Joel Mathis

Photo by  cottonbro  from  Pexels Damir Marusic reflects on the emotional damage done by two years of pandemic: Maybe as the variants get less deadly and we get better at managing sporadic outbreaks of novel mutations, something approaching the previous normalcy will re-emerge. But that’s not really what we mean when we say “getting back to normal.” We want to have our innocence restored, to once again believe in a kind of permanence to our lives. I think that’s gone for good, though. That longed-for permanence is similar to the sense of ourselves we have before we experience the death of a friend. We implicitly believed we were somehow indestructible. Not immortal, but that the same rules didn’t exactly apply to us. A friend’s death shows us that in fact they do. It’s the same with COVID. It’s a lesson we can, with time, choose not to dwell on but can never unlearn. It’s a part of growing wiser. Eventually we move on, having internalized these hard lessons. Eventually, we straighten

I find that after a couple of months of getting out, seeing people, and really enjoying it, I'm reverting to old habits from the early quarantine era -- not leaving the house much, not exercising much, and not engaging the world beyond my driveway all that much. I'm vaxxed, but the pandemic is raging once again and the old habits kept me alive for more than a year.  But I've got to be more intentional about all this. I don't want to go back to the old ways.

 I literally just put on a belt for the first time in a year.

It's really cold in Lawrence, Kansas this week -- the temperature as I write this is 8 degrees Fahrenheit. As a result, I've been forced inside more than usual. Instead of spending an hour or two a day strolling along the Kansas River and chilling out, I've more or less been home all day. (I did make a trip to Sonic just to sit and read, but without the Vitamin D and physical activity, it's just not the same thing.) So I'm having one of those moments where pandemic-induced isolation is driving me a little bit crazy. Feeling edgy, sad, tired, depressed. More than usual, I mean. We've been mostly isolated for nearly a year now. Haven't left town. Haven't seen my wife's parents. Haven't gotten to stand closer than six feet to my dad.  I'm tired of this. I'm not feeling resilient.

 ...when I see my reflection while wearing a mask and see my dad's eyes looking back at me.

When my family returned to Lawrence, Kan. in 2016, there was a group of people waiting at the house we were moving into to help us move in. It was a tremendous affirmation of our decision to come "home," reflecting the relationships we'd made here during my first stint living in the town from 2000 to 2008. I feel like I've squandered that moment. I'm reading Timothy Carney's " Alienated America " at the moment, and early on he describes the realization that the people who had helped his family were all connected by institutions. Even before the pandemic, I was a freelance writer who works from home and who attends church once or twice a year. It didn't feel great! I could go days without leaving the house, even, unless I made a real effort. Oh, I have a few friends I see now and again, and sitting outside the coffee shop with a socially distanced group of men has saved my sanity over the last few months, but the truth is it has been awhile since

I dreamed last night I went without a mask into a crowded restaurant where nobody else was wearing a mask, and realizing I probably had just signed my own death warrant. I didn't sleep well last night.

I've been thinking lately that we Americans are going to need a virtue we haven't been much called on to collectively display lately: Endurance. It seems likely that we're not going to live so close to the top of Maslow's pyramid as we have for most of my lifetime, but that doesn't mean we can or should give up. We're simply going to have to learn to endure bad times and persevere through them. Our art these days doesn't teach us much about endurance, but it used to. I listened to this song this morning: Well, there's a dark and a troubled side of life There's a bright and a sunny side too But if you meet with the darkness and strife The sunny side we also may view Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side Keep on the sunny side of life It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way If we keep on the sunny side of life Oh, the storm and its fury broke today Crushing hopes that we cherish so dear Clouds and storms will in time pass awa

My big regret from the last decade or so of my life is that I've spent too much time living in my head and in cyberspace and not enough in real life with real people, and now that it's better to live in cyberspace than in real places, I find I'm going a bit stir-crazy. I miss tangible experiences.

I am at the stage of pandemic isolation where there isn't much left for me to re-watch on TV that brings comfort -- or, at least, I can't do it without diminishing returns. "Parks & Rec" is great, but you can only go to that well so many times. I've been allowing myself some socially distanced socialization lately -- mostly, standing out in front of the coffee shop with a small group of men (it's usually all men, most of them a bit older than I am) -- and chatting for a few minutes. Is it distanced enough? I don't know. I'm terrified it's not. But I've also been going stir-crazy in isolation, so I've decided I will allow myself that little bit. If the crowd gets too large, I leave. I hope I don't regret it. I hope my family doesn't regret it. There isn't a lot bringing me joy these days. The other morning, walking my daily two miles in the rain, I felt a sense of well-being I haven't felt in awhile. But it passed. Most d

  Yesterday, I was so angry at the state of the world -- justifiably, I think -- that I actually thought for a few minutes I was giving myself a heart attack. I wasn't. But the rage I was feeling about everything manifested itself as, well, physical pain. Since the beginning of August, I have been getting out every day to walk a couple of miles. Before that, I'd gotten very pandemic sedentary: My Apple Health app tells me I averaged 365 steps a day in July. That's bad. So I made a goal of 5,000 steps a day, and I've mostly stuck with it. It is the most consistent exercise I've gotten since 2002. (My body and I don't always have a great relationship. I'm kind of a "stuck in my head" guy. Anyway, it was raining this morning. I walked anyway. Through the downtown of my suburbanish college town and back, through the park. And I felt something I hadn't felt in months, maybe years: Maybe it was joy? I don't know. It felt good, though. The state

 It might be a long school year.

