Lying on the bed, I could feel a little sweatiness around my neck. It's 8:30 am, but the wind is already warm. I hear the beeping sound of my dad's car, he's leaving for work. I can't help but think about the chaos that's out there, and he like most people here has no other option than to get out and deal with it.
In half sleep, I open the worldometer's site. There were 350k new COVID-19 cases yesterday. A part of me loves maths and numbers. I click here and there, compare other countries, and see the logarithmic growth rate. I know that number in under-reported. I try to do some mental maths to guess the future number of cases. How soon before there's sanity in the world, I keep asking myself.
I try to collect myself and get out of the bed straight to the balcony. My hands pick my phone along the way. It all happens instinctively. Ugh, it's already very warm. A part of me wants to start my day reading something useful and exercising. But I'm tired already. I slept at 3am. I have almost forgotten how its like to get your shit together early in the morning, I haven't done since last few months. So after convincing myself that I'll change myself soon, I begin check my Slack, e-mail, and Todoist. I start preparing a mental list of things I have to do today. Get an AC installed, get my aching tooth fixed, get the door fixed, follow up with XYZ, reply XYZ, the list goes on. The statistician inside me can't help but raise red flags to anything that involves contact with humans in the outside world. There's a risk of things going south and fatal illness. At least half of the people I know have had COVID in their family. There are never ending posts of acquaintances seeking plasma / oxygen / bed for their loved ones. For a moment my mind snaps and thinks what if it was me. I know there's no point dwelling on it, so like always, I try to quickly distract myself away from that thought and just keep doing my work. I'm not very resourceful (you need quality connections to get plasma / oxygen / bed arranged in such terrible times), so something happens, it's gonna be hard, which means the only option for us is to try as hard to as possible to be safe in the first place.
My freelancing work kept me very occupied in 2021, so there's always more things on my plate then I can finish. Once I'm fully up and running (after my customary early afternoon nap of 1 sleep cycle), I have quite productive days with a lot of "flow" time. Despite of having a good amount of quality work, I feel just okay if not miserable. I have developed a sense of indifference towards things (ignorance is bliss). I feel like my brain over-simulated with things. Whenever I'm not doing work, every other unprocessed thought comes to surface. Should I be happy that I still have work or should I be sad that I'm far away from what I was expecting to try by this time. Am I too selfish for not trying too hard to help struggling strangers, rather just trying to protect myself (and family) and focus on career and financials? Is it my fault that I'm safe and well while others aren't? Do people really need my help? What can I do other than just create some information website / app, thousands of which are already doing rounds?
Since my work requires a lot of mental energy already, I can't help but nudge these thoughts in the "think-through-later" bucket. The easiest of distraction is watching a series / movie, or casually browsing the social media. And maybe If I feel a bit more energetic, read some of those newsletters and shared articles in my ever-growing inbox. Social media is especially annoying in these times. It's just full of posts containing unsolicited advices and accusing others for the situation we're in. The signal to noise ratio is very low, so is the trust level. Most browsing sessions ends up in disappointment. Over the time, I have become a very passive participant. Not even my social, but my social-media life has become non-existent. I just couldn't keep up with pace of changes. I missed multiple life updates of people whom I know, to an extent that it now feels awkward to even like their posts. A part of me fears popping up in their notifications after such a long time all of a sudden. They've probably already forgotten me, I think.
All this is happening while I spend another year not being able to take a step towards setting up my own thing, learning new skills, being healthier, and having good time with people. Ensuring survival itself sucking up all the energy. There's a lot to go through it seems. I just wish this craziness fades soon.