Here we go, week Seven. Thursday. There’s no set day I blog, musing on my life in the Epicenter of the Coronavirus. It’s really more of when I can. You’re in the same position as I am, you’re sheltering in place, you’re working from home, you’re social distancing, you’re doing all these things that are now casual nomenclature, all these things that have been part of our tongue’s lashing since mid-March. And so, here we are, on the cusp on May, still asking the same kind of questions: how long will this last, what will my life look like, when can I go do something that I used to do?

You know the monologue.

This is the week I filed for Unemployment Insurance, although I’m not fully integrated into it, as the last step of filing in is calling into a 1-888 number that 26 million other people are dialing, I am terribly family with the response “We’re sorry, we’re experiencing an extremely high volume of calls,” that I have been listening to this week, by my count over 500 times now. Like everyone else filing, I am besieged with frustration, and hope that I will get through. This money will be a life-saver, as is its intention.

Frustration is the theme of the week. More people being laid off. The continuation of unmasked individuals. Being at Trader Joe’s and seeing a clump of employee’s, in a cluster, discussing some app they were all looking at. The virus in the air, on people’s tongues, lodging into lungs, this infection that is not only physical but now psychological. I walk the world with my headphones on, podcast playing into my earholes, divorced from the world, deliberately, pro-actively.

Structure ever important, particularly as for the first six weeks, I had a job, I had meetings to anchor into, avoiding the pain, avoiding the worry, avoiding the loss of a financial salve. If I sink too deeply into any of that, I’ll drown, so I use structure, structure to survival. I wake up. Take care of Rocky. Dress. I plan out the meals for the day. Yoga for thirty minutes, although not every day. This week, the main driver was the constant redialing of the unemployment office. Using lip balm, searching for masks online, keeping my hands moisturized, all this is part of the structure, as they are part of the foundation.

Structure is the key to surviving for me.