How are you feeling?

People keep asking me that. At work, management keeps asking me what’s on my mind. The first time they ask, I tell them ‘the pandemic’. But they keep asking, because they don’t want to think about it, they don’t want to talk about it, they don’t believe it’s all that’s on my mind.

& it’s not the entirety of what I’m thinking about. But it’s at most one step removed from what I’m thinking about.

The strangest thing about how I feel is how normal it feels to be home all day, every day. I quit my last job because they refused to honor their agreement to let me work from home and took my current job because it’s entirely remote. I’m well suited to the reclusive shut-in lifestyle currently en vogue for people who want to survive the ongoing pandemic.

So I feel okay about me. But I worry about everything else including most people.

The people who can’t stay home, because their job won’t let them. The people who can stay home but wish they couldn’t, because their spouse hurts them. The people who are dying because not enough people know enough science.

How are you feeling?

My co-workers have started opening video conferences with anecdotes of the struggles of having their kids with them all day, of running out of pet food, of having to invent a meal out of odds and ends they were able to scrounge from the pantry.

I’m feeling like this is just the beginning.

That’s how I’m feeling.