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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

Well, I'm sorry I didn't post on my normal day. Everything in my "work room" was put away for Thanksgiving, so I happily lapsed a bit in all my responsibilities. We stayed at home, of course, and zoomed with my parents and sister for the holiday. Drank too much just like usual, felt like crap the next day, like usual. Got into political arguments like usual. It was honestly a pretty normal Thanksgiving, but of course, still in this same house with the same people. The sunroom I work in has become unusable for a pretty big portion of the day now due to too much, well, sun coming in. This irritates me much more than it reasonably should, but lots of things are doing that now. We put up our Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving. We were desperate to do something special, something that would make the house look different and more cheerful. It's nice, but I wonder if it will just make the wait for more time off work and school seem longer. While I kind of anticipated having some emotional problems back when lockdowns were first being discussed back in March, I've mostly been doing OK up to this point. But yesterday into the very early morning today is the first time I've felt like I might actually want some help. It's like there's this dark, sunken feeling in my chest, and nothing is interesting, maybe that's not the right way to put it. Nothing is *satisfying,* nothing I do gives me that feeling that you usually get - that it clicks, that it feels correct, that finishing it gives some sense of completion or accomplishment. That feeling you don't ever even notice until you can't feel it. I think it's the fact that COVID numbers are shooting up extraordinarily high, and they're almost guaranteed to accelerate even further with this holiday, and the next ones. I just heard that the Supreme Court ruled that religious gatherings couldn't be restricted, just in time for the coldest holidays of the year. It's murderous. And while I hope the Biden administration will improve things, when I think of all the damage, the acceleration of spread that will happen in the meantime, and the fact that he has repeatedly signaled his opposition to M4A, to locking the country down, etc., I truly don't have much faith in his leadership, either. Leaders in both parties are afraid to disappoint business interests, so more innocent people will die because we don't have the courage or the sense to do the only rational thing - pay people to stay home and give generous hazard pay and safety equipment to essential workers. On top of the failed leadership, there's the indifference that everyday people have developed. And what's even worse, in my opinion, a performative approach to disease prevention that doesn't actually respect the biological realities of the virus. "Bubbles" whose members associate with other people, masks sagging below the nose, school sports happening at all, and so on. The individualist focus that Americans have disgusts me. Maybe I'll have more organized thoughts on that subject at another time. I just can't find much reason to think there's something good on the horizon.