Every day I work, and it feels like things are normal. But then I return to my chair to read my book or check the news... and then I remember

Work is an escape and it’s a privilege to have something so engrossing, but there is a dissociative quality to making this switch

We just went to the the ice cream shop to cheer up. Masks, lines marked with tape on the sidewalk, no sitting outside on the patio to people watch and feel time lazily pass by.

I’m so grateful to be healthy enough to go get an ice cream. How dare I complain? But I still feel it.

When I hold meetings it seems so normal. We are compartmentalized (mostly) into our work selves and they are shinier and happier, like always. But now the shine is wearing off me. Half the time I don’t bother with makeup, or wash my hair for a week. No one cares on Zoom.

Sometimes, it seems like we are all collaborating on performance art together.

I perform my job.
I perform my life.
The uncanny valley version of me, as a coping mechanism for all the reminders of death.

Or maybe this is just a continuation of my latest midlife crisis

Tomorrow, someone at work who read this will ask me if I’m okay. I want to give them a big hug. I want to lie and say “nah I’m fine that’s just what I do on Twitter, start shit...”

I want to know when we will collectively grieve for 500,000 souls