Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Virus pt.1

So things have been pretty crazy as of late. Yes, I know that sounds like a broken record at this point. But this is unprecedented. I've never seen anything like this my entire life. This is what it's like during wartime by the way for all you youngsters out there. I've decided I'm going to start a series about life during the virus. Really get into the nitty-gritty details. Some of it might be a bore but nonetheless, I think it's an important time to write down all our thoughts on digital paper [ :D ] while the crisis goes on. Who knows,  maybe it will be of use to us as a record. Life during the New Dark Ages. I coined that term first. You read it here first folks. 

Okay, so I've decided on calling the coronavirus the zombie apocalypse virus because for one thing it just sounds way cooler. Much sexier. Yes, I know that corona apocalypse has been trending on Twitter but let's face it folks, that name sucks. The zombie apocalypse virus is better. Because essentially that's sort of what it's like. Sure there are no real zombies walking around but the fact that there are people who have the virus who don't know they have the virus makes them a lot like zombies. And the fact that the elderly are at risk too. Zombies would love killing old people. Oh, the humanity! 

But seriously! Okay, so work has been pretty intense the last two weeks straight. Just in case you're new here, I work retail at a grocery store. Yeah, I know, hard to believe a guy who works retail spends all his time reading science fiction and philosophy. 

We've been swamped with so many freakin' customers nonstop. The first two weeks were absolutely nuts. No carts, no wipes by the door, no bags for the groceries to be put into, no water, no wipes, no sanitizer, no toilet paper, and that was just the first two weeks. We could barely get the customers out and sometimes the wait times were 20 mins or longer. 

The parking lot is a disaster zone. You can't even walk out into the parking lot without possibly getting run over. People are in mass pandemic panic mode right now. It's scary. Ce la vie, that's life. Keep in mind that they just closed another branch of our store down the street so we have all this increased traffic from that recently closed store. Adding to that is the fact that our store is also remodeling the store every night for the next two months. Bad timing! 

So two weeks of this go by. The workers are exhausted. Management doesn't have a clue what they're dealing with. Especially with the sickness and/or spread of it. Enter week three. The store runs out of most items. Most items. Almost all the shelves in the store are empty. Everyday. All-day. The only time we can restock the shelves is at night when the store is closed. The solution? We open later and close earlier. New emergency coronavirus store hours: 8am to 8pm, every day, indefinitely. This is every grocery chain out here by the way. Oh, boy!

Despite the fact that the store is closing early every night, management is still making a lot of the staff stay late during the evenings, some of us as late as 1am, which is my normal gig at that little store. We clean, grab all the carts in the parking lot, take out the garbage, and put all the gobacks back where they belong. It ain't much but it's honest work. There's a real art to the gobacks work now. With almost all the items gone, mia from the shelves, you have to match all the items with the UPC code stickers and find the items that way. It's a bitch. I don't even think upper management would have the patience for that kind of work. They would say it's beneath them. Or perhaps they would get frustrated instantly with how tedious it truly is? You decide. Either way, it's definitely one way of making us work hard for our paycheck.   

The one thing that is very scary about the retail gig and the zombie apocalypse virus going on at the same time is the fact that there's a reported case of the virus at a hospital nearby, and I'm in physical contact with all these customers, potentially an unlimited amount every day I work and continue to work, and potentially unlimited items every item that I touch every time I work. The reality of the matter is that nobody in my town except the one case has been tested so even if they show symptoms they can just ignore going to the doctor, keep living their lives, and nobody would be the wiser. What a sick twisted turn of fate.  At first, it was a comedy, now it is a tragedy.

Luckily I finally found some gloves that I can start wearing for my shift tomorrow. I've been washing my hands like crazy, drinking vitamin C supplements every day, and wearing a hat and sweater outdoors so I don't get sick. Even having a regular cold/flu at this time is horrible as it would look bad at the store when customers come in contact with me. Even my coworkers wouldn't like it.  The world goin' crazy.

