Author: wvfurandroot

COVID-19: Day 17: New Normal

/ wvfurandroot / Leave a comment

I put myself on a schedule in order to protect my sanity.  Up at 6 am, work by 8 am,, lunch at noon, quit working at 4:30.  Bedtime at 10.  (This latter is problematic, but it’s a goal.  So is sleeping all night.)

It’s working.  I’m centered.  I got stuff accomplished today.  And now I’m entering the entertainment time of the day.  I’m watching crime dramas on one of the few channels my antenna can receive, sipping a glass of wine, and playing with the dogs.  I’ll clean the kitchen here in a minute.

I did leave the house today.  If I’m to work at home, I will need paper:  nary a sheet in the house.  So, off I went.  I was surprised to be greeted on the interstate with a sign telling me I was supposed to be at home.  Essential Travel Only!

The office was dark and rather eerie.  It was a very atypical Monday morning.  I watered the plants and grabbed a ream of paper.  Home I went.  The round trip took slightly over an hour.

But there were people out.  Not as many as normal, but a fair number.   That may change a little.  They closed the park today and they’re going to start ticketing/citing folks who don’t comply with the stay-at-home order.

An aside:  Speaking of which, the Virginia governor told his people they to stay at home until June 10th.  JUNE 10th.  He’s a pediatrician by training.  He probably understands this stuff better than most.

All-in-all, today was uneventful.  I’m not anxious or stressed and I’m settling into a routine.  Let’s hope this continues.  We all gotta do what gets us through the night.   I’m sorry this is so boring, but I’m grateful for an uneventful day.  They’ve been few lately.

 

COVID-19: Day 16: John Prine – We are living in the future.

/ wvfurandroot / 2 Comments

John Prine is frail and was intubated yesterday with symptoms of COVID-19.  He has some other health issues.  This is not good news.  Not at all.

I was introduced to John by Mark Blain and his wife, Donnie.  Both of them are gone now.  We were standing around on a camping trip talking about music and somebody mentioned John Prine.  I said I wasn’t familiar.

Well.

Mark looked at me as if I were an alien and began reciting the lyrics to this song.  Everyone there joined in.  My first order of business after the camping trip was to acquaint myself with John Prine.  My first album was Storm Windows.  It’s a great one.

Oh, he’s an American original and a treasure.  My heart hurts.  This is so not good.

COVID-19: Day 15

/ wvfurandroot / Leave a comment

In the days to come, I fully expect to lose my internet connection. It happens now and again, and Lord knows it’s a stressed system right now.   I will, probably, at that time be a tad difficult to live with.   Fortunately, I live alone.

Just think about it for a bit.  How would you cope with being quarantined at home, without Facebook, Netflix, online games, email, Zoom, etc?  We are staying in touch with one another while keeping our distance.  Imagine how lonely it would be without this technology.  The same technology we often complain about as making us less human.  I, for one, am a fan and have always been since I first played around with a 1200 baud modem.

My sleep has been disturbed for some time now, but it’s gotten worse in the past few weeks.  I’m waking every two to three hours and getting up.   So, at 3 a.m., I found an email from an online magazine I had submitted a short story to.  It’s the best rejection I’ve ever received.  My head is swollen and the hit of confidence it gave me cannot be underestimated.  I have been on a high all day long.  Here’s a snippet:

It’s clear from the opening quote and the following paragraph that you have taken a great deal of time to master your craft.  You read like you’ve been doing this for decades.  Your writing is simple, yet interesting, visual, and compelling.  In short, it’s exactly the writing style we love.

Yes, that’s from a rejection!  Ain’t it sweet!

So, at 3 a.m., I got a hit of communication via a technology that I adopted early during a lonely hour that made my day — maybe my month  Every writer wants to “master your craft.”  Woo Hoo.  See?  I’m still giddy

An aside:  if you want to read the rejected story.  It’s here.  I had actually withdrawn the piece from the Rejection People because someone else accepted it, but apparently, the email writer didn’t get that email.  The people who accepted it?  Their email was two sentences — essentially thank you and we’re going to run it.

I adopted the internet as my playground in 1989.  I had a job without much to do and a USENET connection.  This was before sound, color, video or even images save for the occasional ASCII drawing.  USENET was a playground.  There was a discussion group for anything and everything a person could possibly be interested in.  I hung out in the parenting, cooking, Tom Robbins and gardening groups.  This was back when there were so few people on the internet that you recognized email addresses (everyone’s identifier) and names.  “Oh, yeah!  That’s Mike from rec.gardening!  Nice guy.  Grows roses.”

The internet has been so good to me.  You won’t hear me badmouth it or social media.  I think it’s what you make it.  Facebook and writing are my two hobbies.  I’m good at them.  I plan on enjoying them especially during this COVID-19 shelter-in-place.

So, drop me a line,  Keep in touch, y’all.