An Epic Halloween Pandemic Poem not in iambic pentameter TOLD THROUGH WORDS AND OIL PAINT special guest, social media

Talking about the pandemic is taboo. Writing about the pandemic is as exhausting as a first date with an old fu$& buddy.

BUT THINKING ABOUT THE PANDEMIC IS CATHARTIC

It’s easy to list everything we’ve missed out on as individuals and as a society since the start of the pandemic. So many lives have been lost. Dark days with no end in sight.

Around this time last year I was studying for a professional license, I was burning myself out at work trying to prove my worth and propel my career forward. I was planning my wedding, training three new hires on my team, and consoling my oldest son Neil when he didn’t get invited to go trick or treating with the boys he desperately wanted to consider friends.

Life was normal, stressful, and there seemed to never be enough time to get anything done well.

Holidays are important to me, I use them as a year to year barometer of how much I’ve grown and accomplished. This year, as the usual holidays approach, I found myself measuring things differently. A year ago this week I put my easel away in the basement. I’d taken up oil painting for stress relief and an artistic outlet from my corporate job. In June of 2019 I was promoted, and the responsibility of that promotion hadn’t left time in my days to pick up a brush. The easel was taking up too much space in the living room so I put it out of sight out of mind. A day with my paint used to be a stolen luxury, a painting day was a good day.

Nowadays I have to actively remember to take breaks from painting sessions to eat, do housework and shower. Painting has become ingrained in my day to day life. A year ago I struggled to find subjects to paint, I used any excuse to create a masterpiece including my future mother-in-laws 70th Birthday. I painted her bougie pedigreed pup.

Now I have so many ideas and points of view I have run out of canvases to paint on and have a regular supply list with an online art store.

Where did all of this extra time come from?

My daily commute for starters, rush hour driving gave me at least 3 extra hours a day, Online shopping has saved me 3-4 hours a week, no more team outings to prepare and attend, no more in-person teacher conferences, concerts, or nights out to the bar.

Then there was the breakup. Kicking out your fiancé and having one less “important” relationship to juggle.. oh and the fact that I’m no longer speaking to my immediate family because according to them I’m a “sheeple” who is overreacting to Covid-19 by not attending a get-together where I know attendees live with a confirmed Covid patient. More free time. Cant forget the abandonment of my career goals due to the aftermath of a sexual harassment incident turned retaliation claim that has rendered me un-promatable, not to mention my company got bought out by a competitor and just announced imminent layoffs…

You get the idea. The pandemic new normal.

I’ve always wanted to paint interesting people living interesting lives like the old masters. I have little to no training with oil paint outside of being a lifetime fan of Bob Ross and a decade of experience decorating cakes.

I now HAVE the time.

Other than my two pubescent boys, I didn’t have any models. Painting celebrities felt too desperate and uninspired. I found myself finding inspiration in this modern pandemic world in everything I initially hated about our weird shared reality. I found inspiration in the fear and shame of my daily work grind.

I was sexually harassed and intimidated after participating in an HR investigation. THAT inspired me to go inward, to paint what I knew and did not know at that time. Myself. Just me.

Not me the bride to be. Not me the single mom. Not me the friend. No me the coworker. Not me the employee who is trying too hard, but me.

The person.

The human fu&%ing being.

Not me the single woman approaching middle age who is so desperate to be relevant that she’s willing to humiliate herself by believing that anyone cares enough about her existence to care about the causes she’s illustrated in her stupid paintings. But me, the woman who only just recently realized she was worth more than her fiancé’s family’s judgment on her character and worth as a human being.

Not the jilted woman who had to be shown her place after complaining about her boss and now is stuck in a dead end job. No, me, the woman who refused to be intimidated, who hired a human rights activist lawyer to have my BACK when the man thought he was entitled to stalk me, intimidate me, after threatening to ATTACK me.

No the me who finds joy in everything. The me that doesn’t tie my life up in useless relationships, mindless work nonsense or the opinions of anyone who treats me like less than a HUMAN BEING.

That’s the real reason I have so much time: I boiled life down to only the people who matter.

Some of those people I happen to work with. As much as I want to hate my job, I really cant. The people, the real genuinely good people I met there outweigh the bad. In times like these when you are isolated, people matter…

Lets circle back to the start of this pandemic journey to self-discovery. 

A year ago with my three new teammates I trained.

I started to see them, not just in the perfectly framed boxes of our Friday zoom meetings, but in real life too. These friends were there, part of the daily work grind. The long 8 hours a day in a house that I never leave, they were there, on Slack and Webex. Familiar faces and voices I used to know in another lifetime. They were there when the breakup was raw, in a sensible outdoor socially distant way of course. They were the muscle when the breakup got ugly and required a moving truck.

New life, new friends, new memories.

People. Connection. Teamwork.

All the things the pandemic took away it gave back but in a different way.

A way that was always there but that I never would have looked at- REALLY LOOKED AT in the before times.

These three new trainees turned friends have become an unanticipated new tribe.

My moral support.

My daily counselors.

They have gotten to know my kids so well that Neil begs me to arrange informal team meetings.

He insisted on Halloween.

After his disappointment last year I obliged, only to find out that he made a sports ball pizza slap bet with Dan. What’s a pizza slap? Not sure but I plan on live streaming it.

Where was I? oh yes. Normal life.

We want to get back there. To the before times. When things were NORMAL. When I thought the most important person to impress on my team were the authority figures. That was “ old normal” but now “new normal” is wanting to redirect that energy towards the people who listened when Nathan poured his heat out about missing Damon. Who took my boys fishing and caught a frog. Who taught me how to hang my heavy art work…

I like now better.

I like giving my energy where it belongs. 8 hours to my employer and to my teammates. But the other hours are not for commutes but for connecting. Connecting to my paints, brushes and canvases. Connecting to my kids. Connecting to my new tribes. Connecting in new ways BUT with old ways too. Establishing over due boundaries with my body autonomy, and with my body on my yoga mat.

Establishing over due boundaries with my conservative family members.

Establishing over due boundaries with my employer.

Establishing over due boundaries with myself.

I like the new normal. People are standing up. People are standing out.

It might be on a zoom screen but we are connecting and become reconnected with what is important. Humanity is what’s important.

So I paint what my life is, me burning in front of the hypocrisy of my corporate drone existence.

Stolen moments of my work tribe during our Friday team zoom meetings.

This is still real life. And I love it.

I love it because more and more people are waking up. People are getting active. People are not maintaining the status quo that says profit over people.

HUMAN BEINGS  are important. Loss of life is important.

The lives lost to Covid are important.

The people laid off for greed and capitalism during a pandemic are important.

Lives matter.
BLACK LIVES MATTER.

VOTING MATTERS.

See THINKING about the pandemic is important. Who you are. Who you were.

The new YOU normal is important.

Call me a villain, but I know I’m a better human now than who I was before we lost so much. Call me abnormal but I’m not in any hurry to get back on track with who I was Halloween 2019. Last year I went as a frazzled, working, heartbroken-for-my-kid mom for Halloween.

This year my kid is is going to slap Dan in the face with a piece of pizza. That is a win.

So, this year I’m embracing the villain within and going as me. A witch.