Every day I look at the world from outside my window. I flip open my computer and read the latest news about the virus. I read slowly so I can understand every little detail. None of it is good. Nothing is getting better. It's only getting worse. The governor just announced that he's closing all bars and limiting numbers of peoples at restaurants and/or just closing them down. The elderly have been ordered to stay indoors as they are the most vulnerable. And possibly the most pigheaded and stubborn. Because I saw a lot of old people at work today. Very sickly old people. Not good. 

When we survive this it will be like a new age of enlightenment. People will all of a sudden become wiser, more humble, nicer, more serious. They won't go out for frappes as much. It will take losing a lot of happiness from social gatherings, a broken economy, and a quartine to bring the world to a better fate. I hope. 

This will be an ongoing series. Welcome to the New Dark Ages. If you catch the zombie apocalypse virus you will be quarantined for 14 days. Even if you don't get it your city might have to quarantine anyways. Don't touch your face. Wash your hands. What a way to live. In the end, the world doesn't end with us saving the girl in some war-torn country. Instead, we get super sick and pass it on to others. Oh, the irony!   

Welcome to the machine.

Meet the new grind, same as the old grind

Good evening ladies and laddies. I'm back to writing again every night. This calls for a celebration. *takes a swig of coffee* I'm back home after an eight-hour workday, baking a chicken pot pie, and listening to Chet Baker. Ah, this is the life. There's something so soothing about straight-ahead jazz, especially Chet Baker. That slow west coast jazz sound is sublime. It's a privilege to even listen to it for free via YouTube. Meanwhile, the rest of my community is hoarding toilet paper, antibacterial wipes, and water. It's a shit show, it's a shit show, as one of my managers likes to say. 

 The craziest part of this story is the fact that there is indeed a confirmed case of coronavirus at a hospital near my house. It's definitely alarming, perhaps even frightening. But I'm optimistic about the future. Even if the virus breaks out into a worldwide zombie apocalypse. Think about the philosophical ramifications of [corona corona corona!]

Hear me out. Let's say the virus gets much worse in a matter of months. As it's been doing so already. So they lock down cities, schools, public events, and so forth. People will be afraid to go out in public most of the time so they would be confined to their houses or small gatherings with only a handful of friends. Think about the philosophical ramifications of said actions. 

First, people would become more thoughtful. Because people wouldn't have much money and couldn't go out, they would have to learn to do with fewer possessions and less activity. Perhaps they could read books more and bond with their families more. They would think more about who they elect as their leaders. As a result, somebody like Donald Trump could never win in the future. Because people would be more thoughtful, including meaning smarter.

Second, sometimes it takes a disaster to bring people together. We're living in the most polarizing times I think since the 1960s. Things have gotten better since then. But have they really? Or have they just changed forms and modernized into a digital age with the same problems? We as a nation have to come together to overcome all these hurdles. It takes a strong leader of the free world to do so. Trump is a weak-minded fool. He's divided this country more so than any other President since I was born. Heck, even Nixon met the hippies halfway. I'm no conspiracy theorist but if the Russians are using him as a Manchurian candidate, then his whole mission of using the Presidency to sow discord in America was truly fulfilled. I had to go dark here. But from a practical standpoint, we've been living in a tyranny since 2016 when Trump was elected. 

Third, this is the only story bigger than Trump. That alone makes coronavirus a true sensation.  

Sometimes the only way you can deal with something like this is to play it cool and wait it out. The election is this year so perhaps Americans will elect someone with some brains or at least knows how to read. Or perhaps our very own zombie apocalypse virus will infect the whole country [world] at some point, and then we as a nation will have some real soul searching to do. Who knows, maybe we can change the world. 

Until then the song remains the same.  

Struggle and internal contradiction

Oh, that magic feeling...

Lately, I've been writing a lot of op-ed sort of blogs about life, my ideas, philosophy, my particular thought processes as of late, autumn 2019. Here's one for you: struggle and internal contradiction. 

A lot of my posts have been sort of feel-good type of things [you need to push yourself, keep going, don't quit, etc], and some of it has been sort of depressing to write about, yet also uplifting in a philosophical way, zen-like. 

