ZOOM-ZOOM

Had we known, we'd have all purchased stock in Zoom.  It's the "go-to" video conferencing site for keeping us connected to family, friends, co-workers, and audiences in this time of Stay Home/Stay Healthy lockdown.  There are others: Google Hang-out, Skype, maybe more.  But Zoom seems to have the market share.

Like many others, I'm trying hard not to turn into a Zoombie.   But with everyone clamoring to see each other, just to know other humans exist and our friends and family are still out there, I've been drawn in.  Monthly get-togethers are suddenly weekly and almost every day has a Zoom meet-up of some kind beckoning.

Hub and I decided we are going to put some parameters around this.  It's hard.  We have to be honest and not wiggle around the "white lie" of, "Oh, gosh.  I can't...I have a conflict."  Really?  Like what? What could we possibly be doing?  Not going on vacation.  Not going to a play or a ballgame. Not celebrating a birthday or going out to dinner with friends. Are we busy walking from the living room to the kitchen?  Scrolling through the Netflix menu for the 100th time? Nope, the honest truth is we just don't want our lives to be lived in front of a computer screen talking to disembodied heads all day.  As great as it is to see people, it is an artificial and at times frustrating endeavor.  We want to savor the opportunities, not dread them.

I have found hilarity in learning the trick of Zoom though.  On Monday I was on a Zoom meeting with my Coffeehouse Crew (a group of women who meet monthly for coffee at a local coffee shop.)  Most of us are of an age where technology still seems 'new' and rather intimidating.  We are not, shall we say, tech nerds.  So we spent the better part of an hour waiting for the host to sign in; she was having problems with the shared account she was using, then she gave up and another of us hosted the meeting, then we had to help her figure out how to let others join, all the while checking emails and texts to communicate with those waiting that we were doing our best... Some gave up, for which I don't blame them.  Time was about up anyway.

Here's another thing I notice.  We should all try harder.  Sitting in front of a computer, even with a camera trained on us, we seem not to be able to get ourselves situated so that others can easily see us, which is the whole point of the whole thing!  Nor do we care much what we look like.  It's as if an invisibility cloak was thrown over our stay-at-home selves, not that there's anything inherently wrong with a "who gives a shit?" Covid-inspired fashion statement, but I dunno, some effort maybe?  (If you are reading this and taking offense, obviously I don't meant you!)

Let's take a look at the common offenders.  And let's go with the given that I didn't bother with make up or a hairbrush to act as a model.  (And I have to do the list before the photos this way because photos/captions are so hard for me to format on this platform!  See above: not tech-savvy.)  Anyway....here's what I've learned through personal trial and error about "production values":

1.  Backlighting: Not good.
2.  Off-center with lots of busy mess in the background: Not good.
3.  Teeny tiny head with vast expanse of ceiling:  Not good.
4.  Giantess fingers adjusting the screen/settings:  Not good.
5.  Giantess body with disappearing head: Not good.
6.  Face in shadow; slumped, bored, not even trying to look interested or animated or glad to see us:  Not good.
7.  And now....head shot, center screen, pretty good lighting, not a lot going on in the background (well, we can see it's Easter).  Marked down for less than great grooming and plastered on fake smile; but hey, it's progress, right?

DISCLAIMER:  On the other hand, letting go of all pretense in this time of life or death might be a good lesson; getting to see how people REALLY look, and live, is a glimpse into deeper intimacy, isn't it?  Hmmmm....maybe my thoughts are evolving into a new blog post....

At least, that's the (Zoom) view from here...©

STATS & THOUGHTS

Just gonna do a brief numbers update and talk about how this feels, as if this time and what it brings up for everyone can ever be captured succinctly.  We live on shifting sands these days.

Coronavirus COVID-19 on April 7, 2020 (keeping in mind that testing for this virus is woefully and shamefully unavailable to most Americans, so these are the really sick people who got a test -- not those "presumed" victims whose symptoms were not quite bad enough or who are asymptomatic carriers):

Global cases: 1,390,380
Global deaths: 79,148

U.S. cases:  380,744
U.S. deaths: 11,907

Washington cases:  8,384
Washington deaths: 372

My County cases:  1,522
My County deaths:  55


I remember the first COVID case in the U.S. being discovered here (literally, HERE -- a couple miles from where I write) in late January.  Then more cases, then more, and more....

We did not take it seriously enough at first; we should have.  Warning bells were sounding loud and clear and but I have to think the usual American Exceptionalism was at play -- "Oh, sure.  But not HERE!"  Yes, here.  On the national level the pandemic was ridiculed, ignored, downplayed, mismanaged at every turn by the unqualified yahoos in the current Administration with the Chief Yahoo being the worst culprit, which continues to this day with his daily press briefings which he plays like a campaign rally, talking about his ratings and undermining the scientists he trots out to stand next to him as if they support his nonsense.  They later (especially epidemiology specialist Dr. Tony Fauci) try to walk back the silly words that came from his mouth.

At any rate throughout February we saw that this thing really was coming to America.  By the first week of March, I personally started to get very nervous.  I went to the Y but felt weird about touching anything, went to yoga, but noted how close together the mats were.  We went car shopping and by then no one was shaking hands on the deal.  We hand sanitized and wiped down the steering wheel and door handles on our new Leaf when we left.

