Blind inFlight

    Hi everyone, how are you all doing?
    It’s hard to know what to come here and say, honestly. I feel the desire to write to you, and yet I have nothing of interest to write about. I haveo/,n’t been traveling. I haven’t been on a bus since March, so I have no good “people being annoying on public transit” stories. I realized the other day that I have, somewhat without meaning to, crafted a very busy virtual life, what with choir practice and recorder trio rehearsals and, along with my teammates, completely reorganizing the Real Rent Duwamish campaign. I still work my dayjob. I take writing seminars. I talk to friends on the phone and my family on Zoom. I cook and make jam sometimes and watch my dog retrace circles around the living room and kitchen. I take my pole dance classes, virtually. I started kayaking on Wednesdays with a friend who is now my neighbor, and that’s pretty much the outside in the world highlight of my week. I read my books. I rack up meters on my rowing machine.
    So I am busy. It’s a nice life, really. I am no longer constantly obsessed with remembering the last time I left the house and calculating when I might get the opportunity to leave the house again. That desire has gone from panicky and grasping to low-grade, always in the back of my mind but not particularly urgent. Our “new lives” are becoming chronic instead of immediately shocking, and I feel the sustained fatigue of my “new life.”
    I have a gratitude practice, which I’ve been doing for several years, where I write down something I’m grateful for at the end of each day. Sometimes it’s more than one thing, but I only require myself to write down one so that I have no excuse not to do it. Looking back over the last few months, my gratitudes have become simple, present-focused moments: sitting in the sun, eating a peach, steaming coconut milk for my coffee. (Actually, many if not most are food related.)
    Intentional gratitude does help me constantly check my privilege. I am safe. I don’t have an essential job. I am ok right now.
   But I do have to hope for life to be more than this again. Someday. Please.