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shadowkatSometimes the days seem to blend into each other. I've realized that how I deal with anxiety and uncertainty is keeping track of what I can control, and keeping to a routine, habit, which sets up a type of normalcy, and seeking comfort in facts.
Also John Scalzi and others suggest hobbies...that they help. I have several. Never had troubles finding ways to entertain myself. I tell myself stories and write them down. I take photographs and play with them via photoshop, then share them on social media to thrill you all. I write blogs on my journal. I review television shows and books. I take long walks around a cemetery. I read. I write creatively. I draw - I'm going to do a comic book figure drawing class through ComicCon at Home - that's free next week, I think. I also cook for myself. Meditate. Do yoga, and various stretching and strength exercises such as walls squats and wall pushups. Hobbies can be anything really, and constantly changing. The trick is to do something I enjoy, not something the world thinks I will enjoy (like gardening? Bleach. Or knitting? Bleach.) LOL!
I've noticed that DW automatically checks "disable auto-formatting" which requires me to put HTML breaks. So I have to uncheck it. If you discover formatting issues with your posts? Make sure that "Disable Auto Formatting" is unchecked in HTML mode.
The flowers in the pic above are from Friday's walk, before the heat wave hit.
NY is making me crazy on the Census bit - I keep second-guessing whether I did it. (I did, I did it online way back in March. Honestly, I wish they sent me an email instead of just said - "Thank you for completing".)
New York vs. The Coronavirus
New York's economy has been hit hard. The shutdown of the entertainment and tourist industry in NY has killed millions of jobs. To give you an idea? Broadway and the theater district can't re-open, and all the people employed by it aren't salaried - they are paid per show. Same deal with the film and television industry - which employs over 76,000 people. Add to that all the hospitality industry, restaurants, bars, department stores, retail establishments, museums...all of which employ millions of people. I haven't even included the concerts, sporting events, and vendors.
We are opening to Phase 4 - but only Low-Risk Outdoor Activities - like Zoos, Botantical Gardens, and Parks can open. Also, sporting events can happen without fans - the Mets Season Opener is happening on Friday - but with no fans in attendance. (I may check one out just to see what it looks like although there's a lot of other distractions for Friday - like Comic Con. I think Star Trek Universe panel is on Friday. Oh, that's another weird change - all the big entertainment/fan conventions are all virtual.
Television and film productions can re-open - if they are outdoors only.
NY is tracking new cases - there were 502 today, but hospitalizations are at their lowest point since March, and lowest amount on deaths - with a .8% infection rate in NYC.
Another weird thing they've figured out is that "Tele Health" works. Virtual medicine is taking off. One young woman who suffered a brain aneurysm, had it diagnosed and got surgery virtually.
And of course there is a heat wave. I stayed in today because of it - yeah, we're wimps. It's only 88 degrees out - but it is 88 degrees with 80-90% humidity. Feels like walking through a sauna, after a bit, I feel dizzy and want to sit. Also I'm soaked through with sweat.
After a somewhat annoying church service via Zoom, I went back to binge-watching Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix. Prior to the annoying church service, I'd been enjoying listening to James Marsters read Jim Butcher's "Peace Talks". (Marsters recently stated that he had no idea why Butcher had selected him. I resisted the urge to respond to his tweet - with "Butcher selected you because he wanted to grab the attention of the Buffy fandom. He knew you were popular with that fandom, and they were the nitch audience for his books. He was right - I discovered the Dresden Files through the audio books. I never listen to audio books. Friends sent them to me, I got hooked and bought the books myself in paperback and hard back. Smart move." Note - if you want to sell your book, find a television actor with a cult following and fandom, and get them to read it for you. If the actor is a talented voice actor? All the better. Stephen Fry got a lot of folks to read Good Omens, for example. ) I'm enjoying "Peace Talks" - I even cried during one scene. (I'm blaming hormones.)
