Tuesday

Will take Dax on a pre-workday hike in a few minutes.  Had crazy dreams last night, the theme was social isolation, although ex-boyfriends from decades ago made appearances.  I'm also finally horny again, 16 days after my last orgasms.

According to my calendar, today is Dax's 10th birthday, although T records a different day -- I'm not sure either of us really knows Dax's date of birth, we (and K) didn't acquire him until December 2010.

Catching up on work seems impossible these days ... but I continue to triage.

I should go put on hiking shorts and hiking boots!

stuff

Still haven't caught up with T about money stuff, we've just been too busy, he had that class over the weekend, and it is finishing tonight.  I'm not concerned about myself, I had enough cash to cover the basement repair or I wouldn't have signed the contract -- but I cannot dig deeper into my wallet for my sister's surprise request until I've worked out the latest spending with T.  I've pretty much let go of the guilt about this, however.  Her request was sort of the Last Straw of Guilt that broke through a huge pile of guilt I was already carrying around, and I'm still figuring out what that means.  When I wrote over the weekend about how I don't have to be all those zillions of perfectionist things, that was the moment when my back broke and I gave up.  Since then I've been giving myself permission to have more fun, although I've still been busy since I returned to the house.  Work, chores, exercise.

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Talking with K after he's moved to Portland made it feel more real somehow.  Instead of processing feelings about his move, it's like I teleported directly to the reality that he has now moved.  So now my regular in-person social circle is 50% smaller than it had been, until I either do something about it, or I Receive the Vaccine -- which will be untold months from now.

Seeing B in person on Sunday was good.  I never really wanted him to disappear from our lives, the anger I felt toward him was because he had disappeared from our lives after his husband moved in, and so I was willing to follow through and just leave him behind and move on.  But T ultimately refused to move on, and now B and his husband are in the process of separating, so ... in a month or two I'll probably be seeing a lot more of B.

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On the Polyamory subreddit, people have been popping in and asking, "How do I meet other poly people?"  And I've been responding, "It's a Pandemic, you don't!  The more responsible poly people aren't open for business right now!"

Though I wonder whether I will ask any of the people I already know to become physically intimate soon.  I can't see myself wanting to hookup with a new stranger until After the Vaccine.

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What if the vaccine is only 50% effective, sort of like a flu shot, what then?

I will nevertheless return to as normal a life as I can.  To the extent other humans will join me, after they've received the vaccine also.  Because if it is only 50% effective, than that's our new reality.  We cannot continue to social distance and wear masks and avoid multi-household gatherings for the rest of our lives.  It would be nice if sick people would stay home, to reduce the spread of germs, but we have to return to normal eventually.

All of this social distancing was to buy time until we have a vaccine, and to flatten the curve until then.  If we were to never have an effective vaccine at all -- if all the dozens of vaccine candidates fail -- we'll just have to give up and let the million or two million people die so we can return to normal lives.

It would've been great if the US could've done what some other countries have done, implementing strong test, trace, and isolate regimes, to save more lives along the way to a vaccine.  But is a country like New Zealand supposed to cut itself off from the rest of the world indefinitely if there is never a vaccine?  When over 99% of the population would survive infection?  Eventually a majority of the population is going to say, fuck it, we'll take our chances.

I'm holding out until I get the vaccine, and then I'm returning to normal.  I will have given up 12-18 months of my life to avoid this thing, and that's plenty.  If there's never a vaccine, I may as well get sick in my early 50s when I still have a good chance of beating it.

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So I understand, to some extent, the people who don't want to wait for a vaccine, and just want to return to normal now.  Especially the young folks who don't have much risk.  I'm willing to keep up these protective measures until we get a vaccine, but not forever.  Some people feel like we've already given up too much.  But it's about how many hundreds of thousands of people will die in this country so you can go back to normal.

What's your empathy level, what's your fear level, what's your courage level, or are you just stupid and don't even know what the risks really are.

If the vaccine is only 50% effective, I expect a large chunk of people will continue to hide from the virus indefinitely, because of their own personal risk factors, their own fear and empathy levels, or maybe they live with elderly relatives.  We'll just have to see what kind of vaccines we get.