The featured image above is from yesterday (3/17), showing grandson Hudson modeling perfect social distancing behavior. I really miss that little guy right now.

My friend Robert over at Blue Heron Blast challenged his readers to write an essay of their thoughts during this weird, scary time of the virus. Here’s mine.

The outlook for the US is rather bleak, mostly due to the lack of widespread testing. It’s a federal leadership failure of the first order. You had one job, Federal Gov, just one job – keep your citizens safe. And you blew it. When all this is over, I trust there will be hell to pay.

My wife and I have been self-quarantined for ten days now. We started sooner than most, because (a) I decided early on that this was likely to be bad, plus (b) we’re in a bad age bracket for this risk, and (c) we pretty much stay home anyway other than travel and special events. So social distancing isn’t a big lifestyle change for us. We live in a rural area, we’re very self-sufficient (in the short term), we have plenty of food and water. So this is just a more extreme/extended version of what we call normal life.

However, I am crushed by the fact that several of our family and loved ones have to go out every day to work right now and face the virus head-on. They work in health care. My brother Mark, sister-in-law Deeanne, daughter Emily, cousin Donnie, sister-in-law Jill, our great friend Tania – they all have to go out into the world and risk their health to help others. I get it and I admire them, but I’m worried sick for them.

I’ll have to say, if I did believe in god I’d be praying hard. But I believe that there’s no hand of any supreme being in this, just like there’s no intervention in a million other small and large evils every day. I’ll admit that my parietal cortex is lighting up hard right now – that part of the brain that wants to believe in religion grabs onto something like this and says “See! This is what happens when you <choose one or all of the following> ignore god’s law, destroy the environment, overpopulate, etc.

On a less bleak and existential plain, this shelter-in-place existence is giving me the perfect opportunity to do something I’ve wanted to for decades – write a complete novel. I have nothing but time, and I’m using a lot of that to drive forward and finish one. I’m doing pretty well, and should be finished with a first good draft by mid-May. So there’s that.

Final thought is that this event will likely define us as a nation and perhaps a world for decades to come. 9/11 was a small wave compared to this tsunami. So assuming I’m around to see the world on the other side of this, it will be interesting.