A Phase

Certain things are carefully reopening around here, but I'm not.

Hmm, that sounds a little wrong, I just mean to say that although certain services are available to me starting this week, I am not rushing out to use them.

Starting this week, I could, if I wanted, look into booking a hair cut, possibly an acupuncture appointment, physio, some gyms are working on opening "soon", and I'm sure some other things I haven't been emailed or notified about yet.  And I'm not going to be booking any appointments or going to any of those places.  I don't know if/when I will again actually...

I suppose in some ways I'm waiting to see what happens over the next few weeks in terms of transmission rates and possible increases in cases.  To be honest, part of me thinks I should just go and do those things now, before, say the borders open up again or people start visiting from elsewhere, potentially bringing the virus with them.  And I know what's happening here in terms of careful openings isn't happening everywhere.  To be honest, I haven't looked at other provinces, and I'm doing my best to ignore the un-ignorable coming from U.S.-based news, and I'm unclear about other countries too.

I know we all have different populations and different living situations (some cities are far more people compacted in than we are, for example) and different known case numbers and different approaches and I know I'm only hearing the very tail end of whatever high up conversations are happening between health officials and governments and who's talking to who across the world... all that to say I know what's happening in my small corner of the world is not what's happening anywhere else and that too is an odd feeling.

So, no, I'm not changing anything on my end, not for now, not for a while, and we'll see.  We'll see what happens or doesn't happen or what unfolds or changes. 

This is all so complex, and I know when I start to think about those complexities and situations other than my own, I get very quickly overwhelmed, so while I am not oblivious to all of the other things out there and all the ways people and businesses and organizations are struggling, I'm really trying to keep myself on the lower end of panicked.  So I'm not "going there" with a lot of this.  But damn.... this isn't easy and it isn't simple.

I wish us all well.  Everywhere, I truly do.

And to quote our Chief Health Officer, the amazing,  Dr Bonnie Henry... "Be kind, be calm, be safe".