We are all distracted

After the events of 1968, the author Joan Didion was flummoxed by the tumultuous events of that year.

So many things happened then

Kind of like now.

She had a hard time concentrating and writing was hard.

She said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

I imagine she found herself floundering a bit.

Kind of like we are today.

Historic things were happening.

Kind of like today.

She wrote the book “White Album” in that year. I imagine the title inspired by the Beatles’ White Album. It is about race and tumultuous times that threatened to rip our nation asunder.

However, she did not have a deadly pandemic at the same time.

Lucky us.

I have been floundering a bit these past few weeks.

All I seem to do it work, be on call, write my blog, occasionally feed my husband.

When I am not doing those things, I doom scroll, watching for news.

I stare into the middle distance when I am not even doing that.

This is not me.

I am a go-getter, someone with a thousand things to do and a hundred things always going on

All of my meetings, which is one way I engage with other nurses, have been cancelled because this nation is in the grips of another surge.

I feel we are on the brink of another quarantine.

I feel as if elective cases may be paused soon.

I feel tired watching all the people running around without masks and hugging and going out to dinner and going to birthday parties.

And I want to scream.

Mostly I feel tired.

This past year has been very grinding on the healthcare system as a whole.

I hope we get a grip on it before we are ground away to nothing.

As we, as a nation, are on the brink of 400,000 dead, it is hard to grasp it.

I find her words comforting.

We are all just stories after all.