What a year, and it's only been 8 days

[mousme]

Southern California and Los Angeles are on fire, and tens of thousands of people are being forced to evacuate. It's something to do with the atmospheric rivers bringing so much rainfall to the area last year, which was a good and bad thing. Good, because the area had been suffering from a terrible drought. Bad, because it resulted in lots of new vegetation, which then dried up when the drought resumed, and is what is burning now. At least, that's how it's been explained to me by people who know what they're talking about.

On New Year's Day 14 people were killed and dozens more were injured after a driver intentionally drove a truck into a crowd before dying in a shootout with local police. 

All around me people are getting sick, with Covid or with a "mystery virus" (hint: it's Covid), or with complications from Covid, or with Long Covid. People are getting sick all the time, year-round, and very few people are questioning any of it. It's just "the new normal," and they're just shrugging and accepting that now we just have to live with a disease that scars your lungs and damages your heart and ruins your brain.

In the midst of all this, I'm still puttering along. The world is collapsing all around but I apparently still have to pay rent and buy overpriced groceries. I'm trying to do what little I can and still maintain my sanity.

I started rewatching Person of Interest (because escapist TV is my jam), and the early seasons are still so good. It's funny to think of the world in which this came out, in which terrorists seemed like the worst threat and we dreamed of an AI that was omniscient and quasi-omnipotent instead of a glorified plagiarism machine designed to make us doubt our reality. It's too bad Jim Caviezel went off the deep end--it makes it harder to enjoy his work when I know the loony toons conspiracy theories he not only espouses but also proselytizes about.

 Tomorrow I'm going back to the office. I'm the only one who masks there, of course, and it's weird being surrounded by people who are constantly perplexed about why they keep getting Covid. They're all so impressed that I've never had it (to my knowledge, I may have had asymptomatic cases, after all), and it never seems to stick when I remind them that I wear masks everywhere I go in public. It's honestly a little depressing.

On that note, time for bed.

Comments

[sirena73]

Yes to all of this. I finally spoke to my last friend in LA who hadn't checked in yet and thank everything, he was okay. As a lifelong Angeleno, he was very shaken and said this was the worst thing he'd ever seen and history bears that out.

We do the best we can, but I hope for better days ahead for all of us.