The "Forever Now"

 One thing I think the pandemic has done to my mental health that's a bad thing is, I've gotten in this mind set where "what is now, will be forever." So if things are bad, if I'm anxious, if I hurt - that's forever now. "This is where I live now, I guess." 

I just got a call from my doctor's office: I was to have a 9:30 office visit, a checkup, but now she's going to phone me instead (I TOLD the scheduler it might be loud as I have renovators supposed to come). 

I can only assume this is because case rates in town are now high again (stupid BA.5) and since I don't have anything urgent (my bloodwork looked good), they don't want people like that coming in to the office and maybe getting exposed. 

But I hate this. I hate how we get a few short-lived weeks of relative freedom, followed by months of (if we care about not getting COVID) restricting our movement. I hate this. I'm not sure how much more of this I can bear, to be honest - there are no consolations for a person like me in times like this; I am increasingly alone and increasingly limited in what I can do. What's left in the world for me? 

I'm also really worried about this renovation, fearful he'll discover an unrecognized code violations that will add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost (and it must be paid, because you can't live in a house with known code violations) or that the conclusion is "this place is past saving, find a new place to live" and frankly at that point? I might just hand in a resignation and move back North with my mom

at least up there it would be marginally cooler than it is here. 

I'm still waiting on the workers to show up. They come from Denison so they have a commute but it's not getting any cooler. 

I hope they do knock off early for the heat today so I can just go into my room and wrap myself up in a sheet and try to recover from all this upset about everything.

I can't believe I'm upset about *not getting to go to the doctor* but that's how little real human contact I've had, I was actually looking forward to seeing people and talking to someone else face to face (or, well, mask to mask, but that's forever now)

The other upsetting thing about this for me is, I need to have things to look forward to. I need to be able to plan. Uncertainty absolutely UNDOES me. And now what I'm hearing, with this new variant and the doctor's visit going to a phone call is, you can never ever plan or expect to do anything again. I left the statement in my syllabi about "if we have to go all online again" but I admit I would be heartily tempted just to rage-quit if that happened because it was so terrible and miserable before trying to teach from a corner of my living room. And now I'm wondering: will I be able to go home at Thanksgiving, or will we still/once again be trapped in Bad Variant Hell? And IF the guys finish up in time, will it be OK for me to go to Chickasaw some day before classes start, or should I just stay home? 

Part of this is I second-guess myself ALL THE TIME, I make a decision and go "oooh was that the wrong one" or, more commonly, I decide not to do something because I see all the possible negative consequences and talk myself out of it. And in this life now, it seems like it's all negative consequences.

If I could just learn to accept that things will NEVER be better than they are now maybe I could cope. But I remember the before-times when I could circulate more freely and I just....I am still mourning the life I used to have.