Featured Entries

I live in a senior community that was in lockdown for quite some time. Because all we had was each other, I've become quite close to some of the people here. That's been quite wonderful.

Unfortunately, though, I have lost contact with many many people I knew outside of this community. It makes me sad but I am hoping to reconnect in the future. I don't like long phone conversations but I love face-to-face meetings where you get the whole person, body language and all. Looking forward to that!

I'm one of the very few people in my office-environment workplace who still wears a mask. I've known a few people to have COVID recently, like my really-suffering very-pregnant friend, so the risks are on my mind.

I can't deny that my mask is also a protest. Everyone's all, "ohh, it's so nice to see faces, it's so good to not be working from home, I'm so glad we don't have to wear those darn masks anymore." I disagree with all of that. I can't say that at work, but I can wear my black KN95 in a conference room crowded with fifteen bare faces, like a big ole sign that secretly says, "I hate this and I'm scared for my pregnant friend and I object!!!!!"

Certainly our family Easter celebration was different than usual. No big communal gathering around the table. We still found creative and safe ways to get together but certainly wasn’t our normal Easter dinner.I wonder when/if we’ll ever celebrate all events in our usual ways? 😢

I feel the pandemic has prevented me from living up to my potential professionally because I made the decision to stay home with my children from March 2020 through present times. They needed support for remote learning and mental health challenges and I needed to be here for them. As a result, I have been out of my career for 2 years now. I left a job I loved and it is no longer available to me. Therefore, I am now floundering as I contemplate rejoining the workforce in person. I cannot find a similar position near me and may take a position for a considerable pay cut to be able to have the flexibility and hours that permit me to take care of my family's needs and have work/life balance. It's hard. I pray for guidance and grace.

Yet another of my friends, vaccinated and boosted, has come down with Covid. And at the same time, more and more places are doing away with mask mandates. The two grocery stores where we shop are now both masks-optional, although most customers and staff still wear them. I’m not yet feeling comfortable at unmasked indoor locations, or even outdoors in situations where people are unmasked and social distancing isn’t possible. My partner and I did go to a play and a poetry reading this past week, but both indoor events were at venues that required attendees to show proof of vaccination and remain masked throughout the event. I have been encouraged to read that a good mask can offer a fair amount of protection even if others around are unmasked, and I expect that my partner and I will continue to wear masks for some time to come.

The under 5s still can't be vaccinated. Treatments and preventatives for the vulnerable are still scarce and rationed. SARS2 is still not seasonal. The vaccine mitigates, but does not prevent, Long COVID; an effective preventative for that is unlikely any time soon. My insured self can probably access a PCR test in my county, but I don't know if an uninsured person can. Case counts are now unreliable, and hospitalization counts are a lagging indicator. Sewage is not being monitored in my area.

It's not so much that I'm fighting the temptation to throw all caution to the wind and take back the small pleasures I enjoyed away from home. I would like to, yes, but all sense tells me to wait until I know certain conditions are met. Until that happens, what is, is. Try not to get SARS2. Try not to be in a position to give it to someone else. This is the way. What makes me struggle right now is all the messaging that tells me there's something wrong with me doing this.

The birds start singing about an hour before sunrise, and don't stop until after dark. It's baby rabbit and squirrel season. The trees have leaves, now. Violets have joined the dandelions on the ground, and the crabapple, plum, and redbud are gorgeous. My new wild iris and onion are awake, as are goldenrod, ironweed, and aster. Sunflowers will soon join them.>s The mint I bought to celebrate my second booster is bushing up nicely in its new pot, and soon I'll have fresh mint for my tea and ayran. I'll start my tomatoes and basil on May Eve.

Week of April 18-23, 2022

Personally I am back to feeling like I am in the middle of a dense fog. Sometimes the fog clears a bit

step at a time. To me, this is my recent experience with the coronavirus that lingers in our atmosphere,

outdoors and indoors, masks or no masks.

The most recent information is more confusing than ever. Masks may not be as effective as in the earlier

days of Covid. Unless one is immune compromised. Now ventilation, clean air, filtered air and fresh

air is being proclaimed as far more important. And of course the vaccinations, boosters and anti viral

medications which are or are not available.

So I open windows, turn on my air cleaner and fans. I also wear a mask if I am outside or if someone comes

to my apartment. I am vaxed and boosted and take Vitamin D3 to help my immunity. Sometimes I

of being cautious. We do not have to think twice about whether to mask today and not tomorrow.

I feel a sense of solidarity with other people who, like me, are wearing KN95 or N95 masks is places where masks are optional. I beam a silent thank you to them for helping to keep me healthy.

strong>Week of April 18-22, 2022

I am not flourishing! I am disturbed about the Russian hammer threat to use nuclear armaments. I am

aghast about the war in the Ukraine…. the death, the destruction that one nation can inflict upon

another. How can one man hold such power ….

We already have had more deaths globally since the pandemic began. My mind boggles over the thought that the Ukraine and each of its citizens must also fight a terrible battle to save their homeland. It is

atrocious and horrific. Too many lives lost….

I am outraged that it is taken so long for the Justice Department to Indict former a president Trump

or for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office not to pursue criminal charges.

Can nothing be done?

If antiviral Covid drugs can save lives, why can’t people get access to them? Why do we have such a

dysfunctional health system in this country? Why has our pandemic response been so lethargic?

Why are so many physicians even aware of these life saving antivirals? I am disheartened…

Our entire world has been affected by the pandemic. There were no racial or economic or political

line that the virus did not cross. Why is it that we still have egregious disparity among races, suspicion

and even fear? Why is there such a wide gap between those who suffer in poverty and those who

prosper and benefited in the stock market these past years? Why does the abyss between our political

parties seem to widen to such a point that we could almost be living in two seperate countries, not one

nation indivisible? I am flummoxed and furious…

No I am not flourishing. As long as our world does not flourish, how can we as individuals flourish?

