On Life in Lockdown and Stimulus Checks

At this point, we've all been doing the lockdown thing so long, I think a lot of us have forgotten what life was like before. Or at least I have. At this point, I'm used to this virus being a thing. I'm used to having to plan ahead more when buying groceries to make sure we have the things we need when we need them. I'm used to thinking twice before I consider going out in public (on the rare occasion it even crosses my mind).

I stay home all the time as a rule. I work at home for myself, I entertain myself at home, I pay other people to do all my shopping for me, and my social life starts and stops at social media, so the whole social distancing thing hasn't been hard for me at all. My life as a whole is largely unchanged from what it was. In fact, I could do this whole social distancing thing indefinitely, to be really honest.

Other people are another story though. They don't know how to cope with not being able to see their friends in person, go out for drinks, or spend time in public whenever they feel like it. Most of them are going stir-crazy, half from cabin fever and the other half from genuine stress over coronavirus and the very real risk of serious illness it brings with it. Some are deeply depressed and others are climbing the walls like little children.

I have to confess that the snob in me isn't impressed. As an extreme introvert and long-time voluntary recluse, I've always had people telling me how weird I am for finding it hard to fit into the rest of the world as easily as everyone else always has. It's nice (not to mention interesting) to be the one who's handling everything fine for the change. It's been very nice to be in a position to tell others to just suck it up and do what's necessary for a change.

It's not exactly earning me any friends though. In fact, it's lost me a few so far -- no one noteworthy or important so far, just more hopeless loser types leftover from my LiveJournal days whom I won't miss.

On COVID-19 and Quarantine Life

So far 2020 has been quite the trip. We're only a couple of days into April, but I feel like so many monumental things have been happening lately, both in general and personally speaking. Right now, life for just about everyone in the world is all about the novel coronavirus and the potentially deadly disease that it causes, COVID-19. 

These were things I'd technically heard of the last time I posted here in that I knew they were big deals in China, as well as several countries in Europe. We also knew there were a few cases here in the United States, but I simply assumed COVID-19 would be like Ebola, or the swine flu, or the bird flu, or any of those other super-bugs that made headlines and then disappeared long before they ever managed to touch my life. I didn't think it was even worth paying attention to at the time, let alone actually worrying about or planning for. After all, that sort of thing was for conspiracy theorists and paranoid people like my father and brother, right?

Cut to today. Most of the country is on partial or total lockdown to slow the spread of the virus because it's been spreading relentlessly, as well as killing people right and left. Monterey County, as well as the whole state of California, is under a shelter-in-place order, meaning we're all supposed to stay at home unless we absolutely need to go do something essential like buy groceries or go to the doctor. Non-essential businesses are either closed or struggling to adapt to doing business at a distance. Until very recently, people were panic-buying shelf-stable groceries and essential goods (e.g. toilet paper, beans, and pasta) to the point where grocery store shelves were bare. Even Amazon was out of stock on such things.