Tag: pandemic

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a reminder that freedom isn’t free

In the last two years, we’ve heard a lot of people yelling about their freedom and comparing masks and vaccines to nazi Germany. This week, we have had a glaring example of how absurd that actually is.

While the US and Canada are mired under protests about mandates designed to protect the public health, Ukrainians have had to step up to fight for their actual freedom…the freedom to live under their democratically elected government. They have been forced to flee or take up arms against a country so much larger than their own who seems intent on annihilating them.

I see people in the US declaring that this is why we need AK rifles to be available to everyone, completely missing the fact that a) we aren’t at war and b) we are not imminently under the threat of invasion. The Ukrainian government armed its people to defend themselves against Russia.

Automatic weapons have no place outside of war. They have no purpose other than to kill.

We are watching a nation stand up and fight back under nearly hopeless odds. The ingenuity and strength of the Ukrainian people are an inspiration. And still, here at home, we have people whining that being told to put a piece of cloth over their face to protect others is a violation of their “freedom”…and many of them are the same people who are saying that they would defend their neighbors with their guns if the need arose.

And they can not see the irony there.

Freedom isn’t free. It is predicated on a number of principles, including the idea that we must protect our citizens, even from ourselves, especially in a time of crisis.

I hear that the Ukrainians are open to volunteer militias coming to aid them. Maybe some of our right-wing militias should head over, prove they’re actually willing to do the work of defending the freedom that they keep declaring. But, if you’re going, make sure you’re not carrying a deadly virus with you so you don’t kill those you are there to defend.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep my mask on in public to protect those here at home from the same.

I hope your Sunday is filled with kindness and joy, dearest Readers, and that peace comes sooner, rather than later.

Photo by Eugene on Unsplash

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bring on the hugs

If you have been reading my blog for any amount of time, you’ll know that I’m an agoraphobe. I was even BEFORE this pandemic. I’m most comfortable and happy within my own home, and in spaces that I am intimately familiar with (family homes, friends places, etc). In particular, I need to control the number of people in any given space.

This makes this whole idea of re-entering “normal” rather problematic for me. This year and a half being encouraged to stay home to stay safe has escalated certain anxieties for me. The rise of this Delta variant isn’t helping.

In a week, I’m getting on a plane for the first time in close to two years and I’m flying to Austin, Texas to spend time with some friends.

There’s a lot to be excited about. There’s also a lot to be worried about.

I know the people I’ll be with are vaccinated. I know a good chunk of our time we will be in well ventilated or open areas. But there’s the BART to the airport, the airport, the plane, the other airport, transportation to the hotel, the hotel…etc…

I’m trying to balance that against getting to see friends, getting to meet up with coworkers and live music for the first time in a lifetime.

I have Xanax on hand. I have presents to deliver. And I can not wait for the music.

And hugs. I can’t believe how much I miss hugs.

Photo by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash

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do we still need pride in 2021

In any “normal” year, I would already be hard at work on the site of the SF Pride celebration, working with my team to deploy donation buckets out to the groups that man our gates to collect money from Pride goers.

That money goes into helping to keep Pride running, as well as giving grants to the non-profit organizations who send us their volunteers to do the job. It’s a job I’ve been doing in one capacity or another for the last…I don’t know anymore? Fifteen years?

You might think that it’s an odd job choice for someone with agoraphobia, and you’d be correct. It is. However, I learned early on in my battle against the irrational fear that having a job to do, having people who count on me to do that job, goes a long way in pushing the fear back.

When I first started working Pride with the Pagan Alliance all those years ago, I started off volunteering to supervise PA volunteers, but the Pride Donations department was just starting up a program to have coordinators who worked behind the scenes and I tossed my hat into the ring. Since then, I’ve been part of the team that did the work.

It provides me with a safe space when the crowds are overwhelming, and a task that needs doing to allow me the push I need to conquer the fear…or at least keep it at bay. It helps that it also includes a golf cart for part of the day, which affords me a little bubble of space around me.

All of that said, this is our second year without the event due to this damn pandemic. It just isn’t safe to cram that many people into that space, even now…even here in California where our numbers are way down.

I’ve heard a lot lately about why we still need Pride. We need Pride so that our community knows that we have their back. We need Pride because our transgender siblings are still being murdered at an alarming rate. We need Pride because our people are still facing discrimination in jobs, housing and even just in shopping. We need Pride because we need to lift each other up and help each other along.

In recent years we’ve started to realize just how many LGBTQA+ folks exist in this world, and it’s a lot more than we used to believe. I have a large number of non-binary and ace friends and family that ten years ago would not have felt safe to be who they are in the open…or even realized that there was a name for what they were feeling. I have transgender friends and family that have “come out” in the last five years, who are finally starting to feel that there is a place in this world where they don’t have to pretend.

So when will it be enough to not need a big gay celebration and parade? Never. It will never be “enough”. We should always celebrate who we are.

