Year: 2020

Editorial: In the Wee, Small Hours

As I write this, it is a cold (-9°C/16°F) 4:45 a.m. on a Sunday morning, November 1st, here in Winnipeg. I am exhausted—emotionally, mentally, and physically—and yet I am unable to find comfort in sleep. Tossing and turning, I finally give up and go to my computer.

Some people use their insomnia to read or meditate, or perhaps play a game of solitaire. Me, I do what I usually do when I can’t sleep: I turn on CalmRadio.com to the Spa stream of soothing music, load up my main Second Life avatar, Vanity Fair, and continue to weed through the very oldest items in her voluminous, 241,601-item inventory, trying on and deciding whether to keep decade-old apparel, footwear, and accessories, or throwing the items away, knowing I’ll never, ever wear them again.

I’m currently in the F’s, trying on all the 10, 11, and 12-year-old FallnAngel freebies I picked up at various hunts (and throwing almost all of them into the pixel recycling bin).
Now, on the other hand, I think I will hold on to this beautiful system-layers-and-flexiprims kimono by FallnAngel…

And aaaaah, yes, the irony does not escape me that I, infamously relaxed housekeeper that I am (“slob” is such an ugly word), that I am spending the wee hours of my morning cleaning and organizing Vanity’s virtual wardrobe, while a large pile of Ryan’s real-life unfolded and un-put-away laundry sits next to his bed, his unironed dress shirts are hanging from his exercise cycle, and several towers of dirty dishes and unwashed pots rest on his kitchen counters and in his sink, just waiting to be loaded into my dishwasher.

Why do I do this? Why do I make these choices?

Well, Second Life is one of those hobbies which occupies my time, generates a flow state, and makes me feel happy, and I need to find those happy places wherever I can find them lately, in these distressing and disorienting times. When I clean my apartment, fold my laundry or load my dishwasher, my mind tends to wander, and I tend to get stuck in a dark cloud of anxiety, despair, or depression, despite my best efforts and intentions. Achieving a flow state, or a good mood, is something that I have decided that I want to maintain as a priority, so if something makes me feel good (or at least, feel better), I tend to do that first.

This is how I am choosing to cope during the coronavirus pandemic, and I am not going to beat myself up if I happen to have a pile of dirty dishes on the kitchen counter or dust bunnies hanging out in the corner of my bathroom. I am the one and only person around, and I will simply get to it when I get to it. If, at the end of my day, I have not disappeared into the black pit of depression, then I consider that day a success, regardless of how many crumbs lie under my kitchen table or how many dirty pots sit in my sink. I am choosing to focus on my mood, and to forgive myself for any misplaced priorities.

As you might know, the circumstances of my life and my career have unfortunately forced me to put the RyanSchultz.com blog on the back burner these past three months, while I attended to other projects, problems, worries, and crises, but it is now November 1st, 2020, and I am happy to say that I have successfully navigated through the huge pile of work that I have had to do, and met all the deadlines that I have had to meet.

I now have a blessed (and believe me, very much-needed) two-week vacation from my full-time paying job with my university library system. And I intend to use that time, not just to do a little housecleaning in Second Life and in real life, but also to attend to the somewhat neglected RyanSchultz.com blog.

Stay tuned for further announcements as I ponder and plan my next steps for the blog. The past three years have been an unexpected but wonderful adventure, and I cannot wait to see what the next three years will bring!

Photo by Randy Tarampi on Unsplash

UPDATE 11:56 a.m. Well, after a good long sleep, I have finally loaded up my dishwasher with the first load of the day, and I am back at cleaning up my inventory.

This being the day after Hallowe’en, I leave you with yet another wonderful blast from the past from Vanity Fair’s ancient inventory that’s a definite keeper: this gothic Carmen-Miranada-esque Hallowe’en outfit from Comme Il Faut, complete with hat, hair, shoes, jewelry, and skull maracas! The only modern aspects of this avatar are my signature Catwa Kimberly head and Slink hands; everything else is system-layer clothing, prims, and flexiprims on a classic avatar. The outfit still holds up perfectly well after more than a decade.

