Category: Pandemic Diary

Pandemic Diary: April 6th, 2020

Today marks the start of my fourth week in self-isolation in my apartment, hunkered down with three months’ worth of all my prescription medications and at least a couple of months of food and supplies. I have run out of bread but I have started to bake; I have almost run out of milk, but I have three large bags of powdered milk in my pandemic supplies, which I have started to use.

CBC guidance on face masks (source)

Around six o’clock this evening, I decided to venture outside for only the fourth time since I began working from home on March 16th, 2020. My exotic destination was the nearest garbage bin. I tossed in my trashbag, and then wandered slowly back to my apartment, savouring the fresh spring air, listening to the gurgle and drip of melting snow, seeing the squirrels scamper from tree to tree, and hearing a woodpecker work away at a tree in the small forest behind my apartment complex.

My hand hesitated slightly as I reached for the (external) doorknob to my apartment, to come back inside. Then I faced a dilemma: should I wash my hands before removing my jacket? I decide to wash my hands, take off my jacket and scarf, then wash my hands again, just in case. Relentless handwashing has played absolute havoc with my eczema. (I spared an idle thought to those people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, who must be struggling mightily in these unprecedented days of pandemic. I am beginning to understand their levels of anxiety.)

It is only after I am seated in front of my personal computer again that I see the tweet from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (above) in my Twitter feed, and I mentally kick myself for not having the foresight to wrap my scarf around my mouth and nose when I went out. After all, it is a “public space”, right? Of course, I equate “public space” with ANYWHERE OUTSIDE. The fact is, the outdoor space was completely deserted of people except for myself. But what about particles hanging in the air?, I think.

I firmly tell myself to GET A GRIP, that I should be more worried about droplets than particles, that I do not live in downtown New York City or Hong Kong or India or some other area chockablock with coughing, sneezing, infecting people.

I can feel my depression becoming slightly worse over time. I know that I am at high risk of a depressive relapse. However, I still force myself to get up every morning at 7:00 a.m., shower, get dressed, brew a large vat of black coffee, and sit down in front of my PC, log into my work email and the virtual reference chat software my library system uses to chat with patrons, and face whatever the day brings.

This morning, I didn’t realize until well after I had gotten out of the shower, dried off, and dressed, that I had somehow forgotten to wash my hair. I shrug—who’s going to see me with greasy hair?—and continue with my morning routine.

Just a few minutes ago, I learned from Dr. Fran on the RyanSchultz.com Discord (now up to 400 members, with more people joining almost every day) that U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson has been admitted to the intensive care unit for COVID-19. Shit.

And I read another article about how the added stress of a global pandemic lockdown has led to worrying increases in reports of domestic abuse around the world.

And I realize that I, stuck alone in my apartment, I can do nothing about either of these things. I resolve, even more firmly, to avoid the news—all news. (Of course, that is impossible, but I am getting better at it these past few days.)

I had thought briefly about registering with the Public Health Agency of Canada/Health Canada as a COVID-19 volunteer, but I realize that, with my underlying health conditions that confine me to my apartment and put me at risk of a severe case of COVID-19 (not to mention my history of chronic clinical depression), that I would be a rather poor fit to the task.

I’m sad, I’m tired, and I wish this day were over.

UPDATE 7:13 p.m.: My friend Carlos sends me a direct message via Discord, right after I posted this blogpost, and we chat for a few minutes. He gives me his cell phone number and tells me to call anytime, and I in turn give him mine. Being an extrovert, I find that even a brief text chat cheers me up. He sends me a hug emoji and we part company. Thanks, Carlos!

So, feel free to drop me a line if you are on one of the many Discord servers that we possibly share. I’m always up for a text chat!

Pandemic Diary: April 2nd, 2020

Quarantine is the cultural appropriation of depressed people.

—Comment from a recent Reddit post on r/Coronavirus

Today has been one of those days where, as the day wore on, the more anxious, depressed, and angry at turns that I got. It didn’t help that I swore I would stay off Twitter and Reddit today (I was up till 1:00 a.m. last night reading through my Twitter feed, which at this point is 80% coronavirus-related experts.) You can imagine how well that resolution went.

It didn’t help that this morning I posted a musing to the r/Winnipeg subReddit community, about how the coronavirus pandemic was like a 6-to-18-month blizzard that we all had to get through, all isolated in our homes at the same time, venturing out from time to time in the storm to clear the spaces around our doors, but basically hunkered down at home. Everybody stuck at home, but going through the blizzard together, pulling together and helping each other get through this.

I got a bunch of ignorant comments and I finally yanked my post this evening, angry at the world, and angry at myself for letting some social media trolls get to me. I should know better by now at my age.

