How the Fuck Is Anyone Doing Anything Right Now?!

Every morning I wake up, start my coffee, and immediately check the air quality, trying to discern exactly how much of my state is on fire at any given moment and how high I need to crank the air filters. Trying to discern whether or not it’s safe to go outside. And by outside, I literally only mean outside – like, the one square mile around my house – because I can’t go into a building anymore without putting my actual fucking life at risk.

Pandemic denial has reached a fever pitch. We, as a species, haven’t been particularly good at doing fuck-all anything about it, but we’re not even fucking talking about it anymore. We are all, collectively, shrugging and turning our backs. I personally know more people who actively have COVID, or have been recently exposed, than are actually taking it seriously anymore. Than are actually trying to not get COVID right now. Meanwhile, all the medical professionals in my life are issuing Doctor Doom-style decrees that if I don’t go into their virus-teeming hospitals to meet them, face-to-face, for two minutes of small talk that they can absolutely accomplish over Zoom, they’ll cut me off from care.

Even my fucking dogs are broken at this point. My wife tried to take the older one into work the other day and he basically had a panic attack. My therapist even (jokingly) (mostly) diagnosed him with pandemic-related PTSD.

Ever since I was diagnosed with CF-related diabetes and cut back on sugar, I’ve had very little energy. We’re talking, like, an entire fucking year at this point. My A1C has gone up somehow, too. In March, I was finally put on the miracle drug Trikafta, only it turns out I was put on at least ten times the fucking dose I was supposed to, and so the only miracle was that my liver didn’t disintegrate. I spent a fucking month functionally unfunctional, and I didn’t even get a sorry.

My anxiety and depression have, understandably, also been shittier than usual lately, so I increased those meds a while back and haven’t really been able to write since. I told my therapist, so we switched up some meds, and maybe that’ll help, but, in the meantime, I’ve got withdrawal, increased malaise, and diarrhea to deal with. Also, my other therapist – my talky-talk one – is having complications from a heart transplant and that’s not not an omnipresent and existential bummer.

A not-insignificant portion of this country is pushing for a slide into fascism. Scores of dead children don’t seem to bother us anymore. Nature is actively trying to murder us with fires and floods and droughts and all of it is entirely justified and we’re doing absolutely nothing to stop it. Supply chain issues and corporations pouncing on the idea of supply chain issues are making keeping the fridge stocked without going broke a genuine and fast-approaching problem. All of my local Walgreens have devolved into Mad Max-style wastelands, staffed entirely by the Squeaky-Voiced Teen from The Simpsons, making getting medications frustrating at best. Also, the radio station I listen to the most switched DJs, and even though I wasn’t a fan of the old guy, this new one is a thousand times worse and literally just hearing his voice will pull me away from whatever I’m doing and grind my brain to a screeching halt. And, also also, it’s been humid as shit lately and I didn’t move to the desert for it to be humid as shit.

I am 100% unsure how the fuck I’m supposed to do fucking anything right now, nevermind listicles and entertainment journalism. Nevermind writing short stories and novels that, at this point, it’s becoming clear no one is going to read. Or, okay, maybe four people are going to read.

I’m sitting on three finished novels (and one extensive, half-finished rewrite of one of those novels). I’ve racked up literally hundreds of agent rejections at this point, many of which were very polite if not outright flattering, but the entire publishing industry is in some kind of flaming free-fall right now, so if you’re not an established name or haven’t written a book that, as-is, is exactly the weirdly specific thing someone is looking for, you’re fucked. Several agents have said, point blank, that, as readers, they loved my video store horror book, but they don’t really handle comedy or coming-of-age or whatever the fuck single adjective out of six that describes the book, so they’re not even going to try. The YA adventure book is probably too long, definitely ten years too late, and also presumably leans too hard on being a Romeo and Juliet retelling in a post-These Violent Delights world. And as for the transplant novel, the single most common refrain was that, pre-pandemic, agents “couldn’t connect with the characters.” But now, post-pandemic, it’s too relatable and no one wants to deal with that ’cause they’ve already lived it. My story doesn’t add anything new to the conversation.

Which, by the fucking way, if you ever go through a huge and specific trauma, and then the rest of the world also goes through a very similar kind of trauma, and you think, finally, people will get it, people will understand and relate to what you’ve been through – ha ha ha ha fucking ha no they fucking won’t. They’ll just want you to shut up because they’re tired of thinking about it and you’re bringing them down.

Which, as an addendum to that addendum, having your entire fucking identity ostensibly erased because everyone is sick now, that’s just the basic human condition now, so shut up, you’re not special and, seriously, no one wants to talk about it, read the fucking room, dude – just fucking die already so we can all go back to our concerts and conventions without all your fucking whining – while, meanwhile, COVID transplants get all the front pages and CF transplants aren’t a thing anymore, and you’re just some relic of Stone Age medicine – and all of this should probably be a(n admittedly very unfortunate) boon to the chronically ill and disabled community – more sick people should mean more care and provisions for sick people – but, most assuredly, it is not – it’s a fucking trip. But, like, the bad, brown-acid kind of trip.

If I have a point here – and it is very questionable that I do – it’s that all of the above is going on inside my brain all the time, and I’ve got a feeling that everyone else is also dealing with at least some of it, but they’re also still functioning humans – making shit and doing shit and living lives – and I don’t really get how? Like, when I spoke to my therapist last week, she just openly said, yeah, we’re living in the end times, and then literally shrugged it off. And what I want to know is: how can I do that, too?

As a guy who wrote over 1,000 very sarcastic pages about living during the end of the world – as a guy whose entire life has been one kind of pandemic or another – as a self-avowed nihilist who sometimes has problems connecting correctly with other people – who sometimes has problems caring – I find it problematic that the apocalypse is bothering me. And since there’s not a chance in any version of hell we’re actually going to stop this slide into oblivion, all I want to know is how to enjoy the ride.

That really doesn’t seem like too much to ask.