Shots Rang Out

I guess that it's important to strike a balance between "not feeling like I need to be the most productive I've ever been in my life" and "not writing at all during quarantine".

This week it has felt like we've settled into the new normal of quarantine. Everyone has stopped making jokes about how they can finally just hang out and do nothing, myself included. After two weeks of being sort of forced into this new weird life, I'm starting to get a feel for it and it's sinking in that this is just how things are now and it's not a break from life.

I'm typically a pretty self-motivated person, but it's been hard to move from full-time classes and a TAship to writing only on my own and an online TAship. As a student, I'm fortunate in that I'm just writing papers for the rest of the semester, so the disruptions to my education were pretty minimal. The opposite has been true of teaching, as moving a year-long art history survey course online after 7 months is proving to be difficult. Kids are confused and anxious and it's so much hard to stay in contact and help them out. I can't imagine how tough it must be to teach to fully online courses as a professor.

I also find it interesting that this situation is also bringing Rebecca closer to people who we never get to see in Ontario. Neither of us have ever been big on video calls with friends and family, but we've been doing that consistently with all of our friends since this started. Maybe it's because everyone has nothing to do and never sees anyone. I like to think that it's also a result of just knowing that the person will be there and pick up when you call, but maybe that's a little on the optimistic side. As someone who can be withdrawn, and often doesn't reach out or communicate nearly enough, it's nice and important to be reminded that it's crucial to do those things.

I've been listening to so much Bob Dylan lately, something I really didn't see coming. I went through a phase of listening to his folk material when I was younger, but I'm having a great time digging into his stuff from the late 1960s and 70s now. My appetite is insatiable and it's convenient that there's hundreds of records at my disposal to chew on. Finding a huge discography, or bibliography, whose general form deeply satisfies you, like Dylan's music or an author that has a distinctive style, is such a fulfilling thing. It's nice to know exactly what you want to listen to and also that there is so much of it to look at.