Life in the Age of Corona

A Daily Diary

Thursday, June 25th, 2020

Musings

Despite slowly venturing out more, reopening our lives, getting out more, the days still seem monotonous and more of the same, day after day with no end in sight. Get up, exercise, work, swim, blog, game/book/show, sleep.

Our life before the Virus was also pretty structured; consisting of heading to the office/ school, work, swim, work, three evening a week with classes (Aikido/ swimming) and two weeknights with shared dinners at home. Sometimes with book club or a dacne class instead of or before or after dinner. An Internations social every other months, the odd date here and there.

We still do book club, just via zoom these days, I have been seeing people on and off. Comparing those schedules the only thing missing is evening classes.

Why then do I feel as if our life has become a void? And I wonder if other people’s lives are equally boring, empty somehow? The longer I think on it, the more I conclude that my life before the Virus was related to people and plans, having plans, making plans. And neither of these things are happening much in our live these days. I love to host people for drinks, a BBQ, a brunch or a drink. When before those were things to fill up the weekend – alongside Aikido practice and swimming. None of that is really an option these days, except for maybe the odd socially distanced drink in a garden, leaving a void.

And plans, we had so many plans for this year. A dive trip to Puerto Rico in April - cancelled. Me, three Aikido seminars, travel to Europe to see the family - cancelled. Meet EM and friends in Madrid during their university tour - cancelled. Going on to Lisbon, maybe even the Algarve to see a friend - cancelled. All of August would have been full of plans with friends and travel.

October was full of plans with people coming to visit - cancelled. There are no more plans to make, for either personal or work travel and travel has defined me and EM all our lives. We had a plan to spend a week at the beach jointly renting a house with friends we have been socially distanced hanging out with next week, but even that does not materialize as no houses are to be had.

This all leaves me feeling sad about live and what it should be. I think it is the inability to plan and execute a plan which leaves me feeling so empty. And worst, there is no roadmap when we can go back to making plans as the situation in the US seems to get worse by the day. A total of 37k new infections were reported for the USA alone today. The death toll has now surpassed 125k and worldwide infections are on track to reach 10 million by the weekend with 9.56 reported cases today. It is just sad.