Posted by This is long overdue, but with the Covid 19 lockdown where I live, I am now a full time parent and a full time employee, so free time has not been a thing.
Pandemos
This is first: I am no longer working with Pandemos. Several months ago, I turned the group over to a friend. There are any number of reasons behind this, primarily that, in January, various work commitments ramped up for me. Once I get the time and spoons, I need to look into how to turn over the website to someone else.
If I affiliate with a group in the future, it will be one that is democratically run. There will be no permanent head. There will be no extra authority granted to anyone on account of initiation into any tradition.
Right now, I’m just doing minor experimental crap with my friends online.
Family
Everyone in my family is healthy. I strongly suspect that our household has already had our brush with Covid, that we had an extremely mild case, and are probably all immune.
Alexis is now a full blown toddler, saying words, walking, running, and smuggling the number 2 home from daycare in their clothes. Of course, that last one happened before Santa Clara County issued “shelter in place” orders, and daycare stopped being a thing. My only complaint is that I would rather not read the same 10 books in a continuous loop
It’s nice to have a big poly family to support me during this time.
Mental Health
I’m doing pretty OK with the lockdown. I have no free time. None. Zero. Nadda. The last week has felt like three months. I have a backyard and I put a tent in it. I call it my “therapy tent.” When my big poly family, or the 24 hour news cycle, gets to be too much, I go in there and pretend I am camping.
With all of the plague and death afoot, about which I can do very little, it’s possible that being utterly overwhelmed by work, parenting, and household demands is what is keeping me sane.
My pottery had to go on hiatus, and that saddens me immensely. My art is a very big part of my identity and my spirituality, and it hurts to be separate from my artistic community and my community studio. I miss my pottery friends more than words can possibly express.
PSA: Ma Gender
This has been true for years, but a reminder that I am agender, and my pronouns are they/them. This isn’t an update, exactly, but I find it absolutely hilarious that the people castigating me on the internoodle tend to get this right, referring to me as, “that person,” or “they,” while others who seem to hate me a great deal less get it wrong, referring to some binary gender.
I bring this up because of the baby updates. For some reason, having a child and talking about this tends to cause people to misgender me more aggressively than usual.
If my gender makes you angry, take that shit up with your therapist. I declare it a you problem.
Magick From Scratch 
Thanks for the updates! It’s good to hear from you, and that you and yours are doing well, all things considered…
The thing I hate the most about this is I can’t go out at all, really. Having three underlying conditions that would make this thing deadly on their own, and having the three not play well together even when a pandemic isn’t raging, it would be a very bad idea to take a chance…and that is driving me a little bit nuts. But, even worse is that the transition for my “industry” to work-at-home was done in a snap and is easy…which means that now, I don’t have a time or place at home that work isn’t hanging over me, and that is annoying the hell out of me, because I’ve done relatively well at keeping work and home separate in this last few months for my own sanity. It sounds like you’re in a similar position, alas, so my sympathies are with you.
There are advantages to living alone, i.e. I don’t have to deal with anyone else’s issues at the moment directly. The major disadvantage is I am so starved for human contact that it’s driving me nuts. I get to see my mom once a week when she brings supplies/food, and that’s about it. I’m generally fairly introverted, but what I’m losing from not standing in front of a class on a several-times-a-week basis is inestimable, and I resent every second of it because of that.
I’m trying to find the good in all of this, and in the potential to do some work that I haven’t been able to do that my commute time alone daily would then give decent time to…but the anxiety and such is so ramped up I just spend a great deal of time paralyzed these days. Ugh…
In any case, again, thanks for letting us know how you are, and I will keep you in my prayers into the future if you’d like.
Ugh. Oh yes, I know that feeling.
A lot of us working from home right now are less productive than usual, and those of us with small children are even less productive. And yeah, when the work day is over, there is no liberating moment of walking out the door and closing it behind you. You just sort of stop working, and there’s just that vague feeling of… I’m not sure. Maybe a lack of closure, or a floating anxiety.
The answer, I know, is revising my expectations about how much I can get done under these circumstances. It’s difficult.
I think it’s ok to just… not be ok right now. It’s a Pandemic. There’s anxiety, grief, a disruption in our way of life… we’re all knocked for a loop. I take comfort knowing that it’s temporary.
Best of luck to you in finding a way to cope until this is over.
Love the idea of the tent in the garden!
Oh and I meant to add… I always try to respect people’s pronouns, even when they and I have fallen out. I had a miscommunication with a nonbinary person on Twitter and we blocked each other, but when I think of them (rarely), I still use their pronoun.
The use of they is slowly becoming more mainstream. I look forward to the day when being told people’s pronouns happens everywhere at the same time as being told their name. I was very heartened when a cisgender comrade in the NDP started putting his pronouns in his emails and encouraged everyone to do the same.
I’m so glad to read that you’re holding up okay. Us too.
So glad to hear it. Stay safe!
it is wonderful to hear from you and glad that you and your family are well. HUGS
On Sun, Apr 12, 2020 at 6:09 PM Magick From Scratch wrote:
> Thenea posted: “This is long overdue, but with the Covid 19 lockdown where > I live, I am now a full time parent and a full time employee, so free time > has not been a thing. Pandemos This is first: I am no longer working with > Pandemos. Several months ago, I turned the grou” >
I’m sorry to hear about the loss of pottery in your life and the identity impact of being cut off from your art. I’m feeling similar things myself and seeing others in my circles experience identity-shifting as well. I hope that these are indicative of some larger shift in our peoples for the better. Either way, I wish you well and the swift return of your art and artistic community.
Thanks.
I’m trying to do some drawing and painting to fill the void, but 2D art is just not my forte.
Many of my pottery friends are over 60, including my teacher. I’m genuinely worried for them.
Informal prediction: it will be Autumn before we see anything resembling a return to normal life, if not until a vaccine is produced.