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Pandemic Diary: October 31st, 2020

No trick or treating this year! (source: Government of Ontario)

Normally, on the evening of Hallowe’en, my best friend John and I have a regular routine to avoid the pesky little trick-or-treaters going door-to-door in our suburban neighbourhood. Instead, we leave our homes (carefully turning off our entrance lights to indicate that no one is home and zero candy is forthcoming), and we both decamp to a local restaurant for a leisurely meal and some conversation over a beer or two. We’ve been doing this for years,

Unfortunately, this year, there will be neither the trick-or-treaters nor the restaurant meal. Yesterday, the provincial health department reported a surge of 480 new cases of COVID-19, almost all of them occurring in and near the city of Winnipeg:

The latest COID-19 statistics from Manitoba (source)

Three more seniors have died from COVID-19 at Parkview Place, one of several seniors homes, hospitals, and schools where outbreaks are currently taking place. While the five-day testing positivity rate in the province as a whole is 8.6% (that is, of all COVID-19 tests conducted within the past five days, 8.6 out of every 100 people have tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus), the 5-day positivity rate in Winnipeg itself is higher, at 9.7%.

Effective Monday, the province has established an emergency, code-red lockdown in and around the city of Winnipeg (affecting approximately 780,000 people). What this means is:

  • Hospitals and healthcare services will continue to offer urgent and emergency surgeries, procedures and diagnostic services, but elective and non-urgent surgery and diagnostic services will be postponed. All hospital visitation has been suspended, with exceptions made on a case-by-case basis for patients receiving end-of-life care, in labour and delivery, and in pediatrics.
  • Public and private gatherings (both inside and outside) are restricted to a maximum of five people. “Limiting contacts outside the household is strongly encouraged.”
  • All restaurants and bars are closed, except for take-out, drive-through, and delivery.
  • All indoor and outdoor sports and recreational facilities, group sports, bowling alleys, etc, are closed. Gyms and fitness centres are restricted to 25% of regular full capacity, and all exercisers must wear masks.
  • Non-essential retail stores will be allowed to remain open at 25% of regular full capacity (or 5 people, whatever is higher). Grocery stores and pharmacies will operate at 50 per cent capacity. “eService, pick-up or delivery [are] recommended whenever possible. Encourage limiting the number of people from each household who go shopping.”
  • Casinos, arcades, gaming establishments, VLTs, movie theatres, concert halls, museums, galleries, and libraries must close (this includes the three libraries that have reopened at the University of Manitoba).
  • Community, cultural and religious gatherings will be limited to 15% capacity or 100 people, whichever is lower.

Notable in its absence from this list is shutdowns of K-12 schools, where the provincial advice is to continue blended (in-person and online) learning, and to ensure as much physical distancing as possible between students when in class. However, given the way things are going, I will not be surprised if the lockdown is extended to both public and private elementary, junior high and senior high schools as well. (One Winninpeg chool, Centre Scolaire Léo-Rémillard, now has 14 coronavirus cases, has 4 classes in self-isolation as a precaution, and has already decided to move its Grade 12 classes completely to remote learning.)

All the leaves have fallen from the trees, there is a cold westerly wind, and the sky is overcast and grey. There is already snow on the ground, and below-freezing temperatures. November, December, and January are going to be difficult months for us here in Manitoba.

Photo by Thom Holmes on Unsplash

Pandemic Diary: October 28th, 2020

Today is Day 227 of my working from my home in self-isolation for my university library system. I am nearing the end of a three-month period where I have been frantically working days, evenings, and weekends to meet several project deadlines, and I can almost see the finish line of November 1st, 2020. I am cranky, utterly exhausted, and most definitely not in a Hallowe’en trick-or-treater mood.

Here are the latest provincial stats, and they are not encouraging. Pandemic fatigue has settled in, people are getting sloppy, and COVID-19 infections are rising sharply:

While these numbers may appear small compared to the absolute clusterfuck-dumpster-fires taking place just south of the border in North and South Dakota, for a province of only 1.3 million inhabitants (mostly in and around the Winnipeg area), this is not good news. The Winnipeg Free Press reports that our hospital system is bring pushed to the brink:

Record high hospitalizations are ringing alarm bells for health care professionals. With outbreaks in three units at St. Boniface Hospital and two units at Victoria General Hospital, physicians and nurses are worried about the rising strain on the health care system.

