2020: So Long, and Good Riddance

It’s New Year’s Eve, the last day of a year that’s been less than ideal for most of us to say the least. I expect that, like most any year, I’ll be in bed asleep long before midnight. This, even though I’ve (half) joked that I should stay awake just to make sure 2020 actually leaves.

It’s been a year when we’ve seen a global pandemic affect every aspect of our daily lives. A year when civil discourse was intensified and where a brutal presidential election dominated the news cycle. When we’ve been asked to wear masks in public, stay home, and keep at least 6 feet away from others outside our households as much as possible and seen a large portion of the population refuse to do even that - the bare minimum to protect ourselves and each other. As a result, we’ve also seen hundreds of thousands of people catch COVID-19 and pass away and countless others recover from it only to still have long-term health concerns to contend with in its aftermath. A year where businesses shut down - permanently, in some cases - and families struggled to make ends meet after parents lost jobs. Kids did school at home on the internet, and those of us who could, worked at home too. And personally, it’s a year when I lost my father-in-law (thankfully, not to COVID, but lost nonetheless) and faced my own (also not COVID-related) health scare that I thought might cost me my own life. I still feel effects from that and will have to be cognizant of it for the rest of my life to do all I can to prevent a recurrence. For more on that, see my other recent posts.

Despite all that had to be sacrificed this year, there have been some bright spots. Thankfully, my husband and I have both managed to keep our jobs when so many others have not, and we have been fortunate to have the privilege to work at home for parts of the year, which was a godsend while the kids have been doing school virtually. On somewhat of a whim, we got a new car a few months ago - one I’ve wanted a while and am thrilled to finally have for my long commutes when I do have to go into the office. We’ve enjoyed having more time at home as a family, as that’s honestly our favorite thing, especially in a year that deprived us of Disney World, concerts, dining out at restaurants, and movie theaters; we’ve been grateful that we are so good at entertaining each other. We also got to see a return to reason and hopefulness with the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House. We are long overdue to move past the circus the Trump administration has been. We also have new vaccines for COVD-19 now, albeit in record time that some find suspicious, but they’re here, and hopefully they will put us on a course to a more normal world sooner than later.

And last, but never least, there has been music. Music has always been the great love of my life (aside from my husband, of course), and this year was no different in that regard. Although, live concerts were minimal, virtual concerts, CDs, and playlists still got me through 2020. As everyone else, I pray 2021 will be a vastly better year than 2020 has been for us as a nation and as a global community. It’s been hard all around, but through it all, there will still be music - happy, sad, or indifferent. I’ll end here with a shout out to some of the artists I’ve listened to the most this year: Allen Stone, Samm Henshaw, Tenille Townes, Richard Marx, Jon Pardi, Kelsea Ballerini, Tom Petty, The Chicks, Lukas Graham, and David Bowie. They may never know just how much their work lit the way for me to survive this crazy year, but I know, and I won’t forget. Thank you to music for always making the world a better, more bearable place.

All Corona, All the Time

Several months into the COVID-19 pandemic, I find myself thinking a lot about all the ways life has changed since the start of all this, all the lives that have been lost and that will be lost, and the audacity of those who still insist on believing it’s all being overblown. Currently, over 130,000 U.S. residents have passed away from the virus, and the spikes in our overall cases recently has led European countries to block Americans from traveling there for the foreseeable future. That’s how badly our country has handled this. Meanwhile, our federal and state leadership (and I’m using that word loosely here) still have no concrete plan for fixing this other than basically, just learn to live with it, and oh, well...a bunch of people will die in the process. That just doesn’t cut it.

