After having gone to my dentist
for the first time in four years, I thought that would be the end of
it for a while. I dutifully and grown-uply made an appointment for
six months out before I left the office and naively thought that
would be the last I would hear from them for a while, but no. The
very next day, I got an e-mail stating that they needed to see me in
four months, not six. I was shocked. When I e-mailed back
arguing about insurance coverage and my dubiousness regarding the
actual medical necessity of the four-month time frame, they were
undeterred. I received a long, pedantic e-mail in return, with an
exhaustive breakdown of my insurance coverage and a detailed
narrative rendering of my dental diagnosis (which I do not
scientifically agree with), along with a stern admonition that the
four-month visit is essential to my dental health. Now that they got
me back, they are not going to let me go come Hell or high water. I
would not be surprised if they showed up to my house and physically
dragged me out of bed (because that’s where I’d be, bed) and into
the dental chair. In my defense, as I was pouring out my dental woes
to my trainer, because sometimes the temptation to treat him as a
defacto therapist is too much, he went on his own little dental rant,
huffing that he hates the dentist because they always charge too
much, it hurts like hell, and they never actually address the issue
that he comes in with. He’s a tough, feisty Luchadore who doesn’t
seem scared of anything, so the fact that he hates the dentist too
makes me feel not quite so bad about my own dental phobia.
I was half-heartedly cleaning out
the hall closet the other day in an ongoing bid to find my long-lost
Fitbit, and I realized that I have done nothing crafting-wise in
many, many months. I have had no desire to sew, to make rugs, to
finish my many unfinished projects, or to paint or draw. I firmly
believe this is directly related to COVID-19 and the subsequent
stress it’s caused me. I feel like I am instinctively reserving my
energy right now. I have had to go into work every single damn day of
this pandemic and cope with the massive stress that is involved in
working in a hospital during a global outbreak, and I don’t have
the luxury of any leftover energy to generate the creative impulses
necessary to crafting. It makes me sad. I feel deadened in that way,
and I don’t think that it’s good for me. And it seems weirdly
tied in with my unwillingness to make a hair appointment, although I
don’t know why the two would be related. Perhaps it has something
to do with a sense of luxuriousness. Part of why I enjoy getting my
hair cut is that for one entire hour, I get to feel special and taken
care of and a little bit fussed over. It’s worth paying a little
extra money to go to a place where it smells nice and looks pretty
and there’s some ceremony involved in making me look slightly
better. I don’t want to get my hair cut when it is going to be
stressful and fraught with rules and distancing and glass partitions
and fear and an “in and out as quickly as possible” mentality.
That same sense of expansive luxuriousness is tied into the time and
energy required to think through a creative project and execute on
it. Generating the energy it requires to consider color, form
and design at this time just seems impossible. I don’t like this. As
an artistic person, the grayness and lack of vibrancy in the world
right now is very disheartening. Maybe the best way to fight against
it is to rebel; to somehow find the energy within to create something
of beauty, no matter how small.
Mr. Typist has been urging me for
some time to try this space-opera-y new game he likes called
Empyrion, and I finally gave in. It was hard for me to pull away from
the small, comforting confines of Stardew Valley, where everything is
very predictable and rote, to the massive expanse of outer space and
learning new monsters and a complicated crafting system. It feels
like work. I am grinding my way through the extremely long and
involved tutorial, and I have discovered that I do not like outer
space. Human beings are not meant to live there, and the adaptations
it takes to maintain life are too daunting. I’m probably going to
give this one up fairly quickly. Again, with the energy
expenditures—I see no reason to spend the little brain power I have
left over learning something that I do not derive enjoyment or
much-needed relaxation from. But don’t tell him. It makes him happy
that I am playing it and learning how to kill new monsters. There are
many new monsters in the world, and one needs to be prepared.
On that rather grim note, enjoy
this fun, cheesy, oddly inspiring game trailer for “Empyrion.”
--Kristen McHenry
1 comment:
Everyone should read this!
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