This pandemic has not been kind to me. I am willing to bet I have drank more in the past two years than the rest of life combined. My liver fucking hates me.
We have all gone through, and are still going through, something that I still don’t have the capacity to explain. Even if we haven’t lost someone, or maybe even known anyone to get really sick, we have all been under this unseen, practically indescribable weight that is crushing us in ways we might not even be able to recognize.
During this time, I have found very few new joys. I find it very hard to watch new movies or TV shows, or read new books, or play new video games. It’s like the stress of not knowing what is going to happen in any of those things is too much to add to the stress of not knowing what is going to happen in the real world. I can’t even enjoy the Olympics like I used to, and I love watching the Olympics.
I have read The Great Gatsby again. I have completed my fifth and third play-throughs of Red Dead Redemption 2 and Far Cry 5 respectively. I have started reading a few new books, tried playing a few new games, tried watching a few new shows and movies only to walk away from them all because I just can’t fucking do it.
I need predictability.
Not that life was predictable before. But now we got all the normal unpredictability times ten. Life before wasn’t unpredictable plus insurrections. It wasn’t unpredictable plus over 900,000 dead. It wasn’t unpredictable plus denying truth in science, or elections … well, at least not to this extent.
One of the few new things I have found during this time is Mythic Quest on Apple TV+. No, it isn’t a movie. But have you seen how long it’s been since I have written here? Give me a break. It is funny and fun, and yes those are different things.
I bring it up during this pandemic discussion because I hope that one day I can look back at the episode Quarantine (season 1, episode 10) of Mythic Quest with nostalgia and good feelings, and the only way that will be possible is if we get out of all this shit without too much collateral damage.
The episode took three weeks from conception to completion. It was filmed as a Zoom-like call between all the characters from the actors’ actual homes during the time when they couldn’t film together in person. It reflects all the shit that came with working remotely, at least for those of us who were able to do so. I was unemployed for six months at the beginning of the pandemic, but was able to return to the work force and have spent way too much time in Zoom ever since.
But wouldn’t it be nice to look back at this time and watch this episode and feel something positive about the Bad Times?
But maybe that should always be our goal. What can we do today to make this time worth looking back on?
I don’t know the answer to that, but it is probably worth thinking about.
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