It’s been shown in other countries that if just 80% of the people wear masks in public, the cases of COVID-19 decline considerably; however, far too many people in the U.S. won’t even do that much - the bare minimum - to protect the health of the public at large. They won’t wear masks, and they won’t stop gathering in large groups and going places that aren’t essential. Memorial Day weekend, they decided they’d had enough of taking precautions and went out to celebrate and party, and bars began to open again. Now we are seeing the effects of doing all that prematurely in the form of many more positive tests and increasingly so in younger people. Now we’re into July, and with people still acting like there is nothing to worry about - socializing and crowding whatever beaches stayed open - for the 4th of July, things will likely only continue to get worse. There is talk of hospitals being near capacity in places, and they may be overwhelmed soon if things don’t change. Oh, but don’t ask the doubters to stay home or wear a mask because that is supposedly a violation of their rights. Who wants the right to get or transmit a deadly virus? They do, apparently, and it’s ridiculous. I remember writing a couple of months ago that seeing people out and about with masks on made me nervous. Now I am much more nervous when they are out and NOT wearing a mask. Wow, what a difference a few weeks makes.

A couple of months ago, I was also in the middle of juggling homeschool for my kids and working from home at the same time. If you follow my posts, you know I’ve already had to go back to working in the office, which I still have mixed feelings about. Thankfully, we also made it through homeschool, but now our less-than-smart governor is insisting that he wants the schools in our state to reopen at full capacity for the fall semester, which would be only a month away. Despite the fact that our state is one of the worst hotbeds in the country for COVID-19 now and that younger and younger people are catching and even dying from the virus, he thinks that’s a good idea. I couldn’t disagree more. That’s right. I’m actually all for going back to doing homeschool even though I thought it was a struggle previously. For one thing, we were thrown into it before. Now we know what to expect. But the biggest factor for me is that it is no safer now (and probably even less so) for kids to be in classrooms than it was when they closed the schools in March. We should not be sending them back to school in a few weeks and putting everyone involved in danger. I have heard of people in various locations who have been sent surveys to take for their school districts to gauge what they’d prefer to do, but I’ve seen no such survey for ours yet and am not sure there will even be one. Given the choice, I’d rather keep my kids home where I know they’re safe, even if I do have to keep going to work. We’d figure it out. We always do, and throughout this thing, my kids have already shown they’re troopers and team players, and they are capable of doing whatever we need to do to get through this together.

Over these past few months, it’s been glaringly clear that a large portion of the American population won’t inconvenience themselves in any way to help us beat this as a nation. Even wearing a mask is too much to ask. They’ve made this a political issue instead of focusing on what it actually is - a matter of public health -  and they’ve listed more to our incompetent, not-fit-to-lead president than they have to the medical experts and actual scientists. People are dying in record numbers from this every day, yet they still think it’s a hoax created by the media or the Democrats, and to admit this is a serious concern would (in their minds) show weakness. It makes absolutely no sense, but this is where we are. Americans are so divided, they can’t even agree to save themselves or the people around them. And that’s a sad shame.

2020 Can Go to Hell

Oh, wait. It feels like it already has. And I’m tired. I don’t know how much more of this dumpster fire I can take.

Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. These are names I only know because they’re the latest in a string of names of people who looked like me and were unjustly killed by racists who also happened to be wearing police badges or who had worn them at one time. They should still be here with their families and friends. Instead, they’re hashtags now because this country has a racism problem that it conveniently ignores. Black people in this country are routinely profiled and killed by police or police wannabes who are sometimes arrested as a formality but rarely, if ever, convicted. As a race, we’ve given our Black sons the speech about being respectful of police since even before my time, but when it’s glaringly obvious that respectability is not a guarantee that you’ll come out alive and that even Black women are not safe, what then? What NOW? They kill our people and then look for anything they can use to justify why it was the victim’s fault. I am tired.

