Battle fatigue and a singular moment

 January 22, 2022

As the Covid-19 pandemic wears on, it's difficult not to wonder what motivates people. The spousal unit and  I have gone against our belief that the vaccination wasn't tested enough and we took the shot. I've gotten the booster, but the weather has been such he's not able to leave home. Winter weather is not the friend of the handicapped.  

The county we live in, according to the 2020 Census, has a population of 154,705. According to the county's website this morning, of these residents, only 53% (80,833) are fully vaccinated with another 5% having at least one shot. The positivity rate of those being tested stood at 28.17% as of January 20, 2022. It's a lot of numbers to absorb and process, but what does it mean to a person's real life?

RC and I have battle fatigue. The only way to escape reading and hearing about the pandemic is to shut down the computers and the televisions and never leave home. Talk of the pandemic is in and of itself pandemic. 

I needed to zip into the grocery store for a carton of eggs on my way home last night. I was back into the Colorado and had the key in the ignition when I realized I'd not put on a mask. Damn it! I had a "normal" moment and didn't realize it as it was happening!

Will this set a new precedent for me? It's doubtful. Nothing can ease the pain of grocery shopping these days. 

Recently, I've heard a lot of grief being heaped on the concept of individualism. PULL BACK ON THE REINS! Individualism founded our great country. Yet in the face of a pandemic, millions of people, of individuals just like me, have set aside their individual beliefs and acted for the Greater Good. 

There's hate tossed at "red" states as though those "red" voters are solely responsible for the pandemic. Hey, thanks for hating me! I really needed that today! And for what? I've done my part for the greater good. Stop shaming me! 

Do you know what I'd really love to do today? I'd love to go shopping for a new handbag. How girly is that? 

Wait. What? With all those germy people exhaling into my air space? I guess there's always Amazon. 

And doesn't that send the mind careening down the threads of the greedy filthy rich and conspiracy theories? 

Perhaps I'll just go read a book.

*_*_*_*_*_*_

 KC Kendricks

My home on the web- Between the Keys: 

http://kckendricks.blogspot.com

Visit my bookshelf at: 

https://kckendricks.blogspot.com/p/the-bookshelf-of-kc-kendricks-and-rayne_3.html

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Life through the eyes of my black Lab, Greenbrier Smokey Deuce: deucesday.blogspot.com

My country life at Holly Tree Manor: hollytreemanor.blogspot.com

Snips and clips on my YouTube channel: KC Kendricks Between the Keys

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Emotional writer's block, the impact of grief

May 2, 2020

These are strange times we're in which we live. We've temporarily ceded our constitutional rights and civil liberties for the greater good of mankind. 

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has not as yet impacted life on the mountain. My people may not always be conservative voters, but we are conservative thinkers in ways that have nothing to do with politics. We're country people, rural dwellers with close ties to the land. We've conserved our resources and we're having an easier time of it than our city-dwelling neighbors. But that's not what is on my mind this morning. 

Writer's block. It's time to admit I have a case of emotional writer's block, the cause of which I lay at the feet of stress and grief. The last years have not been easy ones. My mother was institutionalized with Alzheimer's Disease, my stepfather died, my partner had two major surgeries, my best friend moved a thousand miles away, my writing partner died, a new CEO where I work caused a lot of upheavals, the uncertainties about retiring, tending to my mother's affairs including selling her home, and now living in a virtual house arrest. I've been trying to sort this all out in my head and it's not going well. 

Do I think my "problems" are unique in this world? No. Of course not. They just happen to be my "problems." Just as with any problem, identifying them sheds light into some murky corners. I believe the underlying reaction to all of this is grief. I grieve. 

I grieve the loss of who my mother was and what, unbeknownst to her, I must do in her name to provide care for her. I grieve the loss of a woman I've known since we were in the third grade together who is busy in a new life that has no place for old friends. I grieve the author friend who spoke the writer's language with me as no one else can. I grieve the loss of a co-worker that I was totally in sync with. I grieve the loss of a future imagined with my partner who through no fault of his own is progressively more disabled. 

Grief weighs me down to the point I have difficulty remembering how joyous it is to create a story. Creating a story is creating a virtual reality in which the writer joins with new friends to give them a world to live in and a voice to speak in that world. The writer becomes part of this creation, at least for a little while. I miss it. 

I'm sure Chris Grover would tell me to channel the grief into a character. Take him down to the depths of hell and then work him back to the surface. To be melodramatic, I'm not sure I want to take myself farther down into the pit. I'm too cowardly to go back there. You see, time does heal many things without the need to resort to substances that alter brain chemistry. I'm healing. 

I'm healing and now I worry I've become too lazy to write. Writing takes discipline and lots of it. Have the last several years stripped me of discipline? Have I become too comfortable living in the worlds others create? I've been supporting a lot of other writers these past months, reading two or even three books a week. 

