<Rant Alert> Had a moment of grasping, accepting, and loathing the reality that this pandemic sheltering life is here for the long haul. I don’t fucking like it. 1/

It didn’t need to be this way. It never should have been this way. We did this to ourselves. Our leaders failed us. Our ignorance and selfishness outweighed our decency and respect for the communal good. 2/

All we had to do was wear a small cloth on our faces to have a semblance of normalcy, but even that was to much for our “freedom”. Don’t tread on me, right? A minuscule inconvenience to safeguard your neighbors. Too much to ask? 3/

So what now? Seriously, what now? We wait for a politicized vaccine rushed to completion with a backdrop of the most contentious election in modern history? We watch as the antivax, anti-science, anti-reason crowds refuse vaccines? 4/

We watch as schools roll the dice with our children’s health and safety and make the majority of us home school teachers? How are we numb to the reality that 200,000 of our neighbors, friends, and loved ones are dead? How many of them didn’t have to die? 5/

And for what? What gains have a blissful disregard for common good gotten us? What have we learned? How will that knowledge help us save the next 100k? Could we muster collective will to do that if we knew how? Like school shootings, are these deaths are just part of life now? 6/

I’m an optimist. I’m a pissed-off optimist because this whole self-inflicted situation offers few rays of hope for our short or mid-term future to hold onto. It’s note easy to hold onto hope and optimism when every day is an avalanche of shit. 7/

Let’s get our shit together. Let’s take care of our neighbors and respect that we must all be in this together if we ever want a return to normalcy. I still believe we are collectively more decent than selfish. I have to hold onto that. </rant>