The church service annoyed me - because a really old white liberal guy felt the need to do a sermon about how Unitarians helped abolish slavery and weren't responsible for aiding and abetting it (yeah right, revision history to make yourself feel better). I thought, first, not entirely true. Some Unitarians fought against slavery, some aided and abetted it. And this feels a lot like cultural appropriation to me, and more than a tad self-righteous and self-congratulatory at the expense of someone else. (In other words, as my pal Casey would put it - "white liberal guilt" in action.) In short the sermon set my teeth on edge, and I began surfing the internet during it. The layperson sermons aren't that good. I've only seen two that I liked, the one's focusing on Black Lives Matter or Slavery were undercut by the fact that they were liberal white people talking about the situation through their lens. And I'm not sure that is a good idea right now. Kind of like an American Christian who never left the US discussing how they were affected by the Holocaust. Uhm, no. Sorry. You weren't that affected. I'm not saying you don't have a right to talk about it, but getting on a soap box or bully pulpit or doing a sermon? Uhm, no.
AVATAR: The Last Airbender was a welcome antidote to it. I'm loving this cartoon. Folks were right - it gets better as you go. You just kind of have to wade through a few lackluster episodes. This alas is true of most excellent television shows - from Buffy to The Wire. Actually I can't think of any that do not have this problem. I think it just comes with the territory?
Mother called during Last Airbender, to inform me that my brother had to rescue a wild turkey from his garden. It had flown in and couldn't get out. So he had to in and chase it out. The image of my six foot five bean pole of a brother chasing a wild turkey amused me greatly. He is having issues with critters this summer - first rabbits and chipmunks, then raccoons, now wild turkeys...serves him right for moving into their territory and setting up a garden.
Oh well...leaving you with flowers taken on one of my walks this past week, while I go off to make dinner.
Also John Scalzi and others suggest hobbies...that they help. I have several. Never had troubles finding ways to entertain myself. I tell myself stories and write them down. I take photographs and play with them via photoshop, then share them on social media to thrill you all. I write blogs on my journal. I review television shows and books. I take long walks around a cemetery. I read. I write creatively. I draw - I'm going to do a comic book figure drawing class through ComicCon at Home - that's free next week, I think. I also cook for myself. Meditate. Do yoga, and various stretching and strength exercises such as walls squats and wall pushups. Hobbies can be anything really, and constantly changing. The trick is to do something I enjoy, not something the world thinks I will enjoy (like gardening? Bleach. Or knitting? Bleach.) LOL!
I've noticed that DW automatically checks "disable auto-formatting" which requires me to put HTML breaks. So I have to uncheck it. If you discover formatting issues with your posts? Make sure that "Disable Auto Formatting" is unchecked in HTML mode.
The flowers in the pic above are from Friday's walk, before the heat wave hit.
NY is making me crazy on the Census bit - I keep second-guessing whether I did it. (I did, I did it online way back in March. Honestly, I wish they sent me an email instead of just said - "Thank you for completing".)
New York vs. The Coronavirus
New York's economy has been hit hard. The shutdown of the entertainment and tourist industry in NY has killed millions of jobs. To give you an idea? Broadway and the theater district can't re-open, and all the people employed by it aren't salaried - they are paid per show. Same deal with the film and television industry - which employs over 76,000 people. Add to that all the hospitality industry, restaurants, bars, department stores, retail establishments, museums...all of which employ millions of people. I haven't even included the concerts, sporting events, and vendors.
We are opening to Phase 4 - but only Low-Risk Outdoor Activities - like Zoos, Botantical Gardens, and Parks can open. Also, sporting events can happen without fans - the Mets Season Opener is happening on Friday - but with no fans in attendance. (I may check one out just to see what it looks like although there's a lot of other distractions for Friday - like Comic Con. I think Star Trek Universe panel is on Friday. Oh, that's another weird change - all the big entertainment/fan conventions are all virtual.
