Emerging From the Pandemic

TabbyAnn

TabbyAnn

Southern Indiana, U.S.A.
Location
Southern Indiana USA
After spending an unexpected year alone in my new home in a new town with no friends or family nearby, I’m finding the emergence process to be slow and unenthusiastic. I moved here to a new town with the expectation of joining a nearby club and church after I got settled in. It took almost a year to get the house arranged and locate all the outside shops and services needed to maintain myself, my house, and my car. And just as I was ready to venture out to look for social contacts and hopefully make a senior friend or friends, the pandemic hit and both the nearby club and the nearby church closed down for the duration.

The time spent social distancing went rather quickly it seemed. I ventured out once a week to the grocery and occasionally to the gas station and corresponded with friends in other states had plenty of household chores to keep me busy. I guess I adapted to all the solitude and now that the pandemic isolation rules have ended, I find I’m not as motivated to seek companionship as when I first moved here. Yet intellectually I know it’s not good to be isolated and alone in a town.

I did call the nearby church and they have re-opened on a reservation basis. You call and make a reservation and they space everyone out six feet apart in the sanctuary. I prefer drop-in attendance where I can decide not to go at the last minute if I don’t feel like it without feeling I’ve deprived someone else of a seat. So I haven’t made a reservation. I also haven’t called the nearby card club and have somehow lost interest in playing.

Has anyone else felt the pandemic brought about a new normal of isolation that you can’t switch gears easily and get out of?
 

TabbyAnn said:
After spending an unexpected year alone in my new home in a new town with no friends or family nearby, I’m finding the emergence process to be slow and unenthusiastic. I moved here to a new town with the expectation of joining a nearby club and church after I got settled in. It took almost a year to get the house arranged and locate all the outside shops and services needed to maintain myself, my house, and my car. And just as I was ready to venture out to look for social contacts and hopefully make a senior friend or friends, the pandemic hit and both the nearby club and the nearby church closed down for the duration.

The time spent social distancing went rather quickly it seemed. I ventured out once a week to the grocery and occasionally to the gas station and corresponded with friends in other states had plenty of household chores to keep me busy. I guess I adapted to all the solitude and now that the pandemic isolation rules have ended, I find I’m not as motivated to seek companionship as when I first moved here. Yet intellectually I know it’s not good to be isolated and alone in a town.

I did call the nearby church and they have re-opened on a reservation basis. You call and make a reservation and they space everyone out six feet apart in the sanctuary. I prefer drop-in attendance where I can decide not to go at the last minute if I don’t feel like it without feeling I’ve deprived someone else of a seat. So I haven’t made a reservation. I also haven’t called the nearby card club and have somehow lost interest in playing.

Has anyone else felt the pandemic brought about a new normal of isolation that you can’t switch gears easily and get out of?
Click to expand...
Yep.
 
TabbyAnn said:
After spending an unexpected year alone in my new home in a new town with no friends or family nearby, I’m finding the emergence process to be slow and unenthusiastic. I moved here to a new town with the expectation of joining a nearby club and church after I got settled in. It took almost a year to get the house arranged and locate all the outside shops and services needed to maintain myself, my house, and my car. And just as I was ready to venture out to look for social contacts and hopefully make a senior friend or friends, the pandemic hit and both the nearby club and the nearby church closed down for the duration.

The time spent social distancing went rather quickly it seemed. I ventured out once a week to the grocery and occasionally to the gas station and corresponded with friends in other states had plenty of household chores to keep me busy. I guess I adapted to all the solitude and now that the pandemic isolation rules have ended, I find I’m not as motivated to seek companionship as when I first moved here. Yet intellectually I know it’s not good to be isolated and alone in a town.

I did call the nearby church and they have re-opened on a reservation basis. You call and make a reservation and they space everyone out six feet apart in the sanctuary. I prefer drop-in attendance where I can decide not to go at the last minute if I don’t feel like it without feeling I’ve deprived someone else of a seat. So I haven’t made a reservation. I also haven’t called the nearby card club and have somehow lost interest in playing.