There were some continuous themes. Getting older. Changes that weren't necessarily good or bad. But seem bad. Work getting harder, more physical. Being more tired. How do deal with all of this? Keeping your mindset strong rather than just positive.  Or strong and positive.

The thing about all that is that there are struggles and contradictions with regard to all of that. You have to be young to become old. If things didn't change you couldn't appreciate how good things really are/were. For work to become more difficult means you'd have to have had a much easier time at some point in the past. You have to have been full of energy [younger] before you realize you're getting more and more easily tired [older]. 

I might write/say/think one thing and yet may not completely mean it at that moment when proclaiming it. Does that mean that I really mean it? This goes into the analytical side of thought. [which is my true aim out of all these vlog type posts]  To question everything, even yourself.

Consider this: I've been more and more easily tired at work for no particular reason in particular. I was dead half my shift. Dead, as in not very responsive, overly tired, slow, prone to error. Yet, half-way through my shift today I came back from lunch and my attitude was completely changed. I was in the best mood I've ever been in at work. It manifested as me smiling a lot, laughing a lot with my co-workers, being very engaging with every customer. How does something like that happen? And how do you keep such an enlightened state going the next day, month, years, a lifetime? 

The answer could be whatever you make of it. Something just hit me, a pierce in the veil. Sitting under the bodhi tree. Could've been a result of a good lunch. Or a good reading session on said lunch. Realization of something that wasn't thought about consciously or self-consciously. Many things, one thing, or nothing at all. It's important to remember moments like these. It feels good and it was memorable work experience. I think even my co-workers noticed and reacted in kind. It was fun. Cheery. Jovial even. What do you do with this sort of realization? Anything or nothing at all I suppose. This goes to show [character] that a lot of our internal struggles and contradiction could, in fact, be something we can overcome, somehow, in our own way, on our own time, in our own condition. Perhaps I will meditate more. Ruminate on peace and love in the universe. Namaste.

Nowhere to go...

Strawberry Fields Forever

Day by day, alone on a hill...

Each day passes us by. Sometimes we have bad days that sort of bleed into all the other days,  a sort of 24/7 existentialism. Because a happened yesterday it bothers us today, in addition to b being a problem today. What helps us cope with that? How do you focus more on the positivity of being, being in the worldhood of the world? 

Plans with friends get canceled somehow five times in a row. Work gets more strenuous. Time seems to be flowing faster and faster. Your relaxation time seems to be like work. [reading, writing, guitar playing becomes a second job because it is] Instead of doing the things you want to do you end up just sleeping. Everybody's laughing, everybody's happy. But here you are. 

The easy zen answer to all this is that every day is a new day. Tomorrow is only yesterday's tomorrow. But that does not mean that yesterday bleeds into tomorrow, today, the present, the past, or the future. I would go so far as to say that you're not even the same person today as you were yesterday. A multitude of factors determines this. But mostly chemicals in the brain. 

Come together. The more you want to drift off and sulk into your own self-pity and sorrow, you need always remember that there are still caring people in the world despite the pitiful state of affairs in the world. The more you can relate to everyday people the more you see humanity, peace, and love in others, and in yourself. Come together, yeah. 

Because. We feel sad, depressed, anxious, and tired because we are human rather than machines. That is why you must find all your favorite things and enjoy life. You must sit in self-reflection, ruminate on your ideas, thoughts, consciousness, and yet still engage in the world with real, everyday people, rather than sitting in isolation, as some sort of self-proclaimed hermit or yogi. 

The reason people are positive, give off good vibes, and are happy people is because they've been working at it. There is, of course, the rare person who is just happy no matter what happens in their life. No heartbreak will destroy them utterly nor completely. They are strong in mind, body, and spirit because they've been through the bad times and came out stronger in the end, with a stronger mindset, and/or spirit. It's a beautiful thing. It's a necessary thing. 

Let me take you down, 'cuz I'm going to...