The World That's Coming

Perhaps it’s because March felt like the month that would never end, but I’ve been surprised how quickly April has gone; there was a point in the middle of the month where I had to look up the date and felt genuinely surprised by how quickly we’d reached the teens, as if they’d crept up behind me and jumped out in surprise: Hello, it’s April 17th already aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! 

What had actually happened, I suspect, is that the strange, disturbing sensation of days beginning to blur together and seem meaningless in this era of self-quarantine was starting to take hold of me, as well. When time itself seems to be an arbitrary concept — is it Thursday or Friday? Oh, it’s actually Wednesday? Really? — then it’s not the biggest surprise that any sense of time passing in a larger sense starts to fray around the edges, as well.

It was, again, mid-month that I realized that I’d lost track of how long we’d been in quarantine; I’d been telling myself it had just been four weeks, but I’d lost one and we’d been internally quarantined for five already at that point. It was a realization that was part oh, I’m so forgetful, silly me and part wait, am I losing it? all at the same time. Which feels entirely appropriate and authentic to the world as-is, to be blunt.

I don’t subscribe entirely to the view that every day is the same now — I’ve always worked from home, so there’s definitely a sense that my day-to-day isn’t significantly different from what it was, just busier and more compact — but I can’t deny that time certainly feels different right now, in ways I can’t fully wrap my head around… More elastic in some ways, more malleable, without the edges and the shape that used to make everything recognizable.

There’s no punchline here, nor a smart realization or wrap up that puts everything in perspective; I’m just living in the moment same as everyone else, trying to make it through. But, as counter-intuitive as it may be, I’m excited that April passed so seemingly quickly; all things considered, I’d rather time flies than crawls as we collectively hope that things can change and we get to open our doors and see people again.

And then, there was the time where I did four podcasts in a five day period, which was both eye-opening, and somewhat exhausting. All four were comics-based, and all four required re-reading a bunch of material — two of them needed hundreds of pages each — and drawing some kind of critical analysis. Suffice to say, it was a pretty full five days.

The scheduling was actually entirely accidental; three of them were long-standing commitments, and only one had been scheduled significantly in advance — that one was an episode of Drokk!, the monthly series re-reading Judge Dredd with the far-smarter-than-me Jeff Lester; I’d say that was also the least stressful of the four, if it wasn’t for the fact that I had to edit it the next day, too. Each of the others, though, kind of just coincidentally happened at the same time.

(They actually all started to be scheduled on the same day earlier that week, all via Twitter DM. It’s actually kind of amazing how much of my work and/or work-related conversations happen via Twitter DM these days; they’ve started to take the place of texts, which took the place of emails some time back. There’s an evolution of shorthand, but important, ways people get in touch with me for work that’s kind of fascinating. But I digress.)

So, I scheduled the podcasts and staggered them out: one on Thursday, one on Saturday, two back-to-back on Monday. (They were two episodes of the same show, so it made sense.) This way, I told myself, I’d have a breather and time for my brain to readjust and prepare for the next one without it being too much.

Reader, I was wrong.

I was wrong for the simplest reason, which is just that… life happens. There’s relationships and work and, shockingly, a need to actually switch off at some point or else you’ll go mad, and all of that makes fitting in hour long recording sessions, and finding the many hours required to do the homework ahead of time, trickier than I’d initially given any thought to. In theory, I knew this already — I do it monthly for Drokk!, after all — but what I can handle for one event per month is, it turns out, somewhat different than four in less than a week.

Each of the podcasts, I enjoyed doing a lot. I certainly don’t regret doing any of them, and I think I did a pretty good job on each, even if I’ll never listen to any all the way through again. But, in future, if this ever comes up again, I’m going to be kinder to myself and ask for a schedule that lets me breathe and think about something other than comics for awhile.