I realized today that by trying to read every book at the same time, I'm not making a huge amount of progress at any reading. So. Back down to two books or so -- one fiction, one non-fiction -- and try to make a go of it from there.

  This place was once my home away from home. I don't mean that casually. In my late 20s and early 30s, when I was still single, I would often stop by in the morning for a cup of coffee before going to work. I'd grab a quick bite to eat at lunch, then sit here with a book for 20 or 30 minutes with a second cup of coffee. And many evenings, after grabbing a quick supper, I'd sit here in the evening for more reading and another cup. (This was back before I realized that all the caffeine was messing up my sleep.) This was my Cheers. I knew the names of all the regulars. They knew me. Some of my longest friendships were formed here -- before the pandemic set in, my family was having regular suppers with a woman who was a barista at this shop for more than a decade. When I stopped going to church in the mid-aughts, this was where I spent my Sunday mornings. La Prima Tazza is still alive. But right now it's not the same, obviously. There is no lingering over a book in the fro

A lot of people have been in "comfort food" reading mode since the pandemic started, and I can't blame them. On the TV front, I've rewatched COMMUNITY already, as well as -- God help me -- COUGAR TOWN. Which is bad. Really bad. And yet. On the book front, though, it's a different story. I feel like, suddenly, I am running out of reading time and so I am trying to cram in every great book I've ever wanted to read. I don't have patience for the sci-fi pulp I was reading as recently as January. I want books I suspect will enrich me, challenge me, or teach me something. And I panic at the thought of all the reading I want to do that is, as yet -- and might well forever be -- unfinished. Right now, I am juggling four books -- trying to get a chapter a day or more out of each. LETTERS FROM A STOIC, by Seneca MOBY DICK, by Herman Melville THE REACTIONARY MIND, by Corey Robin FREDERICK DOUGLASS: PROPHET OF FREEDOM by David Blight. I've also, in the last few mo

Just a quick note: I think the relative isolation of not-quite-full quarantine is getting to me. I am cursing more these days, more likely to lose my temper than I have been for awhile. Most of the time, I don't even realize that I'm on the raggedy edge until I hear myself say something kind of shitty out loud. I don't like this. For the sake of my family and my own sanity, I need to figure out how to better let off steam. I worry I am becoming this guy:

Here is how I deal with the stress of being stuck mostly in a small house with a kid who hasn't seen his friends in four months: I go to Sonic every day at noon and order a large iced tea. I sit there for an hour in the family minivan, more or less, but basically until I've finished eating all the ice in the cup.  It gets me out of the house. I can sit in the shade for an hour, socially distanced. I can get away from the people I am around all the time . And it gives structure to the day.  I'm sure there is a better way of getting these benefits than sitting at Sonic every day. But it seems to be what I am capable of right now.

I used to be an extrovert. When I was single, it was rare the night I went home from work, had a meal, and went to bed. I'd stay out, and stay out late -- not always with people, but always in a place where I could be with people. Getting married didn't change that -- not the desire part, anyway. (Obviously, my habits did.) Having a kid didn't change that. But the surgeries I had in 2011 did. Going out since then has taken energy. It's been difficult to arse myself to do much but sit on the couch and stare at a computer. Occasionally, I'd get out to have breakfast with a friend. But mostly I stayed home, even to work. I missed my old way of being, but I also didn't know how to be a person among people the way I used to.  It was kind of depressing. So. Not a lot changed for me when the pandemic set in. I work at home. I stare at the screen. I eat. I go to sleep. Somewhere in the last week, though, I've hit my limit. I am desperate for people again. I miss hug

Oh boy: As I mentioned earlier today, we've already decided to keep our son at home this fall. You know why we made that decision? Well, it had nothing to do with Donald Trump. Taking this tweet at face value, it means that the president of the United States cannot conceive of reasons why schools and parents would not want to fill up the classrooms this fall -- unless it's to make him look bad. He is so self-centered that the idea that people don't want to die, or that schools don't want to risk their students or be liable for that risk. He can only conceive of how that reflects on him. Let me be clear: I wouldn't be sending my son to school this fall even if it meant that going or not going could guarantee Joe Biden's presidential victory. Again: Our decision had nothing to do with Donald Trump. But Trump cannot understand a universe in which he is not the center, in which people make decisions based on their own interests instead of how it affects his. His na

We officially made the decision this week: Our son -- a rising seventh grader -- will be learning from home this fall. We don't love this decision. The boy is better at learning in a classroom setting than in digital, distanced-learning environment. He would love to see his friends again. But despite President Trump's constant pressure on schools to reopen, I'm just not comfortable that sending him back to school is the best decision -- for his health, for the health of anybody working at the school, or for us in his family. And there's stuff like this : An overnight summer camp in rural southwestern Missouri has seen scores of campers, counselors and staff infected with the coronavirus, the local health department revealed this week, raising questions about the ability to keep kids safe at what is a rite of childhood for many. Missouri is one of several states to report outbreaks at summer camps. The Kanakuk camp near Branson ended up sending its teenage campers home.