The World That's Coming

All things considered, I think it took about a week and a half before I realized that self-isolation was getting to me. I’d known before that that I was feeling off; I was more tired than usual, finding it harder to concentrate and just generally slower. But, overall, I told myself, I was holding together pretty well.

That’s probably true, in the grand scheme of things — certainly, judging from what I could see on social media and the internet in general, there were those dealing with things far worse, and in far more dramatic manners than I — but I was ignoring, or perhaps simply entirely unaware of, a tension growing inside me the entire time.

This isn’t a story of how I snapped, though, because I didn’t. There wasn’t one dramatic moment where I threw everything on the ground and yelled that I couldn’t do it anymore. (Sorry; I’m sure it would’ve been exciting.) Instead, I just had this slow moment of realization through other people’s behavior that, hey: everyone needs to give themselves a break right now, and that includes me. Somehow, that was enough.

It doesn’t seem to make sense, I know, and dramatically, it’s a disappointment. Yet, it’s what really happened. I had this realization that I was more overwhelmed and overloaded than I’d actually accepted, and that realization in itself somehow felt like a release of pressure. Just thinking about it made it better, counterintuitively.

I’m not entirely sure what happened, if it was simply that I allowed myself the imperfection of being overwhelmed, or whatever — it’s not that I prided myself  in having it altogether during all of this, but perhaps I felt good about not losing it entirely — but just the thought of, if I need to, I’m allowed to admit this is a lot and do something about it felt like something big and important nonetheless. That alone meant something, and still does.

Honestly, that’s probably for the best; with everything that’s going on right now, it’s not as if there’s much alternative to feeling better about things. I can’t exactly go out and see a movie while eating a shitty burger and good tater tots to decompress or anything.

The largest window in the bedroom faces east, as does the bed; it only makes sense, then, that I watch the sun rise more often than not. It’s part of my morning routine, now, especially in the winter months and early spring when I wake up long before it happens. I lie in bed reading or writing, waiting for the show.

Some mornings, it happens subtly — the day just slowly begins as the sky lightens with no great fanfare. The blues soften and, inevitably, turn to the greys of the clouds that hang in the sky on those mornings, with none of the drama of other sunrises; the day just rolls out of bed and stumbles into being, rubbing its eyes and mumbling to itself on the way to the bathroom.

Other mornings, it’s more dramatic but no more bright, as the rain and/or wind storming keeps everything in motion and loudly declaring its presence and the day sneaks in behind this main event, afraid to upstage it. It’s just suddenly light, daytime, and you’re not sure when that actually happened. (On these days, “light” is a misnomer, because the overcast dimness just perpetually feels like twilight through the entire day, because of course it does. But still.)

And there are the best sunrises, the ones where the light hits the clouds or whatever is in the sky just right and everything becomes color, these all-so-vivid yellows and reds and oranges and pinks and purples, and it just amazes. The mornings where you look on with wonder and think to yourself, this is how art got started because how can you look at this and not get inspired? and just look on quietly.

(I try to take photos of such mornings often, holding up my iPad and hoping that this will be the morning that it works, but it never is. How could it be, though? The colors are so vivid that it would never photograph well.)

Each morning, no matter my mood or what I’m doing, how stressed I am about whatever, there’s always at least one instant where I notice the sunrise and stop to pay attention. It’s become a ritual of sorts, and one that reminds me to not get too wrapped up in my own nonsense.

I’m glad everything faces east in the bedroom.

I hate April Fools Day. I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before.

I must have liked it once, I’m sure; there are vague memories of being a kid and laughing hard at the kind of kid “pranks” that get pulled on April 1st, when there’s no demarcation between joking and outright lying and anything and everything is deemed permissible if you shout APRIL FOOL at the top of your lungs afterward, so I’d like to think that I’ve not always been this much of a curmudgeon.

By my early twenties, though, I was already over it. I remember there being some attempt at a big April Fools stunt when I was at art school, and the utter disdain and disgust I felt at the very notion when it was first suggested to me, a passion for eye-rolling that only comes from being so young. Even then, though, it was something that I found tiring and pointless and, most of all, almost painfully un-fun. Why bother?

My true hatred didn’t arrive until I started writing on the internet for a living, however. In a trend that, thankfully, died off as we all got older and wiser, there was once a point where April 1st was when internet writers were encouraged to just lie in order to try and fool readers with something so “funny” and “outrageous” that it would drive up page views and those all important ad views as readers incredulously clicked through to share their anger and frustration at the news that wasn’t real. And then, get this, we were encouraged to write a second article, revealing that we’d been lying all along and betraying the readers’ trust in us! For fun and profit! It was, uh… “hilarious,” apparently.

And then, once that had died off, there was the horror of having to try to report news on a day when you literally couldn’t believe anything, because lying was the law. More than once on April 1st, I’ve written stories about things that seemed entirely real, only for it to subsequently be revealed as a joke where the entire joke was, “That thing isn’t happening.” All April 1sts should be considered days when all reporting is suspended, just to save time.

Only joking! I love April Fools and you’re all dumb for believing what you just read and this is a funny joke because oh God, I can’t even go through with it. April Fools Day, you fucking suck as a concept and an annual event.