Has anyone else felt the pandemic brought about a new normal of isolation that you can’t switch gears easily and get out of?
Click to expand...
Absolutely, my wife and I have little confidence that life as we knew it will ever return. We feel some kind of “longing” that hangs heavy on both of us. We know that the last year has been much easier on us that most.
All that we can do, and all that you can do Tabbycat is just ride this thing out and see where it takes us. Getting used to the idea that normal will never return is hard.
You have our sympathy.
 

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Yes. At first the days felt long and it felt odd hardly leaving the house. Now the time goes by pretty fast. Some things we used to do I just feel like it is too much trouble to bother with. It isn't due to feeling safe as much as feeling like it such a bother to get dressed up and drive to places we used to go. Seems easier to do things around the house.
 
RnR said:
Pecos —
"All that we can do, and all that you can do Tabbycat is just ride this thing out and see where it takes us. Getting used to the idea that normal will never return is hard."

Totally agree with that, depressing at times.
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RnR - How did you get just that one sentence to print out from Pecos paragraph? When I try to reply with a quote it gets all messed up !!! Thanks.
 
TabbyAnn said:
RnR - How did you get just that one sentence to print out from Pecos paragraph? When I try to reply with a quote it gets all messed up !!! Thanks.
Click to expand...

You can press quote and reply, click the [ ] BBC code sign in the top right row, and then edit how you wish.
Click the [ ] again and you're set. You can also click "Preview" in the top right row on and off to do the same thing.
 
Pecos said:
We feel some kind of “longing” that hangs heavy on both of us.
Click to expand...
I feel the same. I don’t know why but as I’ve aged I’ve become difficult I guess I would call it. In my 20’s living in a large city I had so many social friends. Now I have my husband and that’s about it. I’ve had women try and befriend me but with the pandemic I just couldn’t keep up. I have two young children at home and I’m in university fulltime and my husband is military and often away, so I am busy but also feel unmotivated to do anything. I find myself spending hours a day playing stupid online card games just to fill what downtime I do have.

I’m worried about will I be able to make friends again? We moved to this city four years ago, the first year I was very ill and unable to get out of the house. Then just as I was starting to find ways to socialize Covid hit.

I have some great neighbours but I just seem to have lost my social skills. I’m worried about even doing something like baking cookies and dropping them off at neighbours because I don’t want to intrude. Isn’t that sad?
 
Glad to hear you got pretty much settled. I am sure things will get better and normal for you. I retired at an early age and with hubby work schedule, it has not effected us too much. Not too much has changed. I miss going to the movie but we have quite a few movie channels. We go out to eat once in a while. I do my grocery shopping.. my daughter stops by once in a while. I also go out to eat with friends and family once in a while.
 
BlissfullyUnawareCanadian said:
I feel the same. I don’t know why but as I’ve aged I’ve become difficult I guess I would call it. In my 20’s living in a large city I had so many social friends. Now I have my husband and that’s about it. I’ve had women try and befriend me but with the pandemic I just couldn’t keep up. I have two young children at home and I’m in university fulltime and my husband is military and often away, so I am busy but also feel unmotivated to do anything. I find myself spending hours a day playing stupid online card games just to fill what downtime I do have.

I’m worried about will I be able to make friends again? We moved to this city four years ago, the first year I was very ill and unable to get out of the house. Then just as I was starting to find ways to socialize Covid hit.

I have some great neighbours but I just seem to have lost my social skills. I’m worried about even doing something like baking cookies and dropping them off at neighbours because I don’t want to intrude. Isn’t that sad?
Click to expand...
It looks to me that you have a pretty full platter right now between school, two children at home, and a military husband who deploys. That leaves little time to live a busy social life so cut yourself some slack. The things that you are focused on all seem to be focused on the future and require a lot of energy. I would be physically tired and that would greatly affect my interest in being social.
That said, make those cookies because your neighbors are likely in the same boat as you. It is the little things.
 
