Post 59 - May 9, 2020
Day 59…
Governor Cuomo tweeted this morning that today was Saturday.
Who knew?
A couple of months ago I would have known.
I am used to having a lot of balls in the air at the same time.
A typical pre-COVID day for me involved several concurrent work projects that often conflicted.
I’d wake up some mornings not having the remotest idea of how I was going to get through everything on my plate.
In the theatre, weekends mean extra work, not less.
We do two shows while everybody else relaxes.
Before this pandemic shut everything down, I KNEW when it was Saturday.
There was a certain amount of anxiety involved in how I was living before.
That anxiety was such a constant that I rarely noticed it.
I focused through it on what needed to be done and, over the course of the day, I usually accomplished most of it.
At some point in the evening, no matter how much was left to do, I’d call a halt and give myself a break for an hour or so before I went to bed.
There were certainly times when getting enough sleep was not possible.
I learned over the years, however, that it was far better to stop with something undone, go to sleep, and pick it up again in the morning than it was to work through the night and miss getting enough sleep.
Over the course of a week, I’d try to make sure to leave time to walk or go to a museum, but while I was doing those things, I was usually letting what I need to do at work percolate underneath.
Those “breaks” were really just the time I needed for my internal webpage to load.
These days, that work-connected anxiety is simply not there.
There is no work.
Instead, I am working on a long series of “someday when I have time” projects.
My father collected coins.
Not in an orderly sort of way, he just collected them.
All of them were just lumped together in a big biscuit tin.
That tin has been sitting in our storage unit for years.
Some of them were things like old silver dollars from the days when they were actually made out of silver.
Those have monetary value.
I’ve ordered some plastic containers and I’m going to keep those and send half of them to my sister.
Some of them are just loose change from some trip he took to Switzerland or to France.
Aside from their face value, coins like that have little or no additional monetary value.
Between those, though, are the occasional coin that I think my Dad just thought was interesting.
Those are the ones that I am enjoying finding.
He was interested in just about everything.
Finding these strange coins and looking up their history was exactly what my Dad would have done.
Going through them and sorting them out has been like spending time with him again (he passed away about eight years ago).
Three people connected with the White House have now tested positive for the coronavirus.
The President’s personal valet, the Vice President’s Press Secretary (who is married to one of the President’s chief advisors), and the personal assistant to the President’s daughter have all tested positive for COVID-19.
The response at the White House has been to rapidly increase testing.
People entering the White House now need to go through temperature portals - machines that check a person’s body temperature as they walk past.
They have immediately started contact tracing on all three staffers to find out who they may have come in contact with and where the virus might have gone.
The White House is determined to keep the President and Vice President safe.
All three of the people infected have come into contact either with the President and Vice President themselves or with other people, who then in turn have come into contact with them.
Thus far the President and Vice President have tested negative, but it is too soon to know for sure. The virus takes a while to replicate to the point that it is detectable.
The White House response has been swift and decisive.
Fuck them.
What they are doing now is what we, in the rest of the country have been clamoring for the government to do for US for MONTHS.
What they are doing now is exactly what every single expert has been saying we need to do on a national level to battle this virus.
We should have started doing all of this in JANUARY when we were first alerted to this virus’s existence.
The White House thought that they were invulnerable.
The White House thought that this virus would spread among the greater “them” and not touch anyone “important” In Washington.
Will this be a wake-up call for the White House, or will they just continue to deny that this is anything but an economic problem with terrible optics.
If we are going to successfully reopen the nation’s economy, we are going to need to figure out how to do with EVERYBODY in the country what the White House is currently just STARTING to do with just its’ own staffers.
I suppose that there should be some cold comfort in the fact that they are starting to suffer in the same way that the rest of us have been, but really all I can feel is disgust.
If this time without work has taught me anything, it is that I am not ready to retire.
When we go back to work, whenever that may be, and I am fairly certain that it really won’t be for a while yet, I will be ready.
Heck, I’m ready now.
When we do go back, there are changes, I think, that I will make in how I work and what I agree to take on, but, really, I’m a juggler.
I like being busy with multiple projects that mean something to me.
I like working with different groups of people to figure out how to solve problems.
More than anything, I like watching 1500 people crammed together in a room being moved by an experience that I helped create.
Apparently, today is Saturday.
Matinee day.
Someday, I hope that that means I have to set the alarm so that I can get to a morning meeting before the matinee and then, afterwards, meet somebody for a working meal for another show before the evening show and then hang out with friends afterwards and have a drink.
Someday.
That’s not what it means today.
On this particular Saturday, instead of two shows and a meeting, I have several huge piles of coins that need sorting.
I am going to spend this particular Saturday with my Dad.