It is 2 years into the pandemic and I caught covid. People are walking around without masks pretending it is over. I am still angry and now am down because I have been isolated and unable to be with my family on Easter. Add to that anxiety because my 2 grandchildren whom I care for each day also caught covid along with my daughter and son in law. I have been very worried about my family.

I had a high fever and deep cough. My doctor said I probably would pull through ok because I am vaxed and boosted. But, he offered an antibody infusion and I took it. I felt better almost immediately, just wish my whole family could have gotten some help. Thank heavens everybody seems to be on the mend now.

Well we are masked in classes & buildings ... again.

There is a big drop-off in attendance in my UG class. They are just exhausted I think and Putin's war on Ukraine makes it even harder to be hopeful.

I retire the end of May - this is not the way I wanted it to be re teaching. I love teaching but the COVID years have been overwhelmingly sad. We're all just trying to do the best we can.

I kept this journal for most of 2020-2021, and lost heart in it in May 2021 when my uncle died in a car accident. Since then I've added a couple of updates I felt were significant, such as international travel in the summer of 2021, and a live school residency that I did in March 2022, despite covid.

Part of the reason I've stopped keeping this journal is because I don't actually think anyone publicly gives a damn. It's just more shouting into the babel of the internet. I keep a written journal that closely details everything that's happened to me, my friends & family, and the world. That matters more to me than this record. I'm glad other people are keeping it.

Now I have covid, for the first time since the pandemic began. I am triple-vaccinated and I am not at risk. I have been volunteering at local vaccination centres for a year. My symptoms began on the very day that all regulations were lifted here in Scotland.

You ask how the pandemic has affected my life in the past week? Whatever, folks. I have covid. That's how.

The pandemic affects my life EVERY DAY. Not just this week. EVERY DAY from now till I die. I don't need to reiterate that here every week.

bye for now

I'm absolutely not flourishing, but I am working toward that exact idea.

I never really thought about the word flourish until that meme of the guy in the waterfall - unbothered, in my lane, focused. It spoke to me. So, oddly, a meme has spurred me to think about what I need to move forward and be happy.

I don't really think I was flourishing before covid, but a global pandemic does tend to make some people think about how short life is, even under the best circumstances, and how we often can have the power to change things in our lives to make them better. I might just be consciously living a little more for myself these days.

And while I am no where near flourishing right now, I have plans

Esta Semana Santa se reactivaron todas las actividades y tradiciones propias de mi país, luego de dos años que estuvieron suspendidas por la pandemia de COVID-19. En la foto se puede observar una alfombra de aserrín que elaboraron mis vecinos por el paso de la procesión de Cristo Rey.

Se reactivaron porque se exigió que todos los cargadores y personas vinculadas a las hermandades que organizan y realizan las procesiones tuvieran el esquema completo de vacunación. De hecho, se dio previamente una campaña de vacunación en cada una de las iglesias con imágenes de devoción de las personas católicas.

Cada hermandad puso en práctica protocolos de prevención del COVID-19 que incluían alcohol en gel para todos antes de cargar, toallas húmedas desinfectantes y el uso de mascarilla todo el tiempo.

Me pareció, además, que mucha gente evitó ir a los cortejos procesionales si eran personas vulnerables. Realmente no hubo aglomeraciones de la magnitud que solían ser antes de la pandemia. Creo que muchas personas siguen cuidándose y tratan de no salir de sus casas a eventos como estos, si no es estrictamente necesario.

💙💛💙UKRAINE💙💛💙

CoVid continues to feel like this thorn on a rose bush… ever present danger despite the promise of beauty. Can’t let your guard down or you may get pricked. The rain drops emphasize a longing for sunshine, light and a carefree spirit which is not the same as CoVid fatigue. I think we’re beyond that now…

I like the phrase, “pandemic OK.” Its how I’ve felt for most of the duration. It means, to me, that personally I’m OK, but it’s in the context of the pandemic. It means, I never lost my job, in fact I got to work from home (which I love), but I was also isolated from everyone for a really long time. No one has escaped the pandemic, but some of us have certainly fared better than others.

It has made people think I am the cause of my baby not knowing who certain people are. Before the pandemic, she was just born and was always around her family then when it struck,we had to social distance for some time. She grew up in that period and doesn't really know them so I kind of get blamed for it, which isn't fair to me at all. We all know what happened.

So disappointed that the mask mandates have been overturned. Makes it very hard for me to be in many public places - especially grocery stores. And having to travel using public transportation, which I had begun doing after the first omicron wave had passed. Now it doesn’t feel safe.

I haven't really noticed any change.

At the beginning of the pandemic I tried to set up various plans so that our neighbours could help one another (for example offering to shop for people) but no one was really interested.

My friends and I talk about this topic often. We've seen changes in our friends and family that continue even now. We've seen big changes in the way we socialize within our neighborhood. Many of us continue to have a sense of lethargy about socializing. In fact, during this Easter weekend, many of our neighbors haven't planned any get togethers. It's more than just caution now. There seems to be this lack of interest and motivation to plan any social events. I think our bonds have grown weaker as we continue to retreat into our own world. I believe it's going to take a more concerted effort to rebuild those bonds. I've always loved to travel, but just can't seem to get motivated to plan anything.

My experiences in the past week were full of COVID test...The situation was really terrifying , cuz there were increasing more than 10 postive cases every day in my city. What made me worrying was that whether I can come back home on the next holiday-larbor day.

All in all, the feeling in the past week was not good, I was almost in low spirit every day.

But I need to cheer meyself up, disperse the sleepiness and focus on online courses.