Viral

Another month has flown by. The days melt into each other with little distinction, and we see far too many viral videos about humans lashing out and beating each other up as they fight the nebulous fear of a virus that is still rampaging across the planet. I’m unbelievably lucky that my job was easy to switch over to working from home–the official authority for which has been extended month by month, and currently rests at the end of October. We’ve been told that unless the numbers change dramatically, we really shouldn’t expect to return full time to the office until sometime in the new year.

It’s amazing that such a large firm has has been able to implement that scale of change so rapidly. I’m seeing more articles that talk about the mental health downsides of this effort. The Guardian described it as the quiet, grinding loneliness. Politico went so far as to predict the death of cities (with their high rents and high stress environments) because so many employers have made this switch, and could therefore allow employees to live where they feel most at home. Meanwhile, the Electronic Freedom Frontier spelled out the dark side of these moves: Companies are so worried that they can’t SEE their workers working, they’re mandating intrusive “bossware“. Bloomberg, on the other hand, speculated that maybe, finally, the pandemic might turn around decades worth of workers’ rights’ and pay erosion. (That last one comes with some fancy, worthwhile charts to help build the case.) The key graf:

Covid helps clarify just how much employers have chipped away at the labor rights and bargaining power that came with the New Deal. Legislation and court rulings have outlawed key organizing and protest tactics, legalized aggressive anti-union efforts, and radically shrunk the range of occupations granted basic labor rights. Companies looking for a short-term jolt to their profit margin have more incentives than ever to hire workers indirectly, keeping payroll and liability off their own books. The pandemic certainly could give employers even more power to set the rules. Or it could give workers a chance to end the heist on a nationwide scale.

Josh Eidelson, “How The American Worker Got Fleeced,” July 2, 2020

As previously reported, for me, being at home all the time has been an unexpected bonanza. I like not having to make excuses about not wanting to leave home or spend time in large groups of people. (I conform significantly to introvert descriptions and apparently have a healthy dose of hermeticism to go with it.)

Until last week, though, all this time at home was not helping me get back in the flow of writing. My Goodreads list of books read so far this year is edging ever closer to 80, and I’ve already overshot my annual goal. It was more comfortable to retreat into other people’s fiction than mine.

My story didn’t help, either, being set in a post-apocalyptic Earth. Finally, I figured out the plot twist that gets me out of that rut and into something more akin to revenge p*rn (though likely not quite as bloodthirsty a scenario as would make hubs happy… but we’ll see how it all plays out – LOL).

I also figured out that listening to binaural music helps keep me focused and able to churn out words.

So I signed up for Virtual Author Book-signing Bingo event on August 29. (Join me: I’ll be ON CAMERA for SIX HOURS!) As a consequence, Planet Seekers: Team Alpha is currently on sale, down to $2.99 on Amazon. I’m testing out layering visibility of this sale via the Dog Days Giveaway and BookSends. Any help you can give with spreading the word would be welcome.

I’d hoped all that effort would spur me on to finish writing book 2 in time to catch some follow-up enthusiasm from new readers of book 1… but work got busy. So… we’ll see how it goes.

Meantime, relevant to my research for the book, an interesting article about the heart of consciousness being frequency/vibration. And some interesting gaps in the understanding we’ve accepted about humanity via the Human Genome Project. Each has its place in my story line and should make for a different kind of cross-over story between scifi and fantasy–and naturally, also, romance, because I need to make sure that even if only in fiction, there is somewhere a mental model for what a happy ending might look like in disastrous circumstances.

Here’s hoping the next month helps us all find some light at the end of the tunnel, so we can focus more intentionally on our hopes and dreams rather than the catastrophizing that is being forced on us.