The plague has really hit me hard as I only have 2 passions in life ~ one being food and the other in attending/watching youth sports. For a short while it was difficult to get some food I needed as the store shelves were largely empty. Thankfully, that problem was solved after only a couple of months. But the other problem remained until just recently. I could not attend any youth sporting event such as baseball, softball, football, ice hockey, volleyball, tennis or whatever because fans were not allowed to be in attendance. Thankfully, this ban has now been lifted and I have attended a hand full of games over the past couple of weeks. So great to have things go back to normal.

Let us hope everyone will get vaxxed so that we can all be safe.
 
Think what we might be describing here is a "loss of innocence"...the reality of this monstrous game changer has hit our consciousness and it will take quite a while for it to melt down within us and become one with our psyche.
After all, we took a global "punch in the gut" like nothing we ever experienced before. It was touch and go there for a while, so we need time to process it and hopefully come out stronger in the long one. Patience should do the resilient trick.
 
TabbyAnn said:
Has anyone else felt the pandemic brought about a new normal of isolation that you can’t switch gears easily and get out of?
Click to expand...
A little common sense, history and some really funny statistics suggested early on that the pandemic was probably unnecessary and, therefore I didn't isolate or wear a mask (except in places that demanded it). I had good company with respect to this viewpoint and attitude, some of whom were prominent in the field (e.g. a declaration by the American Institute for Economic Research and authored by University of Oxford epidemiologist Dr. Sunetra Gupta, Stanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Martin Kulldorff).

Letters were sent to the D.C. government manderins by various front line physicians, researchers, epidemiologists and virologists trying to make the following simple and common sense points.
  1. Flu virus is especially dangerous to the elderly and/or immuno-suppressed and every effort should be made to protect them by extraordinary measures (e.g., masking and isolation)
  2. Quarantining otherwise healthy people who or may not demonstrate symptoms is ridiculous. Those with symptoms are likely to get the sniffles and have also already spread the virus. As long as they're not spreading it to the endangered group there's not much to worry about.
  3. Making workers stay home who have next to no likelihood of being significantly impacted by this virus is ridiculous.
  4. People who do get mild flu symptoms will likely develop some immunity.
  5. Most masks don't work.
  6. The media has created an unnecessary panic.
Given the intense media and political pressure, people with such ideas were badgered, censured and sometimes threatened. Even today prominent people are getting death threats over this. Freedom of speech has been curtailed and even shut down on social media. Fortunately, the madness of this debacle seems to be coming to an end. Let's hope the new normal isn't stupid enough to go back to the what was the pandemic normal. Let's hope people learn from this.
 
JonDouglas said:
A little common sense, history and some really funny statistics suggested early on that the pandemic was probably unnecessary and, therefore I didn't isolate or wear a mask (except in places that demanded it). I had good company with respect to this viewpoint and attitude, some of whom were prominent in the field (e.g. a declaration by the American Institute for Economic Research and authored by University of Oxford epidemiologist Dr. Sunetra Gupta, Stanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Martin Kulldorff).