In a Facebook post Saturday, a medical microbiologist at St. Boniface Hospital wrote that, “Without a turnaround, we are within days of being at the limit of ICU capacity.”

“Resources are getting strained. ICUs are full. We are on the brink. This is what happens when we let our guard down, have too many contacts, relax and go out with too many people,” Dr. Phillipe Lagacé-Wiens wrote.

Jason Kindrachuk, a virologist at the University of Manitoba, noted health care professionals have been warning of a rapidly approaching crisis point for a while.

“Not only are we seeing increases in case numbers, we’re seeing increases in hospitalizations, we’re seeing increases in people being admitted to intensive care units, we’re seeing increased fatalities,” he said Sunday.

Today, the first death from COVID-19 was reported at Victoria Hospital, a stone’s throw from where I live, in an outbreak of 19 staff and 19 patients at the facility,

Parkview Place personal care home in downtown Winnipeg (where my grandmother and grandfather lived) has 29 staff and 92 residents who have become infected with COVID-19. Seventeen residents have died, and angry families are demanding answers. I can only thank God that my grandfather and beloved grandmother died in the 2000’s, well before this outbreak.

On Monday, I went to my local pharmacy to get my flu shot. It was the first time since March 16th that I have been part of a large group of people (mostly seniors, all masked, and all trying to keep 2 metres apart, an increasingly impossible task as people kept arriving).

A hastily-assembled makeshift flu clinic had been set up in the electronics department, but it was clear the pharmacists and assistants were overwhelmed with the demand. Shouting matches broke out between a few of the people waiting for flu shots and the staff, when it was announced that those who had booked appointments earlier in the day would be processed before the “first come, first served” crowd who had gathered. “If you don’t like it, LEAVE!” shouted one stressed-out pharmacist at a particularly angry and accusative old woman, who had not stopped complaining from the moment she arrived.

It was a unsettling, dispiriting, and dehumanizing experience, being treated like an assembly on some machine line, perched on a chair for 30 seconds for a jab in the upper arm, with the chair then being thoroughly wiped down with disinfectant and ready for the next person (I believe the proper term for this is “hygiene theatre“).

As I walked out the pharmacy, I saw my best friend John, masked and standing in a long line of sombre people, all approximately 2 metres apart. The lineup started at the entrance and snaked back and forth between the cars in the pharmacy parking lot. I told him that there were probably 60 or 70 people ahead of him, and that he would probably be waiting at least an hour for his flu shot, if not longer. It was a shitshow.

After I came home, I carefully removed and threw out my N95 mask, washed my hands and my glasses thoroughly, popped three Lorazepam and lay down for a long nap to try and forget the whole unpleasant experience. If this is what getting the flu shot is going to be like, what it is going to be like when there’s an actual COVID-19 vaccine that has to be distributed?

I have one final lecture to deliver tomorrow for my class—delivered remotely and online via Cisco Webex—and then I am going to collapse, after three months working non-stop overtime. I have been sleeping 10, 12, even 14 hours at a stretch lately, and I am still exhausted.

My apartment is a Red Cross disaster area, with dust bunnies, dirty dishes, and canned goods and Clorox wipes piled high in the corners of my apartment. The office chair I had to bring in from work has worn a big hole in the carpeting in front of my home computer workstation, where I sit and work most of the day. (So much for my damage deposit.)

I have had exactly one person touch me in SEVEN. FUCKING. MONTHS, and when it happened (my best friend John touched my arm to make a point in conversation over a summertime dinner on an outdoor restaurant patio), I almost leaped out of my skin. I can’t even remember the last time somebody hugged me.

This pandemic is beating the absolute shit out of me, and the end is still nowhere near in sight. I’m trying to find a positive note to end this blogpost on, and you know what? I can’t. Not today.