if disabled/chronically ill people die or become more disabled. I know that sounds like a hot take, but what else can I think when looking at their words and actions? Most recently, the CDC decided even medical offices and hospitals don't need to require masks, except when numbers (that are artificially low because they don't include home testing) get astronomically high. The last safe places, the places I need to go regularly as a sick and disabled person, are no longer safe because even though medical facilities are made for treating sick people, the CDC has decided to bend over backwards to pander to healthy people who don't want to wear a mask for an hour or two.

I'm just glad I got some of the medical care I needed before the doors shut in my face. But I have no idea how I'm going to handle blood work, appointments, an MRI, and a surgery in the coming months.

I could go on about the things I've learned, but to switch to how I've changed: basically I'm much more cynical about people and the world. It's funny, I was actually talking about my anger and resentment the other day with my therapist. She mentioned that isn't uncommon for disabled and chronically ill people to feel that way - but I realized that until COVID I didn't. There used to be tons of things I couldn't do, or things that I could do but only at the expense of something else. But that was just how my body worked. I got pretty fucking sad about it sometimes, especially in the beginning when I mourned my old life and the life I had planned, but I don't think I was angry.

The problem is, now the thing holding me back (and restricting my life much more than it ever was before COVID), isn't something to do with my body - it's systems and people disregarding my life and safety for their convenience, fun, and "the economy." That makes me angry. To watch people sitting in the same doctor waiting room as me with their mask around their neck, surrounded by high-risk cardiac patients. To watch people going to conventions with thousands of people, not wearing masks, and then complaining they got COVID (which they may have spread on the plane flight home). To watch coworkers planning to go to an in-person work retreat in another country with their families the week after a super-spreader holiday.

I work in progressive politics, and that last one has helped further deepen my cynicism with progressives and leftists when it comes to disability and accessibility. They sometimes talk the talk, but so many organizations ignore disability justice in their actual work. There has not been a concerted effort to understand the pandemic as a mass-disabling event, to understand and mitigate the increased barriers for disabled/chronically ill people who want to participate in activism, or extend their "solidarity" to sick people. And the groups who are considering disability in their intersectional approaches are the ones with the least resources, like mutual aid groups.

Kinda rambling at this point, but... yeah. I guess on the plus side I've found a hobby (zines) I enjoy and might stick with? Can't go to the local zine fest because it's indoors with no masks, but... Ah well.

My view of humanity and society has fundamentally changed. I thought we were evolving intellectually as a species and society was becoming more stable.

There are two types of Sci Fi movies. The future of humanity as an evolved species. And the future of humanity as a shit show, or even extinct. I used to think we would evolve.

Now I see how fragile society is. The pandemic wasn't that bad. Yet huge divisions were created by fear and anger.

I really feel more empathy for Germans, who are still suffering a crisis of conscience from what Hitler untapped.

I think fundamentally we are slowly learning how to treat each other better... as long as we don't get punched in the nose by something unusual such as an unexpected recession, war, pandemic.