And fucking Jared Kushner dispensing pandemic advice at today’s White House press conference shit-show (which of course I heard about through my Twitter feed) just about finished me off. I’m not sure my blood pressure can take any more of this. And we are only at the first million cases of COVID-19; what is the rest of April gonna look like? May? June? July?!??

I am so completely and utterly done with this day. I am popping a couple of Lorazepam with my chamomile tea this evening.

Please, stay home. As I have already said, with my underlying health conditions, if I get COVID-19 I am a sitting duck. Flatten the curve.

Pandemic Diary: April 1st, 2020

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

—T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Actually, here in Winnipeg, we aren’t going to see any lilacs until late May at the earliest. People living in more southerly regions often don’t realize that winter in Winnipeg runs six months of the year, pretty much from the beginning of November until the end of April. In fact, the weather forecasters are telling us to expect 10-20 centimetres (4 to 8 inches) of wet, heavy snow today.

Yesterday I took a sick day from work, even though I am already working from home: I was struggling with depression and needed a mental health day badly. In the morning, I had my biweekly phone call with my psychiatrist, a reassuring, stoic Russian woman who always dispenses good, sensible advice. (As someone who has struggled all his life with chronic clinical depression, I have been extremely lucky to have had good, empathetic psychiatrists throughout. It makes a big difference, as do the antidepressant and anti-anxiety prescription medications I take, although I try very hard not to rely on the latter to deal with my anxieties.)

I have been thinking a lot about the mental health impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, and I suspect that we are going to see a wave of psychological and psychiatric problems after all this is over (and frankly, even before it is finished). One of the ways I deal with the stress is, of course, writing this blog: to inform, to exhort, to editorialize, and sometimes just to vent. I am still maintaining and updating my list of mental health resources during the pandemic, adding good resources as I encounter them. (I think I am doing this for myself, for future reference, more than for anybody else. I just want to have this information handy when I really do need it.)

I have tried—Lord knows, I have tried—to limit my news consumption. As I wrote in the COVID-19_support subReddit:

I wake up every morning feeling depressed, and I know I should stay away from the newsfeeds and news media, but it is so hard. I plunge into the news and I get depressed, I get outraged at Trump’s latest antics, and it’s not helping me. At the same time, I want to know what is going on.

The COVID-19_support community is one of many that has sprung up online to provide a space for people to talk about their feelings and support each other. I honestly cannot imagine going through all this without the internet. I have an active coronavirus-chat channel on the RyanSchultz.com Discord server, where my blog readers from around the world (who normally discuss social VR, virtual worlds, and various aspects of the evolving metaverse) can talk to each other about the pandemic.

I have been struggling to focus on work while working from home, but I have made a commitment to set an alarm, get up every morning, have a shower, get dressed, brew a pot of coffee, and sit in front of my personal computer, to face the day as best I can. A coworker shared this video of how she was feeling about this unprecedented situation, getting up day after day, like in the 1993 Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day:

I feel fortunate that I work with such a wonderful group of people at my university library system. We are pulling together during this crisis, and I do feel that I am a valued part of the team. Among other assigned projects, I am serving as a sort of floating back-up to our library’s virtual reference service, Ask Us, helping faculty, staff, and students connect with and navigate the wealth of digital information resources in our libraries. In cases where people need information which is located in a physical, paper book (currently unavailable since our physical library collections were locked down with our university’s shutdown), we are making arrangements to purchase (or, more accurately, lease) access to electronic editions of those books when possible.

At home, I am slowly working my way through all the pandemic food supplies I had stocked up on: pasta, potatoes, rice, cheese, yogurt, bags of mandarin oranges, canned stews and soups. I have stepped outside my apartment exactly twice since I began working from home on March 16th, and I have run out of bread and almost out of milk. However, I have three large bags of instant skim milk powder, I have discovered that I like the taste of powdered milk, and can live with that as a backup. No need to go grocery shopping, yet! I plan to hold off as long as possible, and perhaps turn to online grocery delivery as an alternative to going outside.

And I have started baking. One of the 10-kilogram bags of flour I had stocked up on several years ago developed a rip in the bag, and went bad, but the other bag is just fine, and I have been teaching myself how to make basic biscuits. I am starting to get good at it! My ambitious plan is to eventually work my way up to baking my own bread.

Photo by Nadya Spetnitskaya on Unsplash

And apparently, a lot of people are baking during the pandemic:

As more Canadians work from home and practice self-isolation due to COVID-19, there’s been an increasing interest in turning on the oven and baking.

Baking-related search terms are up on Google, grocery stores have experienced an increase in flour purchases and sugar and flour manufacturers are working overtime to keep up with a spike in demand.

If you are looking for my last-updated list of good, credible, information resources about the coronavirus pandemic, click here.

I leave you with an inspirational video, which was put out by the very talented people at Travel Manitoba (who, obviously, aren’t being called upon to promote much travel at the moment):

Stay home, stay healthy!