When you have no inspiration.

 Dear Reader,

I have been struggling for the past year, roughly, to stay on top of my writing. I started out with great plans which then got eaten by homeschooling and then distance learning last year. We're a few months past the one year mark of when New York state (my home state) shut down due to COVID-19. Last week, we passed some threshold criteria for reopening the state. Events are still not happening in many cases because practical people are cautious. What does this have to do with my inspirational block in my writing?

That's a great question and I honestly am not sure what is a good answer to it. I have two boys that are unvaccinated. One is about a month shy of turning 12 and the other is two months shy of turning 14. We want to get them vaccinated at the same time. The problem is both of them are terrified of needles. We literally have to hold them down so they don't flail. The last time that my eldest got the flu shot, the doctor's office had this spray that numbed the area where the injection went in. He handled the business of getting vaccinated a lot better with that. But, we can't get the vaccines at our doctor's office. We have to go to a mass vaccination site. Gods only know how that is going to go for two young men on the Autism spectrum who haven't ever really had to handle a crowd before in their lives. (We live in a small town in the boonies. The closest we get to a crowd is when the folks from out of town show up to visit their lakefront properties. Even then, it's not that big or busy.)

Since the mask mandate has been dropped, virtually everyone is going around maskless. This is terrifying to me. Because we don't have a 100% adult vaccination rate. Some of these people who are wandering around without masks are carriers. I don't want my boys getting sick. And with this new delta-mutation from India showing up here in the USA, I don't know if my vaccination is enough. So, my family continues to wear masks. As of right now, the schools are still practicing the COVID-19 safety protocols. So, when summer school comes along, the kids will be wearing masks at school as will the teachers and staff. Again, gods only know how that's going to be handled in autumn when school is back in session. The uncertainty is awful and makes my brain go blank when the thing directly confronts me.

I have a bad feeling that there's going to be a third wave of deaths due to the country opening up before herd immunity via vaccination is achieved. And I fear that it will cost us a generation who simply are not old enough to get vaccinated. My sons may be vaccinated in time, but my grandniece is barely a month old. And there are countless other children who are not old enough to get vaccinated against this plague. That doesn't even take into account folks like some of my friends who are either to immunocompromised to get the vaccination or who are allergic to components in it. I am legitimately afraid for these people.

It is hard to write as a coping mechanism in the face of this horror that's been unfolding for over a year. There's so many lives that have been lost. There was so much political bullshit games being played that directly caused many of those deaths. The country is on a perilous ground. The January insurrection made very clear the threat embodied by Donald Trump. There is rumblings of another attempted coup in August. It is deeply disturbing. I have a good number of neighbors in the area who would support such a thing.

I feel like I am living in the Weimar Republic shortly before the Nazis came to power. Everyone is hastening to be back to 'normal' and ignoring the danger of the pandemic, the deep seated racist problems, and the economic disparity happening in real time. My side of the family left Germany during that period. They came here looking for better lives. When WWII broke out, they joined the military to go free their kinsmen from the hold that the Nazis had over their country. I now have relatives who I am estranged from for various reasons, among them is their overt support of white supremacy ideology. I have a brother who says that Hitler's only problem was he had bad advisors and that Hitler was attempting to do a good thing and unify Europe (completely dismissing the holocaust and the concentration camps). This brother proudly supports Donald Trump and the white supremacists that have flocked to his banner. He's claimed that they're "good Americans". To say that I was repulsed by that choice of phrase is an understatement.

Come what may, I won't be a "good American" and if the republic survives this bullshit, I'll be pleasantly surprised. But, first, we have to manage not to die in great numbers.