Television and film productions can re-open - if they are outdoors only.
NY is tracking new cases - there were 502 today, but hospitalizations are at their lowest point since March, and lowest amount on deaths - with a .8% infection rate in NYC.
Another weird thing they've figured out is that "Tele Health" works. Virtual medicine is taking off. One young woman who suffered a brain aneurysm, had it diagnosed and got surgery virtually.
And of course there is a heat wave. I stayed in today because of it - yeah, we're wimps. It's only 88 degrees out - but it is 88 degrees with 80-90% humidity. Feels like walking through a sauna, after a bit, I feel dizzy and want to sit. Also I'm soaked through with sweat.
After a somewhat annoying church service via Zoom, I went back to binge-watching Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix. Prior to the annoying church service, I'd been enjoying listening to James Marsters read Jim Butcher's "Peace Talks". (Marsters recently stated that he had no idea why Butcher had selected him. I resisted the urge to respond to his tweet - with "Butcher selected you because he wanted to grab the attention of the Buffy fandom. He knew you were popular with that fandom, and they were the nitch audience for his books. He was right - I discovered the Dresden Files through the audio books. I never listen to audio books. Friends sent them to me, I got hooked and bought the books myself in paperback and hard back. Smart move." Note - if you want to sell your book, find a television actor with a cult following and fandom, and get them to read it for you. If the actor is a talented voice actor? All the better. Stephen Fry got a lot of folks to read Good Omens, for example. ) I'm enjoying "Peace Talks" - I even cried during one scene. (I'm blaming hormones.)
The church service annoyed me - because a really old white liberal guy felt the need to do a sermon about how Unitarians helped abolish slavery and weren't responsible for aiding and abetting it (yeah right, revision history to make yourself feel better). I thought, first, not entirely true. Some Unitarians fought against slavery, some aided and abetted it. And this feels a lot like cultural appropriation to me, and more than a tad self-righteous and self-congratulatory at the expense of someone else. (In other words, as my pal Casey would put it - "white liberal guilt" in action.) In short the sermon set my teeth on edge, and I began surfing the internet during it. The layperson sermons aren't that good. I've only seen two that I liked, the one's focusing on Black Lives Matter or Slavery were undercut by the fact that they were liberal white people talking about the situation through their lens. And I'm not sure that is a good idea right now. Kind of like an American Christian who never left the US discussing how they were affected by the Holocaust. Uhm, no. Sorry. You weren't that affected. I'm not saying you don't have a right to talk about it, but getting on a soap box or bully pulpit or doing a sermon? Uhm, no.
AVATAR: The Last Airbender was a welcome antidote to it. I'm loving this cartoon. Folks were right - it gets better as you go. You just kind of have to wade through a few lackluster episodes. This alas is true of most excellent television shows - from Buffy to The Wire. Actually I can't think of any that do not have this problem. I think it just comes with the territory?
Mother called during Last Airbender, to inform me that my brother had to rescue a wild turkey from his garden. It had flown in and couldn't get out. So he had to in and chase it out. The image of my six foot five bean pole of a brother chasing a wild turkey amused me greatly. He is having issues with critters this summer - first rabbits and chipmunks, then raccoons, now wild turkeys...serves him right for moving into their territory and setting up a garden.
Oh well...leaving you with flowers taken on one of my walks this past week, while I go off to make dinner.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-20 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-20 12:22 pm (UTC)Outside of work, where I'm reading a lot of contracts, technical scopes, etc - I don't read anything I don't want to or don't enjoy. I'll drop a book if it is : annoying, boring, or makes me angry.
It's why I gave up on book clubs a while back - they had this uncanny ability to pick books to read that I would despise. Not at first, but eventually. Worse - they loved the book, while I hated it. I finally decided that my days of having books thrust at me to read - were over. I'm not in college any longer - I can read whatever I want. It's very freeing.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-20 06:13 pm (UTC)