“Another one to read in five years … I can tell you one thing, it’s not going to look like 2019.” [Mood on Monday, When This Is Over]
I posted this on 20 July 2020, five years ago tomorrow. I was convinced of my thesis. How could we go through a global pandemic not have things change? Such a major cataclysmic event would have repercussions in every area of life. That’s what I said then, “You can’t – as a person, as a nation, as a society – go through a shitstorm of this magnitude and not come out the other side fundamentally changed.” [ibid]
Turns out, you can.
On a micro level, my personal situation is about the same. Same place. Same people. Same jobs. Same horses. No major changes for good or for ill. The ladies came & went. That was the plan when they arrived. Some issues with cats; still enough to form a clowder. [Jasmine & Rose archives]
On a macro level, it feel like we are still fighting the same battles with the same people. We have rearranged the deckchairs but we are still dodging icebergs. The forces of light and reason are besieged on every side. Same shit, different year.
I’ve read the theory (source not noted, apologies) that one reason for the current state of the world is a sociey-wide grieving from the pandemic. Could be.
Perhaps five years is too short for an historical perspective.
~~~
Afterword
Free fiction for you. The Year Without Sunshine, by Naomi Kritzer. Mentioned before. Relevant to this discussion. [On The Mountain]
By the same author, an essay written in 2020 about a story written five years earlier. Story “So Much Cooking”. Essay, Reactor: Didn’t I Write This Story Already? When Your Fictional Pandemic Becomes Reality, Kritzer 2015. CW: essay is fine, story has sad elements.
I wrote multiple full-length posts talking about current events, often titled Mood On Monday, from March 2020 to May 2021. [pandemic archives]
This morphed into the introductory bits at the top of each post. [State of the Blog, Awareness of the Outside World, Taking a Poll on a New Feature] 20 July 2020
Previous retrospective [One Year Later] 13 March 2021
What have the last five years been for you?
Onwards!
Katherine
Virtual Brush Box 
I’ve had a lot of bad changes in the last 5 years. Moving here at the beginning of the pandemic wasn’t an easy way to adjust to my new station in life. But I’m here, and coping. Mostly. Eowyn is still here. My quilt project, on hold for most of these years, is once again in motion. Sometimes I feel we’re just continuing, not living.
I hear you.