Christian Conner. Though not killed, this man (incidentally, about as respectable as a man of any race can get) was flat out bullied by a white woman in Central Park because he nicely asked her to leash her dog, which is the rule...which she was not following. He began filming her tirade, and what did she do? She immediately threatened to call the police and tell them a Black man was attacking her, and she proceeded to do just that. Do you think she did that because she was actually in danger? Hell, no. She did that because she knew the cops would come and likely assume she was in the right because of the color of her skin versus the color of Christian’s skin, despite the fact that the video he recorded clearly shows she was in the wrong, right down her dog that she was practically choking to death with the leash in question by the end of the altercation. Thankfully, she’s lost her dog AND her job as a result of her ignorance. What company worth anything would want to be associated with that behavior? Apparently, not them. And thankfully, Christian is still here to live another day and tell his story because things didn’t turn out the way she banked on them turning out. She may not have wanted him killed, but at the very least, she expected the cops to side with her because of who she is. The truth is there should be no story here. He did nothing wrong. Actually, he did everything right, but without that video, it would’ve been his word against hers, and I doubt the first assumption would’ve been that he was the one telling the truth. We shouldn’t need a video to prove that we are worthy of being believed. I am tired.

I’m also tired of COVID-19. All the racial disparities in this country are tiresome at any time, but to still be dealing with that while also trying to survive a pandemic is absolutely exhausting. It’s like practically everything shut down because of the virus except racism. We couldn’t get lucky enough for that to take a break. Racists just decided to make up for lost time, I guess. The real threat of COVID-19 is still here, though, and with states so eager to reopen everything prematurely, the cases of the virus have been increasing, although we may never know just how much. It doesn’t fit the narrative of opening everything if they admit that things are not as OK as they’re making them out to be. Meanwhile, people have basically decided the threat is over, as if this virus had an expiration date. Just because they’re bored, and it’s warm outside doesn’t mean COVID-19 has magically gone away. It’s still here, folks, and it’s still killing people. Their opening things up isn’t about it being safe. It’s about the powers that be wanting to open the economy. It’s always about money. Money over people. Since my last post just a couple of weeks ago, the number of COVID-19 deaths in this country alone has doubled. Doubled! Did I mention that I am tired?

My family and I have stayed home since March, only going out to pick up groceries or takeout for the most part. Any errands we ran, we ran because we needed to, and we took precautions. We homeschooled our kids and followed the rules. Now school is over, and things are opening back up, so my husband and I are both expected to return back to working physically in our respective offices, and I’m not thrilled about it. We’d still like to be able to stay safe at home, but now we’ll be required to be out of the house for work again. Neither of us feels this is the best course of action, but we also have bills. Sadly, we aren’t independently wealthy and have not won the lottery (which we don’t even play), so off to work we’ll be going. Reluctantly, but faithfully. What we will not be doing is going out unnecessarily beyond that just because the government officials want us to believe the coast is clear. I assure you it is not. There have already been increased virus cases from people not continuing to social distance and/or not wearing masks, and there will be more. We’ll be the ones doing what we can to try our best to not be included in that number, thank you very much. Trying to juggle what we know in our hearts that we need to do versus what we have to do to support our family is especially stressful given all this, so yes, I am tired.

And since it loves to pour when it rains, it is with sadness that I tell you my father-in-law passed away last week. It was not related to the pandemic, thankfully, but that doesn’t make losing him hurt any less. From the time he went into the hospital to the time we buried him was only about 2 weeks. He treated me like his own daughter from the day I met him, and he was fiercely protective of me and the whole family. I will miss his humor and his advice. I am sitting in his favorite chair as I type this, and it’s not lost on me that he should be sitting here instead. But he’s not. Yes, he’s in a much better place than we all are at this point, but we will miss him dearly. While I am sad he’s gone, I know it pales in comparison to what my husband and his mom and siblings must feel. If he could impact me this deeply in the short 16 years I knew him, imagine how they feel after loving him for so much longer? Also as of last week, my in-laws had been married 47 years. His not being here is a lot to process. We are ALL tired.

I don’t really feel pressed to concentrate on anything else at this point, least of all work or the demands of anyone else who might remotely expect anything from me right now. I need a break from all of it but doubt I’ll get one anytime soon. There always seems to be someone wanting me to do something when all I want to do is be still. I’m emotionally drained and desperately need a reset button. I’m tired of racism. Tired of COVID-19. Tired of having to be so damn responsible all the time. Tired of grief. Just plain tired.

