It's been awhile.
I've been busy. Busy being a father, a dad, a renovator, a learn-as-you-goer, teacher's assistant, dog-walker, home-maker, etc etc. with little time for writing. I'm only here because I am on a sick day from work with it's own weird little backstory behind that which I won't get into.
I did Nanowrimo, which is a writing challenge held in November in which you try to type 50,000 words. I cut out an hour a day and my family let me with little to no distractions. I used that to edit a 1st draft I have let simmer for many months. It's a murder mystery thing; someone's killing pedophiles and it's done in three different points of views; a step away from my preferred Karmageddon world building.
It's a challenge in itself and I'm only like... 1/2 way done, even with Nanowrimo. And CoVid.
According to Worldometer.info, here are the latest stats worldwide; . 1,665, 000 deaths (about 3% of those who officially contracted it). In Canada there were 13, 865 deaths. They don't give out an age breakdown but that can be found with a little digging; last I checked, 96% were people over 80.
Yep, CoVid is still the thing. There are too many conspiracy theories to count and, depending on who you ask, faith in our leadership is plummeting. We have small owner-operated restaurants forced to close while McDonald's has their best sales ever. You can't have a wedding with more than 20 people (depending on where you are) yet Home Depot and Walmart are fine. You can't work out at a gym or have dinner with more than 4-6-10 family members but you can go into any store that is open as long as you wear a mask.
Masks are mostly mandatory the world over yet nobody mentions the mask-makers as part of any conspiracy. That's left to Big Pharma, two of whom have announced vaccines immediately after the US election win of Joe Biden over Donald Trump. And socialists; that one is fun. While the stock markets show huge gains (keeping the rich richer), somehow this is all a conspiracty for a great economic reset where everyone will get a (gasp) basic universal income.
As back when this first started, nobody really rich or famous has died. Tom Hanks was one of the first to get it and that would have been a game changer. But he was fine. As was Justin Trudeau's wife, Boris Johnson (UK premier), P!nk, Trump ('cured' over a weekend), a ton of other White House high-ups in his cabinet, Prince Charles.
I had my own theory at one time (writer brain kicking in) that this was a War of The Worlds/Invasion of the Body Snatchers thing where those who die are pod people, advance forces for alien overlords. It's not sensitive to those who have lost someone but we all have to try and make sense of all this in our own ways. If that involves me coming up with a Killer Alien Virus theory to explain why I can't watch my daughter play ringette, so be it.
Mostly, those who died have been old and with weakened immune systems. I went for a walk awhile ago and had this minor epipheny of how this is a Boomer reaction to the approaching of Death, as futile as it may be to fight it, they're going to try. It's backfired a little, such as so many have had to die alone, their families unable to hold their hands one last time, in fear of infection. When we, as a society, placed our elders in care homes, paid other people to care for them then get angry that they are dieing in these places we have put them, who really is to blame?
So we have people shouting online to wear your masks and other people shouting it makes no difference. In my province, nearly all the deaths were in long-term care homes (which are like bus stations for funeral homes). We have a 50 person cap on a hockey arena that sits 3000 and a 2 person cap in public restrooms.
We have this 'front-line workers are the real heroe' memes going around yet many of those are the cashiers who are keeping the economy running. There has been no mention of Big Banks or credit cards doing anything other than lip service to everyone falling deeper in debt. I don't know how that will play out but in the meantime, we try to keep as normal as possible.
Yet on my end, things are actually quite stable. We both kept our jobs; I caught up on a lot of side-projects such as building a front walkway, building a fence, bartering my labour from that to a 14ft aluminum boat and a utility trailer (which I then rebuilt). We resided our house, finally losing the avocado green aluminum siding and replaced 8 windows. Then to top it off, we have a new(er) truck, one that can actually tow the utility trailer! So yeah, sorry society is in the crapper and our alien overlords are about to run the show but I'm doing pretty darn good.
Now if I can only get a book deal.