May this Pride weekend be filled with love and appreciation for who you are, Reader. May you feel safe to live your truth out and proud. May you make space for others to do the same. I love you all!

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

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where hope grows

I grew up in Upstate New York, where the very first signs that spring was on the horizon were the daffodils that poked intrepid little heads up through the snows that wouldn’t yet melt for a few weeks (or more). For the longest time, daffodils were my favorite flowers because of that, and they still hold a special place in my heart.

When you’re still in the depths of the cold hard embrace of an Upstate New York winter, after the fun of snow has become the drudgery of slush that has frozen over and cold toes that don’t seem to ever get warm, that first little hope of spring is a most welcome thing

It seems we are facing much the same feeling with this pandemic right now. We are all so done with sitting at our windows, looking out on a world that is filled with hidden dangers, and we just want to be able to go to the movies, and out for coffee with friends.

Vaccines offer us that first hint of hope that our year-long winter of disease is coming to a close, but just like those first daffodils herald a spring that may still be a long ways off, so too does the promise of immunity come with a caveat. Many a blizzard has buried those first daffodils, reprimanding them for sticking their heads up too soon. Returning to our normal lives too soon will bring with it another blizzard of Covid-19 to swat us down and set back our recovery.

Hope grows where vaccines are planted, but immunity takes some time to blossom. So, as we turn the wheel of the year toward Imbolc, let us hope, but remain vigilant.

Happy February, Readers! May it be filled with love and kindness.

Photo by Charles Tyler on Unsplash

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black lives matter. period.

There seems to be a sense of expectation hanging in the air, at least here for me. Some of that is the fact that after months of unemployment, I will be starting not one new job on Monday, but two! I pretty much won’t have a life here for a while, but neither of them pay what I’m accustomed to and combined they might just let me climb up out of the hole I find myself in financially.

Add to that confirmation that an event I had been looking forward to in August is still happening (at least at this moment…who knows what the future will bring…but it IS in Texas, so…yeah, no idea how that will affect things), and I am cautiously hopeful.

With so much wrong in this country right now, with death and dismay all around us, it feels good to have something to look forward to. But, we have to remember, this pandemic isn’t gone. And, we are sure to see spikes in the numbers going forward, with so many bodies out there protesting, with businesses opening, with so many people just acting as if now that we have a new threat, the old one is gone.

People are still dying of this virus. Which in no way means that I do not support the protests or my black brothers and sisters. I totally understand their choices, because if your choice is a slow, agonizing death or a fight to prevent senseless, violent death? I’d choose the latter every time.

I wish I had what it took to be out there with them, but I’ll be honest, between my agoraphobia and my immuno-compromised system, I break out in a cold sweat just looking at the pictures on my TV.

My new jobs will help me stay home too, since they’re both work from home. It means a lot of stuff I might normally be doing gets put on hold, such as writing. Today and tomorrow might actually be the last few days I have to get words out of my head and down on paper for the next few months.

So I should probably get on that…and make more coffee! Remember, Black Lives Matter. Kindness Matters. Love Matters.

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it’s the end of the world as we know it

Any normal June 1st would see me waist deep in preparation for San Francisco’s Pride Festival and Parade, which usually happens near the end of June. I’d be planning training sessions for my volunteer groups and their supervisors. I’d be fielding phone calls from first time volunteers over the phone, holding skype calls to help someone get up to speed. I’d be pouring over spreadsheets, making sure each entry gate had enough people manning the donation buckets.

This year, in a time of a pandemic, we had already canceled the parade and festival before the current escalation of the end of the world, but I can only imagine that if we hadn’t, we’d be seriously considering it now.

Why? Well, because drunk, stupid people are hard enough to contain when they don’t have an instigator driving them to bad behavior. Because we’ve seen so many clashes of community and police (though I have never personally seen police acting inappropriately at the festival itself, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen) and because right now emotions are very high and the world seems to be standing at the tipping edge of something huge.

SF Pride sometimes has 1 million people over the course of the weekend. Those people come in every ethnicity, every nationality, every color, every orientation and every gender. Outside the gates there are protesters trying to tell us our “lifestyle” is wrong, or sometimes other messages that often get lost in the clamor of that many people. There are criminals looking to score drugs or to bloody someone for fun. There have been shootings and stabbings. There have been gay bashings.

Lay that on top of the racial tensions and the fear and the anger, and you’d have a recipe for one giant powder keg, just waiting for a spark to set it alight.

So here I sit at the beginning of Pride month, a little numb and staring into the heart of a country that no longer feels like home, and I hide in my house, watching the chaos around me unfold. My agoraphobia makes it nearly impossible to join a peaceful protest. We will see a spike in virus numbers. This might devolve into a civil war, or at least that’s the way it feels.

Maybe it is the end of the world as we know it. I’m not convinced that is a bad thing. It’s up to us, every individual to decide how we rise from the ashes.