2020 is broken. Just throw the whole damn thing away.

For the Love of Live Music in the Age of COVID

Anyone who knows me or has followed me online for any amount of time knows that music is my life. Specifically, much of my life - both professionally and personally - revolves around live performances. For me, they are an essential service, but it’s just not safe to congregate that way at the moment. While many people have missed not being able to get their hair cut or their nails done while everything is on hold for COVID-19, if I had to pick one thing that I miss most, it would be live music.

From a personal perspective, concerts play a big part in keeping me sane. I’ve done numerous blog posts on that subject. A cool thing that’s come out of everyone being off the road is that the artists I love to go see live also miss the road and have been doing online performances from their homes pretty regularly. While I’ve enjoyed that, it is definitely not the same as being in the same room with them, only a few feet away and breathing the same air. You just can’t duplicate the energy of being there in the moment with them. For now, I am grateful that we have at least this outlet for sharing the music we love, but I dream of the day when we can all be in the same space again.

Professionally, I’ve made my living in various concert venues and theaters for over 20 years with only a break here and there to be a stay-at-home mom. It sounds strange to me to say that because that seems like a really long time, and I guess it is in a way, but it hasn’t felt like it because I love what I do. Any job brings headaches with it sometimes, but the feeling I get from looking in a packed room that I helped fill and seeing people enjoying themselves and getting lost in the performance is like nothing else. I remember feeling that especially when I peeked in on the very first Nashville Predators hockey game years ago when I was still in Nashville working at what is now Bridgestone Arena. I had no interest in sports but was curious to see the sold out crowd in the stands and what all the fuss was about, so I went in for a few minutes and took it all in, and the energy in that room was unbelievable. I felt an immense sense of pride that I had helped make that happen, and I have had an on-going appreciation for the Predators ever since - as our hometown team as well as for the time I spent working there. I’ve felt that feeling many times since then over the years. Somehow, all the hard work feels worth it when the lights go down, the act hits the stage, and the crowd cheers.

With talk of concerts possibly not returning until 2021, it definitely gives me reason for concern as a fan and as a person who works in live events. As much as I miss seeing my favorite artists on the road, there is also the part of me with a family to feed who worries about what it will mean for my job long-term if this continues too much longer. I’m thankful that, unlike many in my field, I’ve been able to keep working from home thus far, but the 2nd half of our season was also wiped out by mid-March because of this. The live entertainment world has been hit so hard with countless canceled shows and those who work so hard to make those shows happen suddenly being left wondering what comes next. Our business can’t just open back up and go back to normal even when the time comes. Live performances take a lot of time - months and even years - to work out logistically. They don’t just happen overnight, and while our next season, scheduled to begin in the fall, is already mostly booked, I’m not overly optimistic that that’s going to happen as planned either. It feels like a lot is up in the air, and the planner in me doesn’t like ambiguity.

At the end of the year, I usually make a list of the concerts I saw as a fan that year. Sadly, this year’s list will be pretty nonexistent. Thankfully, I was able to see Allen Stone w/Samm Henshaw and Andy Suzuki & The Method a couple of weeks before everything blew up. As amazing as that show was, I had no idea at the time that it would likely have to hold me the rest of the year. The other shows I was planning to see right after that were canceled, of course, and there will probably not be any tangible summer concert season. That realization is heavy for me.

That said, I am in no hurry to rush back into a crowd of any kind and probably won’t be for a while. I am generally not a fan of crowds even under normal circumstances, and I am certainly not ready to be in one right now. I think it’s possible to deeply miss the things we love to do while also acknowledging and respecting the fact that now is not the time for them. Now is the time to pause these things to be able to come back together and enjoy them again later when it’s safer from a public health standpoint. So, I can mourn, with everything in me, the show season that has been so rudely and abruptly interrupted, but I am also happy to stay at home as long as it takes. Those emotions don’t have to cancel each other out, nor should they.

Master Level Introvert

I didn’t think it was possible to be more of a hermit than I already was, but I think this quarantine has actually done it. It’s made me want to leave home even less than usual.

I used to be able to justify it for work, if nothing else, but after weeks of working from home, I honestly don’t even want to go out to do that. It’s actually a combination of being a homebody, not believing we are ready to open everything back up yet, and needing to be home to homeschool my kids now that classroom school has officially been canceled for this school year. We are about a month away from the last day of homeschool. For now. Who knows if they’ll even go back in the fall? I guess we’ll have to see.

So many people are so anxious to return to life as normal, despite there still being an increase in virus cases. I’m sure increased testing has something to do with those numbers. We couldn’t count what we couldn’t test. It all feels so rushed to me, though, and it boggles my mind that people can’t do the simplest thing, which is just staying home. Rushing to open everything too fast is only going to give us a worse second wave than the first one, but you can’t convince some people of that. They act like the virus will magically disappear simply because they’re tired of staying home. If only it were that easy. Or maybe they just don’t care if more people get sick or die from COVID-19 as long as it’s not them or their family. But it very well could be. Just this week, a friend of mine lost her grandmother to this virus. At last count, the U.S. had lost 50,000 people to it in the last couple of months, and that number keeps growing. Oh, but sure...open all the things like there’s not a global pandemic. It’ll be fine. (Side note: No, it won’t. It’ll be worse before it’s better, for those who don’t understand sarcasm.)

It’s my theory that the politicians who are pushing for reopening everything are only doing so because they don’t want to keep paying people unemployment or providing stimulus money. It seems a small price to pay to save lives, but they seem willing to sacrifice more of us to save the beloved economy.

So, yes, I am perfectly happy to stay home as long as it takes. I pray we are able to keep working from home for the foreseeable future to preserve our income, health, and the groove we’ve finally gotten into with homeschooling. There’s already been talk from both my job and my husband’s about returning to our offices, but nothing is official yet. With any luck, hopefully that will be put on hold a bit longer and not throw a wrench in the system we have going. A few more weeks of homeschool, then our mountain to climb will be what to do if we have to go back to work but the kids’ summer camp gets canceled. I guess we’ll cross that bridge when and if we come to it.

Navigating the New Plague

A few weeks ago, I couldn’t have imagined things being the way they are now. I wanted to believe that if people all took the necessary precautions, the threat of COVID-19 would fade away like every other virus that goes around does, but that is not what happened.

Things have gotten worse pretty quickly in the U.S. Part of it is because our incompetent president went on TV and told those who still believe anything he says that this was a hoax, and despite his being warned of this threat months ago, he chose to ignore the warnings and play golf instead. Until it was too late. Until the virus was already here, spreading like wildfire, and killing our citizens. Further, once it was confirmed that COVID-19 was actually a real thing, he continued to try to downplay the severity of it, in direct contradiction of what the actual scientists and doctors advised. I am sure we are still not being told the whole truth about this situation, how long the virus has actually been here, or what he knew and when, and we may never know the full story.

But, for once, this can’t all be put on him. At some point, people need to take personal responsibility for their own health and well-being, so I also blame those who still even now aren’t taking this seriously and who insist on having social gatherings despite shelter-in-place orders, stay-at-home campaigns, and CDC advice not to congregate with anyone who does not already live with you. It boggles the mind, but there are actually people still having huge parties in their homes, even as the world is fighting a pandemic that has killed many and also put countless others out of work because so many things we take for granted had to be closed or canceled to try to contain the spread of this thing. I guess they don’t think any of this applies to them, and that is why this will get worse before it gets better and why I don’t think we are anywhere near seeing the end of it.

