I'm thinking about wearing a mask around the house.
I don't leave the house much. Only really go to the grocery store, occasionally to the mailroom place to drop off a package. That's it. I spend most of my time physically in a state of normalcy, not wearing a mask.
So when I dream, I rarely dream in a mask. My dream self hasn't gotten into the habit of mask-wearing. So I keep having these dreams where I'm in public and I realize that I'm not wearing a mask and I get freaked out and it derails the dream, whatever the dream was about, it's now about looking for a mask.
Except for the one where I was Poirot and I couldn't find a waistcoat that matched my suit. That one was weird.
Pre-election, I was getting a lot of news from podcasts. I wasn't always keeping up with all of my pods, because… well, I'm not going anywhere, and I don't listen as often when I don't go places. After the election… everything in the past seems "before."
Actually, that's not exactly true. This is a continuation of the pandemic.
I've gone through a bunch of purges of my pods. Podpurges. Around March, I looked at my unlisteneds and… started deleting a bunch. Episodes. Whole channels. Everything that was "from the beforetimes" suddenly seemed so ancient that I didn't want to listen anymore.
Now, post-election, is the same. "This episode is from a week ago, when people were still speculating about whether there'd be a coup. So much has and hasn't happened since then."
Now that the election is over, it's all about COVID again. In my head. Because… because everybody is dumb and traveling and getting lazy about masks. I've been doing a lot of deleting. Trying to clear some space. Making room… for the fear? For the persevere? Not even sure yet.
The other day I ordered a bottle of Aleve from Evil Internet Overlord B because I was too freaked out to walk 10 blocks to go to the drugstore and the little grocery store I go to only had tiny bottles. This is not how I want the future to look. But I'm preparing myself emotionally, because if this is the last global pandemic I see in my lifetime, I'll eat my mask.
Maybe then I'll remember to wear it in my dreams.