revolutionary
Added some new URLs to my collection of online reads, penned by people I actually know. Rec your blog and/or newsletter: http://bit.ly/addvoid
The United Nations is on Unsplash sharing free COVID-19 stock photos
Manila, 23 August—I find myself caring very little about this spin re: some sectors talking about a revolutionary government, because to my mind it’s another one of those obvious distractions being floated by the forces that aim to obscure the fact that the President is probably gravely ill and dying and utterly incapable of responding effectively to the country’s COVID-19 crisis.
To quote Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention: ‘You simply cannot fake your way through this job.’ [VIDEO and TRANSCRIPT via CNN] That’s how the local response has felt like, by the way: A bunch of old men faking their way through it—and, well, making money while at it, too. [READ: Duque tagged as ‘godfather’ of Philhealth mafia via Rappler]
Meanwhile, the DOH has been so careless about their COVID-19 data from the get-go. It’s been six months since we logged the country’s first COVID case, and UP TO NOW the DOH data is still unreliable. WHY. HOW can we use these numbers for decision-making. [READ: DOH removes over 4,000 ‘duplicate cases’ from COVID-19 tally; 309 ‘recoveries’ turned out to be deaths via ABS-CBN News]
I’m just generally furious: Imagine losing a loved one to COVID and then finding out that their entry in the DOH database reflects not a death but a RECOVERY. It’s fucking infuriating.
Anyway, for something light: Over the weekend, the folks I work with held the first (can you believe?) e-numan I joined during this quarantine. We celebrated some work-specific milestones, and I realized that for the most part of this quarantine I have managed to be sober. I’d been so afraid of getting sick that I actually stayed away from recreational drinking.
Had this maddening quarantine hit my 20-year-old, beers-lining-the-fridge self, I would definitely have spent the past five months day drinking, and, most likely, smoking indoors. In many ways, I’m sort of glad the version of me facing this now is this version: Mellowed down and less… intense, for the lack of a better word.
I spent my younger years in intensity: I was raised intensely. Younger, I clung to an image of myself and intensely tried to live it out: Our mother’s narrative was that I was an achiever, and that made me into an incurable people-pleaser. When she passed, I readily put on that coat, too: Just a kid trying to outrun the challenges of their mother’s early passing. And then, getting the chance to reinvent myself in college, I leaned in to some choice vices, and then bam: I’m gay.
I think my formative years as a teenage gay were so intense, they’re almost embarrassing. It coincided with the early years of the SMS boom in the country, and let me tell you—boy, did we text. We passed CDs around, clandestinely met in random waiting sheds and fought while walking all over campus, negotiating about our respective relationships with our personal closets (She wanted to stay closeted; I did not.) Everything felt like an affront; we exploded every two weeks, depending on our PMS and stress levels. It’s a miracle we graduated on time.
And here we are: Almost twenty years from that place. I wonder how that would have been, had I given myself some time to mellow; to come out much later in life. I remember sitting my friends down one by one to tell them about the… development, LOL. Looking back, it was truly all so young.
Although I assume it would be a chicken-and-egg sort of thing—of course, much of who I am now is a combination of all my past experiences, yada-yada: Would I have mellowed down if I had not been intense in the first place? Maybe not.
But right now, it’s what has made quarantine much more bearable: All this mellow.
Make no mistake about it: The quarantine has been difficult, and most times C and I spend so much time and energy doom-scrolling and being jointly angry at this government and this country, but really, I am glad to be quarantined with someone who has made sheltering in place so much more infinitely easier.
Sure, I can’t wait to get back out there and go on normal dates again (we miss working in coffee shops most of all), but some days it helps to count your blessings, and it’s a Sunday anyway, so why not.
Media recs
🎥 The Wonder Woman 1984 trailer is out!
🔥 Lucifer Season 5 is finally on Netflix!
✍🏼 This piece on rethinking productivity in the time of coronavirus via WIRED: Productivity is Not Working
Thank you and have a good week ahead.
XO,
K.