Letters were sent to the D.C. government manderins by various front line physicians, researchers, epidemiologists and virologists trying to make the following simple and common sense points.
  1. Flu virus is especially dangerous to the elderly and/or immuno-suppressed and every effort should be made to protect them by extraordinary measures (e.g., masking and isolation)
  2. Quarantining otherwise healthy people who or may not demonstrate symptoms is ridiculous. Those with symptoms are likely to get the sniffles and have also already spread the virus. As long as they're not spreading it to the endangered group there's not much to worry about.
  3. Making workers stay home who have next to no likelihood of being significantly impacted by this virus is ridiculous.
  4. People who do get mild flu symptoms will likely develop some immunity.
  5. Most masks don't work.
  6. The media has created an unnecessary panic.
Given the intense media and political pressure, people with such ideas were badgered, censured and sometimes threatened. Even today prominent people are getting death threats over this. Freedom of speech has been curtailed and even shut down on social media. Fortunately, the madness of this debacle seems to be coming to an end. Let's hope the new normal isn't stupid enough to go back to the what was the pandemic normal. Let's hope people learn from this.
Click to expand...
What would you consider "elderly"? IMO, when considering the dangerousness of flu virus, that'd likely be 60 & over. And isn't everyone on this site at least 60? Soooo, if you're at least 60, I don't understand why you don't consider Covid-19 dangerous enough for you to mask & isolate whenever possible. (Unless it's that "guy" thing of "I'm so darn healthy, why it's like I'm still 25!" You wouldn't be alone in that kind of thinking; every darn male I've known in my life thinks that way.)
 
The restrictions and isolation associated with the pandemic helped me to prepare for the next phase of old age.

Staying home for extended periods, planning shopping, errands, appointments and becoming more comfortable with available technology has given me more confidence in my ability to adapt to becoming housebound at some point in the future.

I’m curious now about how long it will be before COVID-19 disappears from the news cycle and we are able to let it go from our daily lives.
 
JonDouglas said:
A little common sense, history and some really funny statistics suggested early on that the pandemic was probably unnecessary and, therefore I didn't isolate or wear a mask (except in places that demanded it). I had good company with respect to this viewpoint and attitude, some of whom were prominent in the field (e.g. a declaration by the American Institute for Economic Research and authored by University of Oxford epidemiologist Dr. Sunetra Gupta, Stanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Martin Kulldorff).

Letters were sent to the D.C. government manderins by various front line physicians, researchers, epidemiologists and virologists trying to make the following simple and common sense points.
  1. Flu virus is especially dangerous to the elderly and/or immuno-suppressed and every effort should be made to protect them by extraordinary measures (e.g., masking and isolation)
  2. Quarantining otherwise healthy people who or may not demonstrate symptoms is ridiculous. Those with symptoms are likely to get the sniffles and have also already spread the virus. As long as they're not spreading it to the endangered group there's not much to worry about.
  3. Making workers stay home who have next to no likelihood of being significantly impacted by this virus is ridiculous.
  4. People who do get mild flu symptoms will likely develop some immunity.
  5. Most masks don't work.
  6. The media has created an unnecessary panic.
Given the intense media and political pressure, people with such ideas were badgered, censured and sometimes threatened. Even today prominent people are getting death threats over this. Freedom of speech has been curtailed and even shut down on social media. Fortunately, the madness of this debacle seems to be coming to an end. Let's hope the new normal isn't stupid enough to go back to the what was the pandemic normal. Let's hope people learn from this.
Click to expand...
Yes, let's hope people will learn from this but there, of course, no limit to the stupidity of some people. Now, with the internet, smartphones and everyone thinking they know it all and can publish their dribble on the internet like it was a document from "God" the world is in a pretty bad situation. I found it sadly amusing for for nearly a year, all the news from around the world was ignored and only news from the virus published. It got so bad in our local paper that I counted 18 pages of news pertaining to the pandemic in one single issue of that paper. I canceled my subscription and will never subscribe to that paper again. Talk about people having tunnel vision (or perhaps a form of brain washing).
 
