Something that's bothered me most about this pandemic is that it struck us just as I was about to return to work. I was going to do a lot more, actually: exercise, try out some kind of meditative practice, engage in social gaming, volunteer somewhere weekly, and other self-development stuff like quitting spitting and taking up origami. After a few months canning I decided last month to resume the job search; the plague situation looked stable here in Oregon, and the summer-to-fall transition is usually the last hiring spree out of the year and in this case likely my last chance to land a potential keeper until next spring. I was going to start some of that self-betterment stuff, too, but so far all I've managed is to cut down drinking (which is actually a big deal). It didn't take me long to reverse my decision, at least regarding seeking employment.
Like that picture? That's a typical outdoor seating arrangement at the sushi place down the street from my apartment; most of the places I've seen in the area that offer outdoor seating are fudging between-party distances. I'm surrounded by highly educated (and class-conscious) Yuppie liberals, and even they're getting tired of the necessary constraints the pandemic imposed on us — before Portland got strangled by toxic wildfire discharge people were starting to uncover their nostrils wile wearing face coverings, more joggers and cyclists eschewed their use entirely, and dinner parties started growing larger and friendlier. And that's not even mentioning the droves of fools out there denying science that's been established since it was discovered flies weren't born from rotting meat, or who decry a rational pandemic response as a brutal assault on the constitution … or whatever other hare-brained buffoonery compels these guys to be so vehemently self-centered and socially irresponsible.
I'm not going to rub elbows with co-workers and get breathed all over and handle the cash and/or food of customers, probably indoors in poor air circulation. As much as I loathe scrounging for bottles and cans, and as abysmal as the hourly pay rate averages out, I'm at least one order of magnitude safer doing that. I'll just have to bite the bullet and cut most of the fun corners out of my budget. Which I've already started doing, now that I only drink a six-pack a week and have given up cigarettes. I can financially tread water through fall and winter, and maybe even spring; I'm supremely confident the coronavirus will kick us in the teeth as soon as we start spending more time indoors (as our colleges and universities are already foreshadowing). We'll also be shopping and traveling for the holidays. The flu season is right around the corner, too. And many of us on the West Coast have had our immune systems likely weakened by exposure to wildfire smoke.
A lot of people getting sick + a lot of people being fools + increasing favorability of environmental conditions = a lot more people getting sick, maybe to the point where our robber-baron feudal healthcare system seriously buckles under the strain and towns and counties get shut back down. I'm not taking any chances. I've smoked for almost thirty years; if I catch this I'll probably end up fighting it for a couple months and end up with permanent damage to my cardiovascular and respiratory systems — dodging this bullet could very well mean the difference between whether I die at sixty-two or seventy-two. Come to think of it, I'll probably eventually switch from using a magic scarf with an N95 filter folded inside it over to one of those 3M™ respirators (they're actually easier to breathe through). Besides, in the meantime I can still engage in self-betterment, right? I literally have nothing better to do.
