COVID-19 stories
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Strange places
“Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.” ~Robert Hunter, of the Grateful Dead It’s amazing what a couple of weeks of illness and isolation will do for you. You realize, for starters, how many things you’ve taken for granted for so long. The ability to taste and smell your food. The company of good friends. The freedom to run errands or go anywhere you please. Last month, Doug and I were hit with unrelenting cases of COVID-19. As I write this, I’m on Day 11, still testing positive with mild symptoms. But there are glimmers of hope.…
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Being vulnerable
“I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are also wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.” ~Brene Brown For a while there, Doug and I were feeling smug (or invincible) because we’d dodged the COVID-19 bullet for so long. We got our vaccines, avoided unnecessary risks, and wore masks when necessary. Our close friends and family members have been careful, too, although many of them caught the damned virus anyway.…
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Getting over ourselves
“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” ~Rick Warren Socrates said that “the unexamined life” isn’t worth living. But self-absorption isn’t such a good thing, either. Self-absorption can be a symptom of living in fear or uncertainty — or spending too much time alone. And there was plenty of that going on during the first year of the pandemic. Thankfully, we finally started rebooting our social lives this year. We’ve had to step outside our pandemic comfort zones, reach out to others, and renew our sense of community. We’ve had to brush up on our conversation skills again. When I stop obsessing over my own concerns,…
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Zoom fatigue, snail mail, and poetry: Notes from my quarantine journal
Snail mail / Cindy La Ferle ____ For more features and additional content, please visit the home page. Social media sharing options are located in the beige box below each day’s post. “What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters to each other. You can’t reread a phone call.” ~Liz Carpenter Friday, May 8 ….Staying connected to friends and family presents a new set of challenges during a pandemic. With the national COVID-19 death toll topping 77,000 and rising daily, social distancing is the best preventative available to us now. But it’s not the easiest.On days when the plaster walls of my home are closing in, it’s tempting to…
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Trapped in an “X-Files” rerun: More notes from my quarantine journal
Cindy La Ferle “What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science. The answers are there. You just have to know where to look.” ~Dana Scully, The X-Files Friday, May 1, 2020 I’m glancing out my home office window as I type this — just in time to spot a neighbor walking a large dog. The dog does its business on my lawn; the neighbor tugs on its leash and walks away without picking up the pile of poop left behind. But I’m too exhausted to pound on the window to rebuke her lack of manners and respect. It’s an apt metaphor for another…
