What's YOUR problem?

[Phoebe]

Sitting in a crowded waiting room with people cough, cough, coughing without even trying to bury it, wheeee! But still chill about it. Que sera sera. Now I am starting to deeply get why my dad is a cheerful fatalist. This is my now and future.

[Phoebe]

I'm a religious person but God damn it do religious people piss me off sometimes. Why would it be okay for LGBT people to be fired for being gay? Even if you think that it's immoral for your own warped "reason", because you don't even understand how to interpret the meaning of your own sacred text, Why would you think it's okay for employers to fire a person because you've got some kind of personal moral issue on top of your own stupidity?

And why is it important to you that other people believe in a God, or in your God? Pretty much the last thing I would want to do is rudely impose my thoughts about religion or spirituality on another person, especially another person who is vulnerable to being influenced by me without making their own free choice. What if we are all tumbling through meaningless nothingness, save for the moments when we are presented with ethical choices to which there is no possible good solution? What do we believe in then? If your God can't handle existential angst then maybe you need a better God, but I'm not the person to go telling other people that, so maybe we should all be modest on the subject and let people breathe and live.

Reader, oh, reader, I'm so sick of stupid people I don't even know how to capture the feeling anymore. The people in charge are legit puzzling over why a good dose of the flu shot couldn't help with the new virus. I'm done with this level of stupidity. If you aren't smart enough to understand why vaccines aren't one size fits all, you have no business voting much less holding an office. I have always thought that voting tests would lead to intolerable levels of disenfranchisement, probably of the people who are already most vulnerable to discrimination and disenfranchisement. But now I'm thinking maybe we really do need some kind of basic stupidity test for voting. Like if you can't do simple math and you can't solve simple reasoning problems, then you just can't vote. My friend has been arguing in favor of this proposition for years, while I always argue against it, so it scares me that I'm becoming extremely comfortable with this as a policy plan. He's going to be so pleased when he realizes he has finally convinced me. It would be unfortunate if a lot of people were disenfranchised, but if those people are going to carry us all to hell because they can't accomplish the most basic reasoning tasks, then maybe I'm truly done with the idea that they should be able to cast a ballot.

[akiva]

First cases of corona virus in Maryland.

[Phoebe]

OK, I talked myself out of the idea that voting should hinge on a stupidity test. I feel better having tried on the idea for size and then rejected it. Reason prevails in the end, damn it I am just up to here with these religious nuts.

[Ronster]

I would go along with that test, but I could see it growing into a "Values Clarification" test or a purity test.

[akiva]

[Phoebe]

It's okay, we wouldn't be able to test them even if they were all coughing and feverish! Nor would we even want to, because we need people to keep traveling and staying in hotels and keeping the stock market up and stuff. Didn't you know that the Democrats want millions of people to die?

Also pretty sure this is all Obama's fault; any flaw in our public health response is owing to his unspecified bad decisions, and by the way he was always calling the North Korean dictator and begging him to be friends. He wasn't born in the US, nor did he even salute the North Korean generals when he visited. On second thought if anyone did salute the North Korean generals it was probably Obama; Trump never would have done that.

But seriously people, you can't even describe corona flu people who are going to work and recovering just fine as having the corona flu in the first place.

[Tahlvin]

[akiva]

[Tahlvin]

[Ronster]

From my own point of view, that of a 50 something, white, male, Protestant, Christian, Fundamentalist I can only say that I personally would have just made the people the best cake I could with all the love in the world because I am going to see these people as someone Jesus saw as worth dying for. Who am I to say anything else? I think the bakers have bought into the legalism that says sinners are not to be associated with and such. I would have the same standards for commerce for all people. I am not sure what to do if people were rude or antagonistic. I would probably kick them out of my store at that point regardless of who they are.

[Phoebe]

I purchased extra deodorant to have on hand (prepper stuff, which has turned out to be important haha). I set one of the new deodorants next to my current one. Every morning this week I have accidentally picked up the wrong one, taken off the cap, and viciously scraped the plastic insert across my armpit. Apparently in the morning I am too stupid to just throw the plastic insert away or put the new deodorant away from the old one. Tragically stupid.

[Phoebe]

Proud of myself for being ruled by reason lately, but when you are physically constituted to have OCD there is an underlying toll. I can feel the weight of this tension my body is constantly fighting off along with the permanent headache from clenched face muscles. It's a massive challenge to de-clench whatever that is, grimly struggling against "me" under the face-surface.

