Scraps from a Pandemic

Today is the last day the university campus will be open for a while. Good news is that I got a good parking spot. All the undergraduates are heading home for their extended Spring break, courtesy of coronavirus.

Of course, it’s raining on the last day. Rainwater pools inches deep in the uneven sidewalks, seeming to further bar the campus to the weak-hearted. But I trudge through the soggy grass to make it to my office. I’ve got to take advantage of one last day of daycare, which, of course, is closing too. When I get to my office, I sit and stare. What do I have to do again?

I was so determined to make it, but now I’m here, I can’t come up with a single thing I need to do.

And that’s how productive the first week of social distancing was.

Falling behind in everything. Even more behind, I guess. I can’t keep up.

I don’t want to keep up.

My motivation, like gas prices, is reaching record lows. I see all the assignments, paperwork, emails pile up, and I can’t force myself to wade through them all. The semester is gearing up for finals week, and I’m shuttering to a stop. Being unproductive makes my anxiety worse. I get despondent. Testy.

Last week was difficult. Trevor and I split time watching Eliza. We each get four hours to work a day. I wasted most of my hours last week switching tabs on my browser trying to decide which task to do first.

And I feel guilty complaining because I know I’ve got it way better than most people. I’m healthy. My friends and family are healthy. So far, none of us have lost our jobs.

We’re fine.

Not sure if I have anything good to say today. I haven’t written anything in a while. Consumed with moving, working, mothering. No room for pretty words. Not sure I can even find pretty words anymore.

I feel compelled to write but I don’t have anything to write about. Nothing seems inspiring. And I guess that’s more of a problem in me. I hardly have time to think a full thought through to its conclusion. Interruption is the norm.

I read a tweet the other day from another academic mom whom I don’t even know. And it made me cry. She talked about how she couldn’t even do the one thing on her to-do list this week. Earlier that day, I had been thinking about how unproductive I am. I barely skate by in my part time summer appointment. I haven’t written at all. I dropped my research project all together. And I feel like I can’t say that I’m being productive elsewhere. That my time is taken up in the education and rearing of a small child because I can’t even get my now three-year-old daughter to poop in the toilet. What am I doing all day? I spend a lot of time on Twitter. Any second my hands are free from searching for tiny matching socks or wiping the floor, they twitch toward the black box that contains the blue bird. I don’t even realize I’m doing it--like rubbing my tongue over a canker on the side of my cheek. And I’m afraid to add up the hours that I spend with the words of strangers lighting up my face.

But I’m already getting bored of this topic and mining my own failures. Even when I have the time and have the willpower to write--avoid the siren call of social media, I interrupt myself. Thoughts pass through my head. This is boring. Now you're whining. Why would anyone want to hear from you?

And now Eliza’s crying, screaming in her room. She’s supposed to be napping, something she hasn’t done in over a month.

And what am I supposed to be doing?

Inspiration is low today. I don’t even know what I’ve been doing to fill the time this week. Working. Eating. Reading here and there. Watching a lot of TV. Spending hours on Twitter. I’m missing emails from people. Opening them up and then forgetting to respond. My partner and I found a schedule that allows us each four hours of work a day, but I just fidget in my seat, look for books that I probably don’t need, create plans for things far in the future and ignore what is upcoming.

My workplace is less than helpful. We have a folding table in the corner of our bedroom that my husband and I take turns using as a desk. The rest of our 950-square-foot apartment is toddler territory--filled with squeals, screams, and potty training. The table top barely has enough space for my laptop because Trevor also uses the table to house his homemade 3D printer. We joke that the 3D printer was Trevor’s first born child because he spent days putting it together years before Eliza was born. He continually adds more gadgets to it to make it more “efficient.” To me, it looks like a bunch of screws and wires strung about on a plastic frame.

What’s more, the table is also home to dozens of figurines Trevor has designed and printed to use for Dungeons and Dragons plots.(Yes, he is that nerdy.) Orcs, dragons, goblins, bears, wizards--these are my deskmates. During conference calls and bouts of boredom, I play with the figurines to keep my hands busy. I get distracted stacking the different creatures or forming elaborate fight scenes among the rubble surrounding my laptop. I’m particularly proud of the scene I created of an angry bear perched upright on the top of a tree and fighting off a giant worm attached to one shoulder and a claw-like creature latched onto its other paw. I left this masterpiece for Trevor to find on his turn to use the desk. Needless to say, he was impressed.

Maybe I play with these figurines more than I think. Is that where all my time is going? Am I really wasting hours creating towers made of giant spiders and owlbears? Even as I’m writing this, I’m eying the dragon, thinking about how many creatures I could stack onto its widespread wings. Of course, this would be a challenge since the wings are a thin foundation for a tower. But the difficulty is what makes it alluring. I don’t really need to respond to that email to my supervisor or find that one source that will be the foundation for one of my final papers. No, I need to find the perfect goblin to balance onto the spider resting on the heads of two wolves which are standing on top of another spider and a swamp creature who are each resting on the opposite wings of a plastic dragon. That’s what's really important in a time like this.