bingo said:
we have been isolated from social groups for many years now...
moved 700 miles to be near our daughter...
small town....we made one dear friend..
she died of pancreatic cancer 2 months before pandemic...
haven't managed to meet anyone ....
we stick close to home...few errands...
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Sorry about your friend, @bingo. Hang out with us while you get out a little more. 🌹
 
officerripley said:
What would you consider "elderly"? IMO, when considering the dangerousness of flu virus, that'd likely be 60 & over. And isn't everyone on this site at least 60? Soooo, if you're at least 60, I don't understand why you don't consider Covid-19 dangerous enough for you to mask & isolate whenever possible. (Unless it's that "guy" thing of "I'm so darn healthy, why it's like I'm still 25!" You wouldn't be alone in that kind of thinking; every darn male I've known in my life thinks that way.)
Click to expand...
Guess what. I am a good bit older than 60, in good health and wasn't all that concerned. Having seen virulent flu before (e.g. H1N1), statistics and other evidence, this looked just like another flu season to me and we didn't do all this masking/isolation crap before, die we?. Having some knowledge about the way covid/flu cases and deaths were being counted, I came to a mathematical conclusion that this season was on par with other seasons The CDC was constantly changing the rules and reporting what they wanted. What they and the news media were reporting differed from what was happening and being seen on the front lines (e.g., doctors testing for both flu and covid were seeing both but told to stop counting the flu and report it as covid. Same with deaths). So, to me, this was just another flu season but with a lot of unnecessary drama, hysterics, bureaucratic bungling and CYA, crying "wolf", hyperventilating, virtue signaling, politicing and a major power play for your money from big pharma.

Aside from all that, going along with the masking and lockdown was hurting our country and people very badly. Jobs and business were being lost. Supply chains were getting clobbered. Inventories demolished. I wasn't going to go along with that the sheer stupidity of all that. Finally, perhaps I value freedom more than some others.
 
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JonDouglas said:
Guess what. I am a good bit older than 60, in good health and wasn't all that concerned. Having seen virulent flu before (e.g. H1N1), statistics and other evidence, this looked just like another flu season to me and we didn't do all this masking/isolation crap before, die we?. Having some knowledge about the way covid/flu cases and deaths were being counted, I came to a mathematical conclusion that this season was on par with other seasons The CDC was constantly changing the rules and reporting what they wanted. What they and the news media were reporting differed from what was happening and being seen on the front lines (e.g., doctors were testing for both flue and covid were seeing both but told to stop counting the flu and report it as covid. Same with deaths). So, to me, this was just another flu season but with a lot of unnecessary drama, hysterics, bureaucratic bungling and CYA, crying "wolf", hyperventilating, virtue signaling, politicing and a major power play for your money from big pharma.
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That's nice (for you) that you weren't concerned. But I know someone is almost 80 and in good health (still jogs, enters marathons, eats super healthy, has a very upbeat outlook on his health & everything else) and got Covid and was in the hospital for 3 weeks. At one point, he felt so darn bad (struggling to breathe mainly) that he called his wife & asked her to come get him so he could die at home instead of in a hospital bed. Luckily she didn't do that & he got better and is home now. But you enjoy being not all that concerned; unfortunately it won't protect you (or anybody you might infect) from Covid or anything else.
 
officerripley said:
That's nice (for you) that you weren't concerned. But I know someone is almost 80 and in good health (still jogs, enters marathons, eats super healthy, has a very upbeat outlook on his health & everything else) and got Covid and was in the hospital for 3 weeks. At one point, he felt so darn bad (struggling to breathe mainly) that he called his wife & asked her to come get him so he could die at home instead of in a hospital bed. Luckily she didn't do that & he got better and is home now. But you enjoy being not all that concerned; unfortunately it won't protect you (or anybody you might infect) from Covid or anything else.
Click to expand...
Two things you may not be aware of. One: I'd been exposed to covid and didn't get it. If I had gotten covid, I would have quarantined myself and thus protected others, most likely developing antibodies to protect myself and others going forward. Two, I did get the J&J shot to protect myself and others. Remember that most masks are ineffective and good health is, I wasn't in much danger and certainly not dangerous to anybody else. It was just another flu season packaged up by the media and certain bureaucrats in a box of fear all wrapped up in a big layer of bureaucratic prevaricating and stupidity. Did you mask up and hide in past flu seasons?
 


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