It's time to redefine my path and rediscover the author part of my soul. It's time to settle the grief, to tuck it away and allow it to unwind and wither. Brave words, to be sure. I hope I can make them my truth because I want to walk in the sunshine again. And if I'm walking alone, I'll just have to create a couple of characters to walk with me. That's what a writer would do. 

KC Kendricks
My home on the web- Between the Keys: http://kckendricks.blogspot.com
twitter.com/kckendricks
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My country life at Holly Tree Manor

What we will remember

April 1, 2020

Growing up, I listened to my grandparent's stories of living through the Great Depression. My mother was born in 1937, as things began to ease. She has no first-hand memories of how difficult those times really were, but she grew up poor. Life for her was a gradual improvement until, as a widow, she married her second husband and money was no longer an issue.  

My maternal great-grandparents were both born in 1889. I look back and am astonished to have personally known people born in that century. Historically, they lived through the Spanish Flu (1918-1920), and the time of polio. A short mile from my house is a graveyard that gives silent testimony to the impact of a scarlet fever outbreak in this small community. A distant relative of mine on my father's side is buried there beside his wife and five of his children. Those five children all died within days of each other from scarlet fever. He and his wife lived to have five more, all girls. They were contemporaries of my great-grandparents although I never knew them. 

In my life and times, we have vaccines against measles, polio, diphtheria, and a host of other diseases. Up until now, HIV/AIDS has been the plague of my generation, a plague we know how to prevent but seem unable to eradicate. We've had significant scares with the Ebola, Zika, and West Nile viruses, but we got through. Modern medical researchers continue to study these and work to develop cures. 

Listening to my elders speak of living through those times was more than a history lesson. It spoke to the lasting impact it had on the lives of the people of those times. They were times of uncertainty and fear and great loss. The Great Depression and the Spanish Flu defined the lives of my great-grandparents and grandparents. In many ways, my grandparents never moved far from those days. My grandmother panicked when one of us got sick, as all children do. My grandfather bought land to farm and keep his family fed. He worked a factory job by day and then came home to tend his garden. He also kept honeybees, a lucrative sideline. They bequeathed more than land and money to me. Their gift was love and a shining example of how to truly live well. 

I look at the next two generations in my family. These days we are living now, today, will be days that define their lives. One of what I call gen4, myself being gen3, is pregnant. The gen5-ers are going to school via the Internet. COVID-19 will be what we remember, what my young cousin will tell her baby about, what the youngsters across the creek being homeschooled via the Internet will have in common with their peers. 

When I'm once again able to join with my gen3 cousins at the table, what we did in our self-isolation and social distancing time will be our discussion. I'm sure we'll note how people paid little or no attention to how serious the COVID-19 virus is. Perhaps we'll speculate on the bare shelves in the grocery stores and wonder how much worse it was for our grandparents. We have constant news and the Internet to keep us informed (on both the true and the false). They had a weekly newspaper and word of mouth. 

In my own little world, I sense a shift inside. I won't remember my time under a governmental stay at home order as a hardship. My employer's reaction to it is something I'll never forget. I've talked a lot about retirement and so I'm looking at these days as a test run. And I'm liking how I feel quite a bit. Being home is a good thing. Now all I need is for the stock market to rebound so I can lock in a few numbers. My own silver lining. 

Time will roll on. Please be smart and protect yourself so you can be a part of it. It'll be more fun to tell your grandchildren about self-isolation and social distancing than to have them tell their peers their grandparents died young, in the pandemic of 2020. 

KC Kendricks
www.kckendricks.com
www.twitter.com/kckendricks

It should be simple, but it's not

March 21, 2020

Happy spring, everyone! The daffodils are finally blooming and I'm home to enjoy them. Life should be good...but it's not. We are living in challenging times and everyone has a criticism to share. Just remember - if you hate just one person, you are a hater. But enough about that. 

We've all been asked to stay home to limit our exposure to those who may be infected with the COVID-19 virus. We've been asked to only venture out for necessities. I'm happy to comply, but then I'm not exactly housebound. I have three acres of ground and the nearest house to my property line is a good five-hundred feet away. I have no worries when I take Deuce outside. 

So I'm home. You'd think sitting down and writing would be the simplest thing in the world for a writer to do, wouldn't you? Yeah, I thought so, too, but everywhere I look I see something that can be done before the hazy, hot, and humid days of the Mid-Atlantic summer arrive. Maybe I need to close my eyes or close the curtains, so I can't see all the work out there waiting for me. Maybe that won't help because I have a lot of writing "chores" that also need to be performed. 

It may all be moot musings. My employer considers me to be essential personnel, and it's not bragging to say I am. Everything passes through my hands. Whether or not I'll be expected to report to work on Tuesday remains to be decided. The thing is, I don't trust others to stay out of the building and stay away from me. They've already proven it's beyond their brains to comprehend such a thing. Another simple concept that is obviously not simple in practice. 

I'd like to work from home. The caveat there is that if they want to cut my pay, well, it'll be time to officially retire. 

It should be so simple, but it's not. 

KC Kendricks
www.kckendricks.com