It's Exponential!

Tote bag design is back, on black!

Just when I thought I was getting old enough to have a contracted life with few surprises...HA!

I've already been isolating since I got back from Delaware in late February. I have some confidence that I am not a carrier and my environment is clean, so from that little bit of relaxation I can look outward, but it's not a pretty picture.

My neighborhood is sweet. Some of us checked on each other yesterday...we're all staying in and waving as we do yardwork. I will try now, as things ramp up, to not even go to the store, because so many others are not yet paying close enough attention. I live next door to some 20-year-olds. They do not appear to have changed their mobile habits. People who work in stores have to keep working, but I don't have to bother them. It's the time when love can kill.

I find almost all my real fears at the moment are about money. That's just an ugly reality that I am trying to get deeper with. I don't think I'll really run out...I will run low, but surely it's just deferred income. Once we get to be out in public again, people will still want my craft and I will still have work. I'd set up some online marketing but then I'd have to be going to the post office (or they'd be coming here) and I will probably do that. I could do some drive-by drops perhaps, but not right now.

I started to put up a promotional post about my new black totes, but then it felt so selfish. This is the time to learn all about our selfish parts. While mostly we've excused them as normal, now they can be deadly. At almost 70 I certainly know people who could die from this virus. Lots of us are compromised with one condition or another. I don't think it's hyperble to try to save lives by staying home. It isn't panic. It's caring about others.

I actually have plenty to do. All of the de-cluttering and cleaning I've neglected for so long would be a pleasure to complete. I've done a little of it. So many organizing tasks are possible...the photos, the different types of archives I'm needing to get up to date, the endless piles of past work, art, t-shirt samples, tchochkes. I'm not going to run out of things to do. In that sense this is a welcome, wonderful vacation.

Black tote bags will sell whenever I can get them out

My orchid is starting to bloom. My yard is full of lovely Narcissus, my peas are up, the birds are amusing and endearing. I saw an Audubon's Warbler at the suet. My dreams are full of cranes and crows. I'm sleeping well, and there's no pressure to get up early. It's luxurious.

Managing fears is nothing new to the self-employed. We've never had economic security, since everything hinges on our ability to work. I'm ready for anything, as long as I don't get sick. I already bought a lot of stock, which I will sell eventually, even if it takes a year or more. My events have savings, so they won't go bankrupt if they can't be held any time soon.

I did have to do some mourning for the Jell-O Art Show, since we were so close and it was a lot of fun. We had cute songs and hadn't even got to the part of running through the script and cracking each other up with the improvisations. I get to write the script, so I put in lines as placeholders to carry the narrative, but the actors who deliver them make them their own and sometimes they do it during the show. No one even really reveals their costumes fully until right before the show, and it's always much more hilarious than expected. So it was a pretty big emotional loss.

But I had been complaining that I was tired, felt overloaded with work, wasn't that excited to make Jell-O. I take it all back now. I will treasure the next opportunity we get to do such a thing. I hope I use that thwarted energy to infuse my regular life with more improv and singing and silliness. We all need it.

It's okay to keep moving, but change directions. There will be some silver linings to this time of reflection for us all. The environment will take a breath, free from our rat race. This regime will surely fall, hoist on its own petard, as they used to say. We'll remember compassion and neighborliness, as we did with the turn of the century glitch that didn't really happen.

Sometimes the peach eats you

Greet death, with courage, as we all should be doing already. You can believe I had a lot of regrets about going to visit my Mom. She's 94. I kissed her, I used her dishes, I was in her space for 3 days, after passing through the Seattle airport, where I drank from a water fountain. Coming back was even scarier, as I sat next to people at post-trip meetings, and tried to be careful. Her place where she lives is now in lockdown (not because of me) as are all retirement facilities, but they are all completely vulnerable. Someone I know pointed out that young people who work in those facilities often have multiple jobs or trainings with possibly contaminated carriers...it has just barely begun to spread here, and where Mom lives. Don't fear death, be ready. Same as it has always been, in our denial.

We're going to get through this, and the people who are the most thoughtful, the most compassionate, are going to be our heroes, which will be a welcome shift as we stop revering money and glitz and return to more solid values. We'll support each other, as people tend to do in crisis. Those who are selfish will examine their behaviors and learn. Those who are greedy will be shunned and will learn the hard way. We can hope, anyway.

All we have to do is find our balance and stay with it. Whatever happens, life will celebrate it. I think I will wash some windows. I'll finish the pruning I thought I wouldn't get to. I'll sort and box up things to give away when it is safe again. I'll get the Market archives done.

Now I wonder if I will have enough time for all my plans. This is an introvert's best vacation ever. No known ending, all the time I need, all the quiet I can handle. I'll be writing. Thanks for reading.