Last year I wrote about my trauma surrounding of 9/11 and how I arrived at some level of closure. In the posts, I pondered when “the next one” was going to hit. It has hit. It is COVID-19.
My project of the 2020s is to emotionally and intellectually process the pandemic as it unfolds. I’m older now. I have a better frame of reference for the world. Maybe this time around I can help others process, too.
Sage and I have been self isolating all week. I left the house for the first time yesterday to make copies of keys and mail them to my mom. She is going to rescue my plants. I do not expect to return to Chicago for months.
Leaving the house yesterday was harrowing. My journey took me to no less than three locksmiths, one hardware store, the post office, and a coffee shop to get beans.
I saw two other people with face masks.
San Francisco is ordered to shelter-in-place and here, in Santa Clarita, in the same state, people are continuing on like nothing is wrong.
I got home, washed all my clothing, took a shower, and started playing Skyrim.
Timefall.
The Roaring 20s indeed.
I came to terms with my mortality at a young age. It was 2006. I was 18, commuting to college on the Metra, reading Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. (I think it was book five, but I’m not sure.)
I put the book down and looked out the window: “I am going to die.”
It was a slight whisper of a thought at first. Then it grew. I repeated it in my mind with increased confidence and certainty. After five or six iterations I was at peace with the finality.
Amidst my spiraling depression and anxiety of 2019, I started what I lovingly call apocalypse meditations. These spawned from the work I’ve done with the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. Essentially, apocalypse meditations are both an inventory and an acceptance of where you are in life right now. They take the form of a series of bubbling, mutating pieces of self-inquiry: