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Are We?

"Having Trouble Coping With Post Pandemic Life?" The headline blared at me this morning on my phone (side note - I am so dependent on Apple products at this point, it's hopeless), and yes, all around us are the questions and stories of "trying to get back to normal." But that headline prompted my most cynical morning affirmation... "Are we?"

Is this really "post pandemic"? It's a fair question, one we ought to ask harder and more often and not assume we know the answer. The logic for "post pandemic" generally goes: a) most of us are vaccinated; b) we're trying to get back to normal; and c) all those statistics about cases and hospitalizations and deaths are headed in the... right direction, right? So it's, you know, kind of over, right?

There are a lot of reasons o doubt that train of logic, questions and details and actual statistics that belie the hopefulness. More to the point there's a reality many Americans don't like: we've been trying to declare this thing over since literally before it began. Some of that, yes, was Trump, his team, and their incompetence. Some of it, yes, was other Republicans and folks on the right following Trump's lead or politicizing what really should have been based on science and public health guidance. All bad, sure. But the toehold that allowed those claims and complaints to take root was America's general impatience and the closing of our society, the most open and free moving in the world.

The point is, this isn't over when we say it is. We won't have "normal" because we insist that everything be "normal." The pandemic is over when we can say, safely, that the risk of contracting a deadly illness is no longer a major threat, when we can treat the disease and prevent death, and when we can fully and safely resume the lifestyle and behaviors we had previously, free from worry for ourselves, and others.

And most surely, we are not there. And here's a quick pass at why:

• The threat of variants: Covid 19 is highly contagious and easily spread. That has not changed, and the Delta variant is showing, yet again, that the disease moves faster than we can track. Given the concerns that variants may be vaccine resistant, it is way too soon to drop reasonable cautions.
• We Are The World. While America ranges from 40-70% adults vaccinated depending on region, almost no other country in the world is close to where we are, except Israel. Most obviously, this (still) affects international travel; but more basically, "post pandemic" is not just us. It is when a substantial majority of the world can resume, safely.
• What about the children? the pace and timing of vaccinations has meant that we won't resume anything like normal schooling until this fall, a reality that puts off for at least 3 months a lot of hard questions and unforeseen issues that may arise as we try to resume fully in person, 5 day a week schooling. For now, families are trying to set up normal kid summers around vacations and camp... and even that isn't quite working. It's cavalier to assume that we won't find, as August drifts into September, that simply restarting school is more complicated than anyone realizes.
• Staffing. And about that camp, and that restaurant, and that airline: what seemed at first like mere conservative hysteria has laid bare the complexities of "getting back to work": the workers aren't where they were, and they're not going back. It's hard to simply undo furloughs. And seasonal employment means nothing after 18 months of seasonless everything. Yesterday, I checked the local commuter train station parking lot, and while it's fuller... the lot was 3/4 empty at 9am. That says to me that we are far away from anything like what life was like before.

Yesterday the Washington Post sneaked a peek at an upcoming book detailing the failures of Trump and his team in managing the pandemic. I suspect, for many, it will be easy to make those bad actions the focus of our failures in this pandemic. And in many ways, he should. But even without him, or with him gone, we struggle to treat this pandemic as a pandemic - an ongoing problem that will, for the foreseeable future, impact our lives, our choices, and hinder attempts to restore normalcy. That, really, is still on us... the rebels, the privileged, the fortunate few who have endured some minor hardship, but come through largely health and intact. Are we "having trouble coping with "post pandemic life"? Or are we really, just, you know, the problem?

Instant Gratification Takes Too Long

The one thing that won't die in the internet age - the instant, and wrong, hot take - for me is actually the hopeful sign that our way out of the pandemic year isn't in fact written yet. The nearly cataclysmic changes we've all experienced in the past year aren't minor, aren't things you just "get over"... and the massive implications for our society and our economics (never mind our politics) are things we can only begin to start figuring out.

And that's why I don't mind the "jobs will instantly return to normal" and "everyone has to stop wearing sweatpants and put on real clothes again" type hot takes. The instant gratification culture of immediate analysis and pronouncements has been thoroughly up ended, even if the media may be the last to really understand what hasn't happened, and what isn't happening, and even start beginning to make sense of where we actually are.

At the most base level... people died. I've been stunned at the number of conversations of the past few months - you know, those reconnecting "hey, we haven't seen each other for a year" post vaccination convos, and dinners and re-gatherings - where that conversation veers into frank discussions of loss and pain and death. More than half a million people died of Covid (that we know of) - random, often pointless losses of family, parents, coworkers. But often, just as surprising, the losses people share turn out to be the other deaths - not covid, but the other stuff of cancer, heart attacks. The reckoning of these losses, over 18 months, has really only just begun, in part, yes, because Trump lacked the basic humanity to properly put the losses in context. But separation, and the near incomprehensibility of losses on this scale, is also a big part of it. No one in popular media, really, has yet found the words, the context, for all this loss. We're just beginning to grope for the words.

Then, too, I think of the enormous life changes so many have experienced as a result of this strange surreal, and yes, lost, year. People who have made major, significant life changes over the pandemic. All of the people who put significant life changes on hold because of it. And so many who have changed nothing... but for who everything has changed. Six months ago, I quit my job and embarked on this new course of writing and living differently. Only today, did it occur to me that perhaps expecting everything to be sorted after only six months is, well, not very realistic. Extrapolate that kind of major upheaval in so many lives... and really, our culture has no comprehension of what is and isn't happening in people's lives, and the ways those changes impact economic and social life. Are people "going back to work?" What does work even mean just now? What is "going back?" So much economic analysis just now is slapdash, lazy, and obvious. It will take months, if not years, to sort out all the forces in play, and what they mean.

And sure, it seems frivolous to relate these near existential issues - life and death, work and purpose - to the more superficial parts of our lives, the daily business of consumerism and consumption that make our American culture hum. But that's the point, isn't it? So much of the frothy, frivolous exercises merrily rolling along in early 2020... are just gone. if nothing else, the pandemic was a forced pullback to "is that really important" that offered many a chance to reassess all sorts of choices And that's just the beginning. Stores have closed that will never reopen. Dining has changed. Vacations have changed. New routines are part of all of our lives. And it's routines and habits that really guide our interests and choices. And again... we're only just beginning to figure out what these look like, what they might mean.

Just one obvious practical example to finish: "planes are full again." It's the hopeful, meaningless, deceptive storyline that will drive this summer's coverage of travel and leisure. Domestic air travel is still well below half of what it was before the pandemic, losses that have nothing to do with leisure or vacation travel (and don't even start on the embers of international). It's business travel that was the backbone, and profit center, of airline revenue. Will it resume? Sure; some of it will seem essential, some will argue that face to face beats Zoom and win. But many won't. At a moment when the whole concept of the "downtown office" is in flux, major city to city air travel looks like a relic.And again, that has economic implications no one wants to face and has gone largely undiscussed.

It's an odd moment, this juxtaposition of the "now now now" internet world we have and the almost luddite realities the pandemic placed on our existence. It's an odd, fascinating place none of us expected to be, and trying to intellectually sort out what it means is useful, and necessary... and all but impossible when we also want it all figured out, entirely, as of yesterday. As you peruse that Vogue telling you to get out of those sweatpants, and take in those reports that lazy workers are reluctant to give up unemployment to go back to work... just remember, no one, really, has figured any of this out. Instant gratification takes too long... and maybe the problem isn't "instant"... it's that maybe we're beginning to figure out this life needs more than just... gratification.

Coming Home

About six months ago, I made a strange, and wondrous, and scary decision to do the thing I'd always wanted to do: work from home, focus on writing, and see how that works out.

Obviously, it wasn't an entirely voluntary decision - in the sense that, it's not a decision that would have made nearly as much sense had we not been in the middle of absolute crazy time. 

It's weird, living through a pandemic. It's remarkable, to me, how clarifying the past year has been: how quickly it separated the things that are absolutely necessary (say, to stay alive) from the less than essential (going to the movies, for instance). In almost an instant, everything I'd based my decision making on - is that fun? do I want things? - was replaced with "what will keep my mother from catching a deadly infection." Ordering groceries to be delivered. Going to deserted parks. Life became, in so many ways, so much simpler.

Even when I went back to work (after a 3 month leave, essentially, to make sure mom was as safe as possible), I found trying to resume old routines was impossible without applying my newfound clarity. And, within months, that same newfound clarity was finding myself asking "what work really is most important and ultimately, most satisfying?" 

And so, I came back to what I've always wanted to do most - be here, and write.

I haven't done much. if any, specific pandemic posting; it's not what I think of as "my blog." Plus, I'm not sure it's exactly fascinating - we've all been at home, more or less. It's not easy. But somehow... we carry on.

But what was really interesting to me, what has been interesting in a voyage of discovery that, to my surprise has been generally positive, is discovering life at home. This life is not what I expected or planned. And it has been eye opening. 

For years, I threw myself into work. I went in early, stayed late, worked hard, Laundry, cleaning... home tasks came a distant second. My day off was "catch up on projects." I would tell myself that, one day, I would tackle some bigger plans, really "get organized." Somehow, the time for that was never quite there.

When I got home this past November, and began tackling those very projects... I quickly realized that I had been kidding myself. For years. These were not small projects. Getting my room together, organizing clothes, really making my desk a proper writing pace, starting to do research.... this was a lot of work. It was the work I'd put off to do... other work. And, as it turned out, tackling these 'minor home projects" was also valuable. And satisfying, And required attention and care.

This past Christmas was the first in years where we had a reasonable time to prepare. It was relaxed and festive and I didn't feel, for once, as it was rushed or ended too soon. I discovered the time to invest in making great coffee every morning, making that healthy fruit smoothie I was starting to like having around, to show up for volunteer activities I'd been missing. And, working on the book project that fueled this switch, I'm discovering that writing and editing is really work I love and love to pursue. 

It's easy in this pandemic to focus on the privations, the limitations, the struggles... the losses and the distance. I'm not made for that - life is too full of possibilities and hope and the chance to grow. There has got to be some good to find in all of this. Or we will just have to make it.

And this isn't to dismiss the work I used to do. I ran into a young woman at my old store the other night. She had started a month before I left, it was her first job, and her second day it rained badly and she got soaked walking to work. She was in tears, felt defeated and wanted to quit. I sat her down, talked to her, and eventually told her to go home and I would cover her day out. Now, happily, she's working there full time, and she knows that my assistance is what kept her there and she thanked me.  I miss the opportunity to be a part of that.

Growing up, I read Erma Bombeck a lot; her essays on life, suburban living and homemaker based feminism was humorous and inspiring; I recommend her highly. And, just like some man, I find myself writing about discovering laundry and cooking as if it was some sort of mystical land, and of course, it's not. But I will credit the pandemic with the opportunity to step back, reassess life as I've known it, and discover things I never quite knew. Coming home, being home... it does feel right, and okay. There will be time to figure out what life looks like after a pandemic, when we get there. And I know it's not possible for everyone... but we have been given, by fate and by disease, a real chance to reassess what life in America looks like. At the very least, we ought to explore what that might look like.

The New "Normal"

For me, it was during Biden's press event for his new HHS secretary and various other members of his health team: there he was, taking questions, giving thoughtful answers, outlining policy proposals, laying out a possible agenda for the first few months of his term... and there, I could see it. This was what we had been missing. This could be a return to normal.

Of course, we're not there yet, and 4 years of incredible dysfunction definitely leaves a mark. Our American instinct to instantly pretend we don't remember the bad, awful things minutes, months, moments after we have passed them is more of a curse at this point than a blessing. Painful as it is, we will need to talk about What Just Happened even as we "get back to normal" or really "getting back to normal" won't be any kind of normal at all.

Throughout Trump's farcical, damaging presidency, my metaphor has been "it's like your mom married a violent drunk, brought him home and said he was going to be your new dad." Your old dad, your real dad was a kind caring person... but dysfunctional dad is a nightmare. He rants and raves, he's wildly paranoid, you quickly begin to lose sleep fretting over what could happen next, you're embarrassed when he mouths off in public... and on and on. America has accepted the thinking of codependency and recovery, the worlds of AA and Al-Anon... but still, only a minority of families have experienced the deep dysfunction of alcohol, drug addiction and other traumatic mistreatment on a daily basis in their own homes. At least... not until Trump became President.

The dysfunction of Trump, the chaos around him was destabilizing, debilitating to our national psyche in so many ways. While that was immediately apparent to some, it eluded many at first, only becoming clear by degrees. They were the people who said, "I never thought it would get this bad" or "I never imagined he would..." at some further degrading of our national discourse, or finding kids in cages, or telling people to inject bleach.There were those who woke up, suddenly and said "I can no longer be a part of this," ad left the Republican Party, their job, their family, realizing that they needed to speak up. These are all steps on dealing with dysfunction. And there are those, as there will be, who simply refuse to see, or refuse to take action. Those who say "it's just like the flu" and "I'm sure there was massive voter fraud..." because it's better to be on the side of the bully, or because they're afraid, or because, really, they don't understand how wrong and how dangerous the dysfunction is. 

I always hesitate to share too much in the way of personal detail, but a lot of that fell away during these crazy years. I grew up in a dysfunctional household, my father was an alcoholic prone to mood swings and wild late night episodes of out of control behavior. You develop ways to cope with this because you have to cope. I learned how to pretend everything was fine, to treat crazy as normal, while always fearing the worst. And I learned to survive. 

Unlike many naysayers, I always figured we would reject Trump at the first opportunity, when enough people knew they had had enough. I thought it might be impeachment - I didn't even rule out Trump resigning - but in the end, the solution we chose was the simplest: we held an election and voted him out of office. And still the dysfunction rages. Of course he would claim fraud. Of course he would try to pervert every established venue to achieve his dysfunctional ends. That's what he does. That's who he is. Yes, he has succeeded in corrupting an entire political party while attempting to achieve his warped ends, and probably the GOP is beyond saving. But it's not mine to save, or to judge. Time will tell.

The dysfunction doesn't end when mom decides to throw dad out, or when dad finally, eventually goes. I say that from experience. The dysfunction starts to end when we - each of us, all of us - stand back and assess the damage. When we sort out what happened, and why, and learn from the experience. It can take months, or years, and even a lifetime. The first step was defeating Trump's reelection. The next step is removing him. And neither one should be thought of as the last step. This is just the beginning. I'm not sure we, as a nation, still fully appreciate that January will only be a start. Not an ending.

It is heartening to see Biden calmly and effectively assume control. It's a relief seeing the competent, professional team he is assembling, and resume the sense that official entities may get back to the business at hand, and not the whims of paranoid narcissist who lies all the time. It's nice to come home and not be worried that there's no dining room furniture because dad has thrown it onto the lawn and set it on fire.... but, I kind of had you there, for a moment, right? Life was better when you didn't know how that dining room furniture thing felt, wan't it? Well... welcome to the new normal. It's a lot like the old normal, except for that lingering sense of unease. 

 

 

This Year, To Save Me From Tears, I'll Give It To Someone Special...

I didn't intend to go quiet on blogging for over six months... but then, I didn't exactly plan on a global pandemic on top of what was already a disastrous presidency either. Life is funny that way. Things don't always work out as planned.

Like so many, it has been a tumultuous year, one of those years that underlines you will end a year not in the place you started. When we started I was mainly concerned about what we could do to make sure we had a better President. Now, that's kind of a distant second to figuring out what steps will be best to
protect the life of my 85 year old mother.

She's fine, and we're coping - which has definitely been the saving grace of all of this. And we did our part in supporting and pushing for what is now, ultimately, the start of a Biden era, the era many of us didn't know we wanted going in, but seems like the only option after all that's happened. Who knew Joe Biden's mix of unspectacular competence and lack of ego would suddenly be superpowers? The very things that, for years, had made him not quite a star among Democrats - the guy who with good ideas but just not quite enough pizzazz to be President - suddenly became not just the best answer, but pretty much the only answer. There will be time enough to lament various aspects of Biden - he wears his flaws as openly as his strengths -  but his calm, effective, and competent manner of showing up and doing the work is very much the right thing at just the right moment.

Its all over but the shouting... and goodness, what shouting. Trump was never going to leave quietly or rationally, and like everything in this 4 year tragicomedy of massive errors, knowing that this would go badly is still not the same as going through it. "Coup" or not, "challenge to democracy" or simply desperate attempts to get your way... Trump remains, to the (very) bitter end a Tyrant of the Toy Shop whose tantrums could be checked, if only the Republican party had a competent grown up to step in.

But they didn't and they don't and we continue to reap the whirlwinds, such as they are. As I write, we await word from the Supreme Court that they will (likely) turn away the last gasp lawsuit of the Texas Attorney General whose "pandering for pardons" gambit had to be sufficiently Texas sized to break through. Ken Paxton's lawsuit will be laughed out of court, but with sufficient seriousness to all but guarantee his Christmas wish of a pardon broad enough to make his federal investigations go away. And like so many of these upcoming pardons, it raises the interesting question of "how you can be pardoned for something you said you didn't even do?"

But of course, we will be living in Trumpworld until midnight on January 19th, a fantasy world where criminality is just a dressy outfit at the Grifters Ball. These terrible people, and their awful ways are just part of how life is, for now, anyway. We shall see what the new era, the return to decency looks like come next month -- and not a moment before. But when we do, I suspect a lot of what has been quietly put up with, not talked about, or not brought to justice, will likely face a comeuppance. I know, it doesn't look like that now. Not yet, anyway. But part of why Trump lost -- and despite our "it was too close" anxiety, was pretty much inevitable -- was how much of this indecency was simply unsustainable. Short of walking into stores, opening the registers and simply putting the cash in their wife's purse, how much more could we pretend was just acceptable? 

It's been a hard year. It's been a gross, atrocious 4 years of living the nightmare of this presidency. And while the way out of this will not be a sudden snap of waking up... I do suspect that the transition will be more of a whiplash than we can see from here. There is, of course, the last stages of disease and death we have yet to face before, hopefully, the vaccines and a real public health operation help us, finally, get past the pandemic. But there is a sense, calmly, of order being restored. With each announcement, every press appearance, Joe Biden reasserts the power of a presidency most of us remember as the Real Thing. And slowly, steadily, even sadly, the farce of Trump returns to its rightful place -- on the fringes, a sideshow for true believers and sycophantic saps too proud or too bitter to admit that, yet again, they've been had.

Last Christmas, for my family anyway, it was barely a Christmas. We had health issues, and work/life balance to contend with. This year, like so many, we are trying to create Christmas, and find a Christmas spirit, early and brightly. This year really is becoming a season of light - literally, all over town, all over America. Decorations are going up. Tress are coming out. This year.. to save us from a pandemic, we are trying to make Christmas actually special. And really... isn't that reason enough to have at least a little bit of hope?

The New Normal

Hello, yeah, it's been awhile...

At first, it seemed like a weird, interesting foreign news story gone terribly wrong. When reporters first described an epidemic in the Wuhan province of China spreading rapidly and causing concerns, it was hard to see what was coming.

The things you realize, after the fact.

I think of Phuket, Thailand and the tsunami, the people who headed out into dry seabed as the ocean receded so far out that people couldn't believe the water had vanished from the shore. It means "run" but who knows that, in the moment?

I now feel like, maybe, I would have been one of those standing on the beach. Maybe a little too long.

As things go, I was maybe sort of lucky. Yes, the panic shopping was already underway, the virus most likely already out and about in my Westchester community, north of New Rochelle. As international travelers came home and cruise lines started to implode, it's hard not to realize that the people who live those lives and take those trips... are your neighbors. Like maybe we should worry. Like maybe we need to take some steps. We were too late. I see that now. Asking questions days, weeks after they needed to start being asked.

(And still, yesterday, the Governor of Florida finally thought, hey, maybe it's time we told that state to stay at home. Yesterday.) 

Still, as I often do, I had a vacation planned for my birthday, the second week of March. Maybe a side trip to Boston to see old friends. Needless to say, that didn't happen as "the Biogen Meeting" blew up. And come the end of that week, staring down the obvious implications of an epidemic now underway in my state, in my county, in the town three towns away... suddenly, living with an 85 year old mother with complicating conditions didn't seem incidental. Not anymore.

Three weeks (and counting) later, the world is... different. In so many ways. Life is lived at home, as we do now, communicating by phone and videoconference and Zoom and watching cable news with agitation and alarm.

There are, of course, many things to be said, many observations to be made. And suddenly, again, I find myself with all the time in the world to write them down. Interesting, that. Some have suggested that Gen X is uniquely equipped to handle this epidemic... I don't feel as confident as all that. I can say that, much like Rachel Maddow and numerous friends of a certain age, living through 9/11 and the early days of the AIDS epidemic does at least give one some markers to work from as this unfolds... not necessarily good or happy ones. You learn some things about people, and groups, in emergencies. Not a lot of them are good.

I think of And The Band Played On (I really must dig up my copy from the basement) -- the story of Anthony Fauci's other big job -- and that moment when one of the CDC shouted at Blood Center execs "how many dead bodies do you need, because we can come back then" about instituting testing controls over blood donations. I think of the leaders putting off stay at home orders, keeping all kinds of falderal open, not doing enough to convince people they, too, are at risk.

I think of those panicked calls on 9/11, when people didn't know where friends, family, spouses were - on a plane, in the Tower, somewhere in Manhattan. How empty Times Square was on the morning of 9/12 (I was there, virtually alone). I look at that empty Times Square and those darkened theaters and empty hotels and I know they come back... eventually. But we are different. We are changed. We just don't know quite how. Not yet.

We try to find the light in this darkness - it's Christmas for introverts! Your cat never wanted you home this much! - but there's a lot of darkness, and so little light. We can't begin to admit, even to ourselves, a lot, how long this could go on, how bad it will get, the people we may very likely lose. Keep calm and carry on. Try to order the groceries online. Try to remember what six feet apart looks like. Try not to panic when you cough. Or someone else coughs. Try not to lie awake, mentally ticking off every cramp, every breath... because who knows if we got it. Or have it. Or will get it.

Gloria Gaynor showed us you can sing I Will Survive when you wash your hands. I mean... we will, right? And so I'm back, from outer space. Back at my desk. Back to the future. Back against the wall. I have no idea how we get through this, how we get used to the new normal. I wasn't really all that keen on the old normal. But like 9/11, like life before AIDS... it does always seem to go that you don't know what you... well, you get the idea.

A Price Above Rubies

In America's mix of egalitarian and elitism, it's not hard to find oneself living or socializing in close proximity to great wealth. It's one of the oldest staples of Hollywood - the good (or bad) kid from a modest upbringing getting exposed to the ways of the upper class. The scholarship kid at boarding school. The everyday worker who marries the boss' daughter. That time you went to dinner in a fancy New York restaurant, surrounded by the obvious displays of people with far more money, if not taste, than yourself.

In some ways, I feel bad for Tom Price. It's not easy to be in close proximity to extravagance, natural, even, to feel somehow you should get to do and have the same things. I was a scholarship kid at a fairly elite private college where other kids drove the spare family BMW, amongst other luxuries large and small. I lived in Manhattan. I've had the privilege of a private showing of the Chanel Couture collection. As much as you think you know about wealth, there's always a level more.

Sadly, the lesson of the last few days is that these are the moments that really do show one's moral compass, and in that, Tom Price failed. Excessive use of private jets on the government dime is a ridiculous, petty excess that flies in the face of claims to cost consciousness and an interest in cutting the size of government. And it's not as though Price's fall was recent. His history of questionable stock deals in health companies while Chairing the House Committee overseeing their affairs was, it's clear, just an indication of Price's sense that he wanted in on the gravy train rolling nearby.

It's gotta sting when you're so very close to it, and reminded constantly of just how far away that life actually is.

Donald Trump may not be as wealthy as he claims, but he is, of course, the very essence of the eighties era "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous" that he came to embody, and take as his "brand." (Trump, in fact, doesn't have the usual Gulfstream size PJ as his main plane - he has a 737 gaudily painted with his logo that hangs out, visibly, near the runways at LaGuardia.) And he has, naturally, stacked his Administration with like minded, and similarly well-heeled, millionaires and billionaires. In the midst of revelations this week involving a number of Trump officials... there sits Betsy DeVos, who doesn't spend government money on a jet, because she owns one.

Of course, as the adage goes, money can't buy taste, and the kind of wealth Trump and his friends bring to DC is a kind of ostentatious, showy display of wealth that rubs many, rich or not, the wrong way. Trump's gilded, golden everything decor in his homes and Country Clubs is designed to impress the easily awed, not demonstrate classic, sublime taste associated with older, quieter money (even DeVos, in that regard, seems more understated and private). Trump's is the conspicuous, elaborate consumption of someone who cares more about showing off, and the appearance of class than anything actually classy. Even Trump's much lampooned language about "the best" and "big league" in regards to what he owns betrays that endless need to show off, to preen and self aggrandize. What's sad, ultimately, about Price isn't just the small, petty nature of his fall - it's the way he let Trump's especially tasteless approach to extravagance further warp his own sense of entitlement. Surely, there are better ways to aspire to being upper class.

Trump's extravagant obviousness, too, is why losing Price is neither the end of this story, nor even likely it's worst example (and we do, after all, still have the oblivious displays of Steve Mnuchin and his recent bride, who may be hiding for now, but seem likely to reappear at any moment). The ridiculous trips, the family with no sense of propriety, combined with dozens of hangers-on, some rich and wasteful, some poor and aspiring... the stories can, and will, write themselves (the world waits, Scott Pruitt - don't stop now). And then of course, there's the even more familiar territory of say, Ryan Zinke, and the casual selling of favors to vested interests, like the oil and gas industry.

Still, at the heart of this Dynasty-like resurgence (I, for one, am not so sure that the CW's revival/reboot isn't a stroke of genius) is that sad, small tale of Tom Price. Covetousness and greed are embarrassing; it's almost painful to watch anyone's flaws laid out in such public, shaming display. American culture markets conspicuous consumption like it's, literally, going out of style. You will never have enough. You will never be rich enough, or thin enough, well dressed enough, or live luxuriously enough. The penthouse apartment, the private jet, the furs, the cars... the list is, truly, endless. And yet, how we punish those who succumb most to the siren's call.  It is vengeful, bordering on cruel.

The trick of course, is to learn what it means to have enough. To see luxuries as just that - the occasional extra, a little bit more, a nice perk. When I get to fly in the front of the plane, dine in the 5 star restaurant, buy the Tom Ford fragrance at Saks... I try to remember to be grateful. And to enjoy it without asking for more. At the very least, it gives one the luxury of giving Tom Price something worse than scorn... and that's pity.

There Is Nothing We Won't Try, Never Heard The Word "Impossible"...

I recently celebrated ten years of doing this blog thing, and I somehow managed to do it quietly, with basically no fanfare (or, more accurately, self-aggrandizement), because I felt perhaps I wasn't entitled to claim it.

Well, it's a new year, so I think I'll just embrace it.

Today I resumed my (fruitless) search for a piece - I know I wrote it - which included a passing review of Oldboy, the Park Chan-wook film I mentioned yesterday. It was part of a piece, I think, about my friend Ray and I traveling by train and regretting my entertainment choices... or something. Anyway, I can't find it, so there.

But, as happens every so often when I embark on these searches, I am faced with returning to the scene of the crime - rereading pieces I wrote and thinking... well... "what was I thinking?"

The search today was especially deep, and I went back to pretty much the beginning, pieces from January 2007 which were about 4 months into writing this thing. Some of it was politics, there were some film pieces (I was big on doing my Oscar predictions in January - never thought I'd just give up on that), and a lot of pressure on myself to keep writing nearly every day. (There's a whole archive list, by month, on the right, at the bottom. Try it.)

I regret that; I realize there are things about my writing I regret. A lot of things. I wish I'd been more thorough with the copy edit (or had a nice person to do it for me), I wish I'd been less personal, surely less "I, I, I..." (but why stop now?). I like to believe I live life without carrying a lot of regrets, but oof, the things I've said... 

That said (and that... and that), I'm grateful, too - grateful for the friends I made along the way, grateful to the friends who were supportive and encouraging the way real friends are. I somehow encouraged my friends to take this journey along with me - and rereading their writing and reviewing their other contributions made me unreasonably proud of them.

High standards, of course, are fine; but I've most likely set my expectations too high and unreasonably in looking back at what I've done. I wrote those things, to get to the writing I do now - if anything, I write more confidently, copy edit (a little) more thoroughly, try (a little) less to put quite so much "me" into every piece... all because I made mistakes along the way. It's true, and I've always known, you won't be a better writer not writing. You will be better writing more, writing more often, taking chances and seeing where that takes you. And yet, the great lessons of doing this I've learned is not everything needs to be written, writing on topics that don't fascinate you just leads to boring writing, and writing every day is a nice goal, but not necessarily a requirement.

My blogging is driven in part by a brilliant, kind coworker who was explaining blogging back when blogging was new (before I jumped in) and said most blogs don't last six months. There were moments I thought this might just be worth stopping, setting aside... yet I don't. Partly to not be a statistic. Partly because I started this because I wanted a place to write. And that, really, is something I still want to do. And be.

And, along the way, I turn up pieces like this, just a little thing about fashion and writing and media and magazines... and I remember why I really love doing this, the things I see that most people don't, stuff I'm really rather proud of. It took three years of writing this blog to get to the place where I could synthesize all that. And seven years later, could I do it better or differently? Sure. But I was there, so I could get here.

A friend at work recently confessed to me that she was dreaming about blogging, about finding a place where she could out her writing out there. Talking to her, encouraging her, I was reminded that I am really doing this because I love to do it, because it challenges me, pushes me forward. It makes me proud to have something to point to, even prouder to see her venture forth and start to make the effort.  

And so, here I am, ten years after. If blogging hasn't been exactly what I expected - and I'm not sure, entirely, what I expected - if I'm not the magazine writer I dreamed of becoming or the movie critic who could surely outdo a lot of what passes for criticism these days... I am still quite pleased with what I have been able to create, and grow, and survive. And goodness knows, there's still plenty more to write about. At least, I still want to keep trying, however imperfectly.

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Yes, This Is Really Happening

"Oh dear, he's still President." 

I'm sure that, at some point, that will stop being the first thought in my head as I wake up, the whole "this is not a dream" quality of how off the world seems with a President Donald Trump. I had to turn off the TV on election night while several states were still finalizing their counts because the actual announcement that Trump had reached 270 was too much to take to bed with me.

But you wake up and there it is and here we are and you wonder how this happened and can it really get any worse... and of course, yes it can, as you watch the early rumblings and stumblings and realize, yes, he's going to put these sorts of people into cabinet positions and keep talking in that way he does.... and on and on.

I'd love to say the point of this exercise is to say there's a silver lining or it gets better... but I don't think it does. It's bad, really bad, and likely to get worse. We've seen the election of a man who is neither suited to nor capable of being President (a reality I do not say lightly), elected on a broad wave of hatred and resentment, surrounded by dangerous people who can cause serious, lasting damage to our country and many people's way of life. The upside of that? Not so much.

Still, I know I can't cry for 4 years straight, and I can't focus only on negatives.  I amazed myself that within hours of seeing how this would be, I returned to blogging with hardly a second thought. Of course it was time to write, to start moving... to do something. Like many, I'm heartened, and thoroughly unsurprised by the spontaneous protests around the country. Of course we would have to stand up.

So this isn't meant as a down post, a cry in the wilderness. Rather, it's the acknowledgement that yes, we've got it bad, and that means we've got to get up and start trying to make it better. In that vein, here are some things to bear in mind:

• The voices saying "we need to come together" or " we need to accept these results" are trying to enforce silence. We do not need to listen to them 
• Similarly, voices saying "you are causing trouble" or "don't make us mad" are an acknowledgement that our refusal to go quietly troubles and upsets them. They are no reason to stop
• A lot of bad things will happen. Not all bad things are equal. Ivanka Trump meeting Shinzo Abe is not necessarily in the same category as Mike Flynn getting to head the NSA
• On the other hand, a lot of where this goes will be built on things they do now - so Ivanka Trump meeting Shinzo Abe may add to the scandals yet to come.
• Each new day, each bad decision will bring new people to realize they are outraged too - there's already some pretty severe buyer's remorse in just a few days, even from those who voted third party. We should welcome them... but also bring them up to speed. We're all outraged. That's just step 1.

Yes, this is really happening. It really is this bad. That's how change works, and while this is change many of us did not choose, would not have chosen... there are people who did, who wanted this. I'm not sure they
realized what getting this actually meant - and one thing it meant, quite clearly, was not that people would accept these results with dull submission or even "quiet grace." Change, shaking things up, is unsettling. It's uncomfortable. Those who said we need to "blow up Washington" need to face what it means to set off an explosion. It's not pretty. There is damage. There is shrapnel. There are unintended consequences.

Many on the left, I think, overdid the embrace of Michelle Obama's well meaning, but incomplete thought "when they go low, we go high." The problem is, they're not just going low; they're going everywhere. And we will have to go there as well - low, high, and everywhere in between. That's not to advocate violent protest, rioting or looting; it's to say that the calls from the right to "accept the results" and "give him a chance" aren't calling for a graceful response. We don't have to be nice about this, how we deal with it, how we "handle" it, how we choose to take action. This is really happening. Something was broken, and the next part is going to be ugly. If that's not the result you wanted from this election... you weren't paying attention. 

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Only When I Laugh

The trouble with trying to resume blogging - often, I'm finding - is that life intervenes. Work beckons, friendships suffer... and my health waxes and wanes. I wasn't expecting to battle a hard chest cold while getting back in the groove of writing, but there it was.

The problem wasn't so much the sniffling or sore throat as it was the cough that settled in my chest - that, apparently, was a recurrence of asthma, something that hasn't happened in some time. I'm not so foolish as to believe that allergies simply vanish, but for whatever reason, my allergic reactions had been pretty well in check for a long, long time. And now, suddenly, it isn't.

It's funny, I find, this problem of struggling to breathe. Over time, it's made me actually calmer, more patient. Freaking out, anxiousness... that just leads to more gasping. Gasping is bad. Keeping calm, trying to stay normal, that's good. If I've been wheezing as badly as I was in the past few weeks, I never really noticed. But the last few weeks, the coughing never stopped, and no over the counter medicine seemed to quell it.

I could put in a good word for "Obamacare" here and the nice health plan I've gotten since the exchanges opened, but it seems silly. Healthcare may be my issue, but getting care was never really my problem. When one is sick, it's time to get help. That's just what you do. The rest is details. And details, still, are where we need better health policy.

In any case, I digress. The thing about asthma, for me, is how it freaks out everyone else. Show up at an emergency room claiming shortness of breath, and you're pretty much first in line. Tell your friends and coworkers and most will look aghast as if you could die at any moment. And yeah, I suppose, that's one way to see it. I just find it annoying and rather inconvenient.

I'm better now - I've been taking medicine, and the short burst of hard steroids is over so I don't feel quite so out of sync. This is my first time trying Advair, and it's helpful, though inhaling dust hardly seems like the best drug delivery system I've encountered, and not something I'm dying (er, oops) to do long term. The wheezing has been greatly reduced, the cough is rarer, and the cold finally seems to be all but gone. It's only when I laugh that I get into trouble, when I laugh so hard I can't quite catch my breath... and then, blam, I actually have no breath. It's ruined my timing. I can't reel off my witty comebacks. My poor companions realize they've brought imminent death rather than joy.

This, too, I figure, should pass. I know I'm probably doing okay because I still have a sense of humor about the situation. Asthma's not so bad... except when I laugh. And even that won't get me down. Just breathe. And carry on.