Unsolicited Advice

I'm avoiding news, but somehow have still caught wind of riots in Michigan, which we are apparently trying to stave off with preliminary plans to "re-open" the country.

This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of why there are armed mobs forming on all sides. Social contact is a fundamental human need in a way that TPS reports are decidedly not. Any plan that "allows" people to spend 40+ hours a week at work while forbidding them to spend Sunday dinner with their parents or having a beer with the neighbors is mainly going to result in a 4000% rise in people ordering torches and pitchforks from Amazon.

We are approaching the point where people will literally choose to die rather than remain in strict isolation. You are not going to get people under intense psychiatric strain to make scientifically-rational decisions, and frankly, there are a lot more of them than there are of you. They are angry and (emotionally) starving, and have a lot of decentralized meth…

Still not dead. Yay.

Still horrified by the course of history. Not so yay. Although I recognize that the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of me surviving this mess regardless of what goes on outside, I find the suggestion that old people should totally be okay with drowning in their own frothy lung fluid as long as it keeps the money flowing abhorrent. Do they know they're saying this out loud? Do they understand that the main mass voter base that put them in power to begin with is angry that gun stores are "non-essential" businesses because they're running on a paranoid survival instinct? Has it not registered that they, too, will run out of toilet paper (or food, or clean water and sanitation) if the proletariat just sits the fuck own and refuses to work under these conditions?

On my part, I've been home for the past two weeks. I have an anxiety disorder that tells me to avoid all human interaction when I'm over-stressed, and just this once it's fucking…

Status update:

Still don't have Captain Trips. Good.

Still panic every time I cough or sniffle, before remembering I have had exactly this level of post-nasal drip literally since November. Less good.

Still would very much like to be drunk, high, and/or asleep at virtually all times. Even less good, but am still able to ration what I have here, and can probably get PeaPod/Instacart/local establishments to deliver more eventually.

Gov. Baker still refusing to issue a shelter-in-place order for Mass, but has issued a very strong stay-the-fuck-at-home suggestion, and ordered non-essential businesses to close. Basically it's more and more boring to leave the house, and we're going to stop people from forcing you to go to work at your goddamn open plan call centers if it is not really truly necessary to keep society running. Restaurants, grocery stores, and pharmacies are still doing courier deliveries, and the USPS is still on duty. Liquor stores, notably, are considered "…

I am not handling any of this at all well.

As previously mentioned, I am not at high physical risk from SARS-CoV-2. I have plenty of medical issues, but none of them are relevant to respiratory infections. I have also not been outside of the house for over a week. Either I haven't caught it and I'm fine, or I have caught it and I'm still fine.

It has become increasingly clear that I am at high risk psychiatrically. I've already got a diagnosis of "anxiety disorder NOS", which as far as I can tell is med speak for "fuck if I know, have some Xanax". I have spent exactly 0% of my life receiving effective medical care for this, and that includes the percentage of my life I have spent receiving literally any medical care for this.

Usually what happens is that I muddle through life by stubbornly doing things, self-medicating when there is nothing to do, and self-monitoring for points where personal stressors plus world events conspire to create a crisis. …

Welp. I'm in no danger of having to look anybody in the eye for several weeks, and as a performer and blogger oversharing is kind of my deal, so...

AMA. Academic or personal. Prepare for a long-winded rant.

If you want to be anonymous, you can send to miss.arabella.flynn@gmail.com. Just stick "Blog AMA" somewhere in the subject line.

Hello from the plague-ridden city of Boston! I wish first reassure everyone that I am fine. I am at no particular risk of catching the novel coronavirus, and if I somehow defy the odds and come down with COVID-19, I am mainly in danger of spending a couple of weeks with a really shitty cough. The hospitalization pattern for this thing is a lot like that of the seasonal flu -- the very old, the immunosuppressed, and those with restricted lung function, otherwise known collectively as 'people who get pneumonia a lot' -- with the interesting twist that, much like varicella zoster, young kids seem to be much less affected. The COVID-19 experience according to both CDC graphs and trip reports from redditors who have tested positive for it is that otherwise healthy people who aren't super old and fragile get to sit through the flu. I did that back in November with the regular rogues gallery of viruses and am not eager to do it again, but at this point I have better odds of landi…

The Eccentric has started a non-profit. It is not going well. He has hired me as one of two "operations managers", but won't let either of us handle any of the actual operations. Which is unfortunate, because it turns out that he is rubbish at small business administration. His main issue is that he has no relationship of any kind with the linear flow of time, and consequently no useful time management skills. He has no idea how long anything will realistically take, and, per the famous equation, no idea how much it's going to cost. This is bad under most circumstances, but ruinous when running on a shoestring budget.

He is going to flame out spectacularly. It will be very sad. He has resisted every piece of advice everyone has ever given him about how to avoid this, so there is nothing I can do. I have resolved to let him pay me an hourly wage to watch the desk of his beloved debacle until our current engagement ends or I find a better job, whichever comes first.

Th…