This is a strange time to be listening to audiobooks about apocalyptic futures. But I was doing just that, juxtaposed against a world outside my car that looked the same, calm and normal, but it all feels quite surreal.
A Surreality.
It’s hard to wrap your head around THE ENTIRE WORLD being under attack from a virus and it is still escalating. It runs through my mind that I need to hold onto this moment, because next week might look entirely different.
The CDC put forth the postulation that the number of infected would double every four days. Here in the United States it is now doubling every third day. By the end of the weekend we will be approaching 30,000 infected and by the end of next week 100,000. At what point do we stop doing half-measures?
I’ll admit that when I first heard of this pandemic I was one of those who thought the hype was overblown. I WAS WRONG.
Please take this seriously. It may not kill you, but it might kill someone close to you if you get infected. I worry about my family, some of which have asthma and might not cope well. I would love to stay home, but I am still being directed to work, and I don’t have enough vacation time to stop. I know how lucky I am to still have a paying job, and I don’t take it lightly. I’m praying for all of us. Please wash your hands a lot, and stay home if you can. I anticipate all of us being directed to stay home with a national curfew before the end of the month.
Shortly after this show went live on Netflix we heard so many good things about it. Getting nominated for lots of awards and starring two of my favorite actors, Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver. A couple of reviewers did a best of list for 2019 and they both had A Marriage Story in their top 5. They both mentioned that it was funny.
This feels timely with all that has gone on in the world in recent months. Especially regarding the Russians using online personas to insert disharmony into social media sites and put out actual fake news about stuff and it worked. It actually did exactly what I wrote about back in March 2011. I know that terrorist organizations like ISIS used social media in a very savvy way to promote their worldview and recruit people. Our military public affairs figured it out late and fought hard to recapture their own media perspectives and now it is part of our toolkit.
First of all, our school systems do a poor job of teaching English. It basically makes people hate studying the language and how to write it better. Grammar? Bleh. How do you get past this? People still write, but it seems like most of those people do so because they can’t stop themselves. I wonder how many more people would be writing if they weren’t made to hate it in High School. When I decided to take it seriously, I had a lot of education to undertake. It spurred me to get a Master’s degree, simply to fill in the gaping potholes in my skillset. I still ended up taking an undergraduate class in grammar. I enjoyed it actually. No really.
It’s the end of the year and it usually brings an overabundance of introspection and reflection and for me it’s not just “what did I accomplish this year” but I find I’m looking at the big picture. Is my life shaping up the way I want it to? Am I having an impact on things that matter to me? Am I positioning myself to be able to influence things that are important to me? I’m approaching the big 5 0 and that may have something to do with it.