On March 7th I decided to start staying home for the most part.  On the 9th I went to a friend's house for coffee then stopped at the grocery store.  That's been about the extent of my social outings in the past 30 days.  On March 13 the governor closed schools, bars, restaurants, put limits on public gatherings; on the 23rd he issued a Stay at Home order; we are only to go out for "essential services" like groceries and medications.  (NOTE: Essential services is a rather loose term -- certain businesses have been given permission to stay open and at times that feels like a value judgement, but whatever...)

Hub gets our groceries every two weeks, gloved and masked, at the "Senior" shopping times at QFC and Costco.  We sanitize the boxes and packages he brings home.

We go for almost daily walks along the Marina trail, wearing masks.  Other than that we stay home.  At least the weather is improving and we are able to be in our yard/garden.  We planted our veggie seeds yesterday.  Gardening is such an act of faith in the future, isn't it?

What does all this feel like to me?  Well, I'm sort of made for staying home.  I love the blank slate of long unstructured, unscheduled days.  As an introvert, I don't need a lot of people time or novel stimulation.  But I miss human touch.  I miss seeing faces in person; picking up all the cues that communication entails beyond a disembodied head on a screen.  I miss the simple ability to go grab a coffee with friends or have our weekly Family Dinners.  I miss my family enormously; miss hugging my granddaughters, with a longing I can barely tolerate.

I notice my moods swing between a sense of peace and freedom, longing and sadness, panic and claustrophobic desperation.  I notice that I am beyond grateful for Hub and that our "troubles" of last year were resolved before all this hit us.  I am grateful to be in a strong, confident, loving place in my marriage; I have the best "partner in isolation" I could have.  I love our long mornings talking over coffee, our afternoon walks, our evening TV show binges.  It's a sweet and special time -- this forced slowed down togetherness.

I am constantly amazed that people speak of being "bored" at home.  I've never been bored; there is always something to explore, if not external busy-ness, then internal reflection.  Letting our minds, hearts, and bodies rest in "nothingness" is a doorway to inner knowing, inner peace.  I intend to walk through it and see what I find.

I notice that some people reach out to friends and family and some don't. I feel abandoned at times and very sad.  I notice that what I always thought to be true of people, institutions, and norms are not really what is true in many cases.  There is a "paper tiger" aspect of seeing behind the facade of "all is well" (government, health care system, financial stability, friendships, family ties).  This is a period of discernment:  What am I learning?  How will I take that knowledge into the rest of my life, when all of this is behind us?   Our world won't be the same post-pandemic, and neither will I.

At least, that's the view from here...©

LESSONS FROM THE TITANIC

Hub and I talk daily about how we are feeling in this time of Stay Home/Stay Healthy (as our governor has named this "stay at home order" period) and how we are navigating this in our daily activities and emotional lives.  It grounds me to be able to voice my confusion, fear, gratitude, anger, love, concern...all of it.

Yesterday I told him I felt anxiety building again, after several days' hiatus.  Hub pointed out that the novelty of this situation has worn off 3-1/2 weeks into this.  At first it was freeing to let go of social obligations, activities, and tasks.  It was fun to hang out together, with no distractions, in easy, open-ended days, feeling the playfulness and contentment and support of this gift of unstructured time. 

But now, we are still here, still practicing physical distancing for who knows how long.  It's not ending yet.  We have not hit our peak of new cases and more deaths.  As more is learned about this virus, we are discovering asymptomatic carriers can pass it along, and possibly much easier than we imagined -- not just through touches, coughs, and sneezes but also through "aerosols" in the air from merely breathing.  The only way to slow or stop this is to stop interacting with other humans.  So we have to find a way to define our every day lives within this confinement for the long haul.

We notice that since discovering Zoom, our calendars are filling up again.  We are seeing friends and family frequently and even going to meetings.  And because the technology is easy and available with a keystroke, we are even increasing our time with various groups (monthly meet-ups have become twice monthly or even weekly) and while this may be a lovely thing to do, we are suddenly feeling "too busy" again.  We have rushed into familiar territory to fill the void.

And isn't that what we do when we feel off balance?  We seek to find balance with the familiar rhythms of our lives.  For us it's connecting, organizing, and taking action.

But in doing that, I feel I'm shortchanging the opportunity to build new skills, make new habits, exercise new muscles for living that can serve me better now and in the future.  Do I even want to go back to what was so familiar?  Or do I want to create a new way of being in my world?  Maybe by filling my time with these familiar distractions, I'm not diving deeply enough into the grief all of this has caused.  Maybe I'm not giving myself the chance to find meaning in this moment, to find the gifts surely there to discover.

I was watching author/motivational speaker Glennon Doyle's  daily video, "Family Meeting", on FB this morning where she compared this pandemic to the Titanic.  She highlighted many of the characters portrayed in the movie and how they all responded to the impending disaster differently.  She urged us to not look at this as "Is this ship going down?" in a state of panic, but rather, "Who am I on this ship?"  Am I the one shoving people out of the way to save myself (denying, hoarding, endangering others by going out) or am I in the orchestra on the deck, playing on, giving the gift I know how to give no matter what happens, perhaps easing the way for others?  We get to choose.  I think there is a lot to learn about ourselves right now if we are open to the lesson.

At least, that's the view from here...©