All of this has led us to have the most confirmed cases of any developed nation. Wow, we’re #1! Except this is not a #1 we should be proud of. I’m certainly not. I’m not proud of that ranking, and I’m not proud of the fact that it did not have to get this bad if we’d had competent leadership, and people actually paid attention to the voices of reason. While it’s true that statistically more people die from the common flu than have died from COVID-19 thus far, it’s also true that we can’t know the full extent of this virus, since testing has not been readily available. I am sure the numbers are actually higher than we can confirm. We also don’t shut down the world for the flu. For me, a huge turning point was when Disney World closed. As a Florida resident, I can tell you, they simply do not close Disney World. On the rare occasion that they do, it’s because a hurricane is happening, and even then, they don’t close the hotels. The hotels are closed, folks. Indefinitely. The only other time they closed Disney World? 9/11. This is a big deal.

I couldn’t have predicted that suddenly bars, theme parks, and hair salons would be closed or that our show season at the theater where I work would abruptly be brought to an indefinite halt. I couldn’t have predicted that I’d suddenly be working from home while simultaneously trying to homeschool my 6th grader and 4th grader with little warning and no training. I couldn’t have predicted that the concerts I was so excited about seeing last month would be canceled in compliance with not having large crowds anywhere or that churches who’d never done so before would be broadcasting their services on Facebook Live and YouTube, and I couldn’t have predicted that the simple, everyday task of going grocery shopping would suddenly feel like I was going into battle and risking my life every time I did it or that every time I went, I’d be shocked at the scarcity of stocked toilet paper shelves because people have hoarded that (of all things!) faster than it can be replenished in the stores. And I couldn’t have predicted that people would be wearing face masks in public (which doesn’t put me at ease personally but rather makes me more anxious) to try to protect themselves from a disease that is here and contagious but doesn’t always manifest itself with actual symptoms, and those symptoms, even when they do present themselves, may not show up for 2 weeks after exposure to the virus. You can actually have it and just be a carrier. It doesn’t kill you but might very well kill someone else. Thus, we are asked to stay 6 feet from the next person when we do have to go out to get food, as if we are all in a massive worldwide game of Cooties. Except it’s not a game. It’s literally life and death for a lot of people, yet this is where we are right now. This is the new reality we wake up to each day, and it feels like a bad Sci-Fi movie.

For all intents and purposes, my little family is doing pretty well. Thankfully, my husband and I are both still employed, and we’ve been cleared to work from home for the time being. The added pressure of being thrown into homeschooling is a bit of a pain and gets overwhelming at times, but it’s getting done. It has to; our kids’ grades depend on it. I’m sure it also helps that we are natural homebodies, so being told to stay at home and not socialize is not asking us to do anything we don’t do as much as possible, anyway. I can think of much worse things that being required to stay inside a house I love with my 3 favorite people on the planet. We have food, shelter, entertainment, and Wi-Fi. Most importantly, we have each other and are all healthy. I pray it stays that way. I am also concerned for those whose circumstances are not as fortunate. As a friend of mine recently said, we are doing well, not only because it’s an introvert’s dream to stay at home, but also because we have a happy one. Happy is the key word. Not everyone has that at home, and it breaks my heart - always, but especially now at a time when you’re not supposed to be leaving unless it’s absolutely necessary, and every time we do leave, we run the risk of bringing the virus back home. Being sick is never ideal, even under normal circumstances, and being sick right now is even less so with hospitals already overrun with patients and low on supplies, and the hassles average people like us have to go through just to get a test. No, thank you. We’ll limit our going out, take precautions, and hope the germs don’t follow us home.

Some seem to think this ordeal will change people for the better - that they’ll suddenly realize the importance of human connection and compassion and take more time to stop and smell roses and realize what’s really important. While that might be true for certain individuals, I don’t hold out much hope for it to affect change long-term in a society where people value the rat race and glorify being busy. If they won’t stay home or slow down during a pandemic, they certainly aren’t going to once it’s over. It will be back to business as usual, and maybe the saddest part of all will be that we will have gone through all of this, yet people will have learned nothing. For now, can we just stop hoarding the toilet paper? That seems like a good start to being better humans.