Please stay safe out there, Readers. Support your brothers and sisters as they cry out in rage for change, for equality, for an end to the violence of poverty, discrimination and straight out hate.

None of us are equal until we are all equal.

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writer & editor at large

As we start a new week, I find myself very worried about money, but still optimistic overall. I have a little bit of work, with a vague promise of more on the horizon.  I haven’t been paid yet for  my first week, just submitted my hours for the second week, and we embark on the third.

The other job I was supposed to start is on hold, due to the fact that they can not complete the background check, because the courts in San Francisco are not open.  So that means I have space for more editing or writing work, if you happen to know of any work that needs doing.

I’m on Upwork, but will work with folks outside of that as well.

So other than that bit of the work I’m doing for one client, I’ve been working on The Blood Witch.  I hope to have this final edit done by the weekend.  Which is when the work to sell the book begins.  Which starts, as most things do, with research.  Then query letters, which will  hopefully lead to an agent, who can help with that whole selling part.

As I do, I’m also watching a lot of documentaries, particularly true crime documentaries.  I found a motherlode of new-to-me tv shows and movies on Hulu.

I hope you and your families are staying safe and not going a little stir crazy.  Be smart, as we start opening things back up.  This virus has not yet done its worst, and I fear that loosening restrictions too quickly will send a wrong message to too many people, opening us up for a strong resurgence of victims.  Mask up. Wash your hands.  Stay home if you can, and don’t let people closer than 6 feet.  You never know whose life you might be saving.  It could be your own.

I love you, Readers!  Happy Monday!

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the veil is thin

There are two times of the year when the veil that separates this plane from the next grows thin, making communication with the dead easier, among other things.  At Samhain we often invite our dead to sup with us, preparing their favorite foods and drink and setting them out on our tables.  Our rituals tend toward the somber at Samhain.

But at Beltane, opposite Samhain on the Wheel of the Year, our rituals are filled with rejoicing, celebrating the awakening of the earth, the growth all around us, and yes, the fertility that will see us through another long winter.

It is a good time to remind us that life will find a way.  Even as the society we built cracks under the strain of this pandemic and all that accompanies it, the earth puts forth sprouts and leaves and flowers.  In the animal kingdom, babies are born, ensuring that their species will continue.  All around us are the signs that if we just hold on through this “winter” life will begin anew.

And maybe, just maybe, we can learn from Mother Earth’s example, and create something new.

We don’t usually stress communicating with the dead at Beltane, but with so many of us channeling life skills that helped our ancestors survive, maybe it’s time we did.  Reach out to great-grandma to get her secrets to a successful sourdough starter (I can not get mine to do what it’s supposed to).  Call out to your great-great grandpa for advice on planting corn or tomatoes or what have you. Invite them to supper or pour out a cup.

Then go stick your hands in some dirt, grow something. You might be surprised at the joy it can give you.

Happy Beltane, Readers, may it bring you blessings and joy.

Cover Photo by Arno Smit on Unsplash

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it’s okay…to not be okay

Earlier this week, I was feeling great about the possibilities of getting a job offer today.  Late yesterday I got an email saying that, like the last three jobs I felt sure I was going to get, the job has gone on hold while the company re-evaluates what they genuinely need.

To some degree, I’m used to it, as a technical writer. But, I have to admit that this time, it’s hitting me pretty hard.  The job boards have the same ten jobs or so that they’ve had for a month.  Everyone is re-evaluating.  Jobs are getting really scarce.

Earlier this week I was feeling pretty optimistic and I was happy to reach out to my extroverted friends, and read poetry on Facebook and help people get through this.  Today I’m feeling fairly hopeless.  Today I’m afraid.

Logically, I know these things come in waves, but I also know that we haven’t seen the worst of this.

I need to pay bills.  I need to pay rent.  But at the same time, I’m afraid to spend anything because I’m so unsure of when there will be more money.  If I spend nothing of my last unemployment check, or of the next two unemployment checks, I will just make my rent in May.

On Tuesday, I have an interview at Target to work overnights stocking shelves because it pays slightly better than unemployment, yet at the same time, I don’t want to take the job from someone who might need it more than I do.

I know we’re all in the same boat.  We’re all doing our best to keep that boat afloat in an ocean of uncertainty and fear.  And I know that I’ll find my optimism again, but for today it’s okay to not be okay.

I’m going to finish up this coffee and wait for the recruiter to call me for a remote tech writer job I heard about late yesterday.  Maybe this is the one?

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poetry for quarantined souls

Earlier this week, I pulled a few of my poems out to share with the world via a Facebook live video.  I was crazy nervous, but in times like this it falls to the artistic people to keep the hopes of the people up, so I bit the bullet and did it.

I thought that maybe, if you don’t follow me over there, you might like to see it to, so here it is.  I hope to do another one later in the week.  I might even consider a reading from one of my novels, or possibly a work in progress.

(Cover Photo by Ksenia Makagonova on Unsplash)