In the absence of anything much else to talk about, it’s time to talk about me. This blog is about me, after all. My ill-thought out arguments and feelings about stuff. And as it’s all about me, I am going to tell you, my loyal reader, how this Covid-19 malarkey is affecting me.
The first thing to say is that I don’t know if I have had it yet. Before Boris Johnson had told us to “stay at home’, three days after the Cheltenham Festival had attracted 250,000 people, who had to stand ever-so-close-to-one-another, and before we had really been told what the symptoms were, I was suffering from a bug which gave me a deep and unpleasant cough and severe breathlessness that hung on for over a week. With the benefit of my in depth medical knowledge, my self-diagnosis concluded I was suffering from a cough which made my asthma a bit worse. And I was very tired. But who knows? Certainly not me.
I’ve been banging away at this blog for nearly six years now, since I parted company with my long time employer, the Dept for Work and Pensions. I had no idea of how long I would be able to keep going and even less idea of whether what I was writing about would be any good. In the end, I concluded it didn’t matter too much. I had always wanted to write, so write I would. If people liked it, all well and good. If they didn’t, then all well and good, too. And so, every day for nearly six years, I have tried to write something/anything, as Todd Rundgren might have put it.
Before Covid-19, there was always plenty to write about. Potential subjects were everywhere. And I found that I usually had an opinion on many of them. I was reminded that I was a modestly talented Jack of all trades and master of none. I had opinions on most subjects, even if I lacked the necessary detail. It was the same when I played sport. I could play almost any sport but none particularly well or particularly badly. Mediocrity as an asset. That’s me. But when Covid-19 came along, everything changed.
Now, there is nothing much to write about except Covid-19 and even those subjects that are not about Covid-19 are affected by the bloody thing. Some days it is a real struggle.
For this clinical depressive, Covid-19 has brought additional problems. With family members, friends and people all over the world getting sick from this horrible virus, and some not recovering at all, the guilt trip is worse than ever. No one says “stop feeling sorry for yourself, pull yourself together because, you know, people are dying out there and look at you in your cosy two up, two down” and I’d like to think they aren’t thinking it, either but, as Joe Walsh put it, you can’t argue with a sick mind. I’m definitely thinking everyone is thinking just that.
My feeling is – and I am not asking for praise here: just stating my feeling – is that the quality of my stuff isn’t what it might be. My sleep patterns, always uneven, are now utterly chaotic, filled with panic-stricken anxiety dreams, and every day that follows night is almost always exactly the same. There’s some safety in that, but at the same time I feel my brain dissolving more into papier-mâché with each passing day. In normal times, I crave certainty and routine. Now, I crave something just a bit different and it is literally depressing that we are stuck with more of the same, indefinitely.
I suppose I should ring my GP because I’m sure she has nothing better to do at the moment and tell her how shit I feel. But – and fellow mentalists will understand this – I prefer to speak to the same GP when possible and not have to explain bloody everything to another GP, perhaps a locum, that’s been happening in my head since 1969. It’s one reason why I try to avoid visiting a GP about my mental health. It just makes things worse. In any event, what could she do?
Doctors’ surgeries are, quite rightly, a bit like Fort Knox at the moment and stuff is being dealt with over the phone. When people in my area are literally hanging on to dear life, it all feels a bit wet to say, “I’m a bit depressed today, doctor.” Even though I am. I’m not a suicide risk, I’m not self-harming, even though I do feel I deserve a bit of self-harming (long story, not for today) from time to time. So, I muddle on through with whatever’s left of my rapidly emptying reservoir of mental strength. And I write stuff.
Professor Chris Whitty yesterday confirmed my worst fears, that we are likely to be stuck with Covid-19 and its grim effects, for the unforeseeable future. Those family holidays that we so looked forward to and even Christmas are becoming tantalisingly out of reach. I’m even beginning to worry that I might still be here, doing the exact same thing, in semi-lockdown through much of next year, too. I’m even more worried that you, dear reader, will see a much greater, and far worse, effect on your own life.
So, I’m still, I’m still writing, I’m trying to stay relatively sane in a world that seems to have gone even more mad than me. At least the sun is shining today. If it’s still like this during the cold, dark days of winter, the men with the white coats might be knocking on my door.