I read some articles about the covid-prep/ocd interaction. Most were bogus nonsense from people who "Feel" very ocd but clearly have no clue, or who offered counterproductive (even risky) advice in the "soothe yourself" category, i.e. agreeing to listen carefully to experts about prevention measures (i.e. confirm your fears), and avoiding too much upsetting info. Wrong. You have to challenge yourself to behave sensibly; above all this is no time for self-soothing. That's for GAD or something, not for clinical OCD. This is a time for conscious ERP and lots of naps and good nutrition so that poor brain can restore itself.

I'm thinking of asking my counselor to write a shareable article on this, as I don't care to out myself to the universe as having OCD. But in the proliferation of noise advice we need some signal.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

Thank you for letting me air my grievances. It helps me to grasp what's happening without offering false reassurance or "everything will be okay".

Because OCD is tricky, It finds a way to the light no matter where you stuff it. Once you are feeling ok about everybody in your family being taken care of and following procedures as well as reason demands, it will find something new. I couldn't sleep hardly at all last night because the brain's new decision is that I am sick, with such slight symptoms that I can barely just notice that I'm sick, but clearly I'm going to poison the rest of the entire world in this way. I will bear the guilt and blood stains on my hands for countless untold deaths, because I had to go pick up medicine at the Walgreens drive-thru.

Also I contaminated my dog and then maybe somebody will pet my dog... Or maybe my kid will pet the dog and then touch something that someone else touches, but since I'm sick (not really) it will ultimately be my fault that everyone dies. OCD really does not care about reason as you see. Reason has no effect on it. I have things to do and do not have time for this. I think most people have thoughts of this nature but then are able to bat them away. It's exhausting. 16 hours now of relentless concentration from this dumb brain on the state of my throat. Why the throat and not, say, a creeping fever? Who knows. It's the throat. The constant monitoring for any possible twitch or itch or sensitivity anywhere between the eyes, nose, throat, lungs... feeling a slight muscle soreness from yesterday's workout and clearly that means plague is descending. Never mind that I've actually been exposed to people with influenza A recently (thanks to them for coming to work even though they had it - today's lesson is that almost all of these meetings could have been video conferences).

Reason has nothing to do with this. Maybe my failure to sanitize my entire body in 14 layers of bleach is going to cause impossible suffering in innocent people. Or maybe I will just lay here until the brain decides it is tired of being anxious. The word anxious is not right for these situations. Anxious is what you feel when you're a little bit worried about something.

[Phoebe]

I'm not going to point the finger of blame but someone (who knows, maybe me) broke my coffee maker and now, after deliberately cultivating a two cup per day coffee habit for medical reasons, I am bereft of coffee. The tea is zero effectiveness, I have resorted in desperation to drinking a Coke. Will try to super glue coffee maker. Don't even care about anything else stressful going on, I'm just like a roly poly bug that has rolled up until the coffee re-manifests itself

[akiva]

There are a lot of people who have much bigger problems than me, so I try to count myself lucky and keep perspective. But my fucked up brain keeps spewing forth the same petty adolescent bullshit, often popping up out of nowhere. So tonight my otherwise pleasant evening was swamped by memories and pathetic regrets and pain about the person i wish I’d never met. Just fucking pathetic. I’m pretty sure I’m incapable of growing/learning.

[Ronster]

My problem is that right now I am worried that I will infect my family because I may have work contact with an infected person:(

I have a better regimen at work and other places. I don't even touch the gas pump handle or the faucet knobs. When I get home I take off my work shoes and turn on the UV light on them. I then go and shower and change into home-clothes. I will put my clothes in a separate trash bag until I launder them. Short of wearing a mask and gloves I don't know what else to do, but I don't want to overreact either and cause my kids to panic. Fortunately my allergies have not kicked in and made me cough all the time...yet.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

Forgot to play Runelords. Probably should not stab myself but ... Well, maybe should. I stayed up until 4 am last night because at some point around 11 the total unprecedented weirdness of our current situation with pandemic hit hard and I was too freaked out to function. I sleep like a stone usually so that needs to stop happening. Nor would it have happened if I had played Runelords with y'all because I would have been a good mood and then just going to sleep. I'm supposed to be homeschooling right now. Big success.