I began April working on a necessary task, cleaning up my password management. In a strange way, this task causes me more stress than the coronavirus. I am replacing some over-used passwords with ones from a strong random password generator. But I soon discovered that my keyboards do not seem to have all the required symbols. I know about ASCII codes which I was able to use. But one website would not accept the codes and I could not determine why. I find this kind of work very frustrating and I become irritated, which makes me less effective, which makes progress more difficult, which makes me more frustrated and more irritated. But in the era of cornonavirus I am more on guard, working harder to maintain good mental health.
In early April there was a noticeable change in tone by governments in Mexico. When they decide to close beaches in this country, they are serious. It is quite a contrast with what has been going on in Florida. Mexico declared a state of emergency. The State of Jalisco stated that they expected 60% of its people to stay at home, not good enough, quite discouraging.
I also noticed more angst in the InterSpiritual Agnostics facebook group which I am a member of. This is a private facebook group so I will not attach names to the posts. But the following post sparked a number of similar comments.
"I don't have the virus yet and though in many senses I am doing well and am grateful, at the same time, I'M NOT OKAY and I just want you to know that it's okay for you to not be okay too. We can all get real with each other and admit this is tough! And you can say I'M NOT OKAY."
My post the next day was well received.
Today I am okay but I have no secret sauce to share. Actually, I am quite fragile and have had mental health challenges for most of my life, too much depression and anxiety. Tomorrow I may break down. But today I am okay.
Pat shared a video with me from a young Canadian man who did some travel videos while in Mexico. It captures the emotion of some very well. Yet we cannot tell them don't worry, everything will be okay. i'm not doing ok (mental health update video)
I received a very thought provoking email from my sister-in-law Linda, below, followed by my reply.
Hope you guys are still doing fine. I will send another email when I have
more time, but I wanted to forward this documentary to you (Ana's niece sent
it to her). I am curious to know what you think of it.
https://youtu.be/PIJxuHibz_I
Oh my Linda!!!
Pat and I watched the first six episodes yesterday and the last four this afternoon. Did you watch the whole thing? This has everything.
Do you believe in synchronicity? Yesterday when Pat and I were having coffee on the terrace I was telling her about QAnon. Then we get your email. A coincidence? Really?
I recently read an article about Q by someone I highly respect, Jordan Hall. His article was removed from the Medium website, but was quickly reposted elsewhere. He has not been given an explanation. This is mysterious. What is going on?
Jordan Hall is not easy to understand, especially at first. But I rarely disagree with him. Here is his article, if you are interested.
Did you know that QAnon followers recently went after Oprah?
HOW A QANON CORONAVIRUS CONSPIRACY ABOUT OPRAH WENT VIRAL
Here is another good article with a key quote.
Qanon Deploys 'Information Warfare' to Influence the 2020 Election
By promoting conspiracies and fomenting division, Zuckerman of the MIT Media Lab says, Qanon and similar movements threaten Americans’ sense of shared truth. “The danger of Qanon is not that they try to blow up a building,” he says. “It's that they and others are blowing up our shared reality."
So Linda, I will start believing the shit in the video when JFK appears in 2020. That has about the same chance as seeing Jesus Christ coming down through the clouds. But with the coronavirus crisis we will see a lot of weird stuff and a lot of True Believers.
Pat utilized the services of a young Mexican lady to go shopping for her at Walmart and Superlake. All things considered it worked well and we plan to use her service again. A few days later Pat saw a comment on facebook that Superlake was closing because of their inability to bring imported goods from the USA into Mexico.
Like many other people, in March I began to look at Zoom as a meeting platform. In early April I had my first Zoom meeting with a new member of Lakeside Pathfinders, someone currently in the San Fransisco area and hoping to return to Lakeside in early May. We had a good conversation but the video of me was upside down.
My second Zoom experience was very good.
Thank you for signing up to Resilience & Sensemaking on Sunday, 5 April!
We've had a huge response and decided to cap the day at 1000 attendees - we have about 50 spots left, so if you know anyone who might like to join, they can still sign up until Saturday at 8pm GMT.
We'll begin the day at 2:30pm BST / 9:30am ET / 6:30am PT and the last session will be at 10pm BST / 5pm ET / 2pm PT. You can of course choose whatever sessions you'd like to join and come in and out. We do encourage everyone to join in with the first session which frames the day. First up will be an introduction by David Fuller & Alexander Beiner of Rebel Wisdom, followed by a talk by Jamie Wheal giving a big picture perspective of the cultural moment we find ourselves in, and then Diane Musho Hamilton helping us make sense of the emotional and relational landscape.
It felt almost thrilling joining with other like-minded people from all over the world. The Rebel Wisdom leaders were excellent moderators. The presentation by Jamie Wheal was very insightful, but his perspective was not new to me. I thought Diane Musho Hamilton was very skillful. The number of participants peaked at 413 and I stayed for the first session, over two hours.
Pat and I had a wonderful telephone conversation with our long-time good friends Ken and Trish Lewchuk who live in Houston. They are both still working and, of course, now working from home. This difference by itself makes their current life experience quite different from ours as retirees. We have had many great conversations with them over the years. We hope for many more. Ken and I discussed the shape of the economy now and into the future. Recession shapes Ken expects a V-shaped recovery without a full return to the levels before this recession. Of that I am skeptical. I would not be shocked by a depression but I think we are in a time when predictions of all types have a higher degree of uncertainty than any other time during my lifetime.