I wonder if people will begin to rethink the use of “viral” in digital media and marketing. It seems kind of tasteless at this point. There’s nothing like a microbial pandemic to make one feel as if all our progress toward the future has been, at least in some respects pointless. I still maintain that had we put our imagination and efforts into medical robots instead of robot soldiers, robots and AI that predict the stock market and sexbots to fuck we would be in a much better position for all this. I just don’t know. I speak to about 75 clients or more daily and what I hear is helplessness. How that manifests varies. There is some ugliness. That’s to be expected. Mostly it seems to be fearful resignation. Everybody knows that it could be worse, that one day a more deadly virus will come down the pike. Vulnerability has become so much more obvious. We’ll see if that brings about any changes in how we go about our lives and plan for the future. It could all be forgotten very shortly when this blows over.

My fear level remains at about a 5 on a scale of one to 10. Again, it’s not even fear of dying so much as it’s about fear of infecting someone more vulnerable than myself. I don’t even know how vulnerable I may be though. Also, epidemiologists have said that it’s entirely possible that over 50% of New Yorkers have been directly exposed. They’re warning anyone leaving New York City to self-quarantine for 14 days when they get wherever they’re going. That’s entirely unlikely to happen but in the past several days I’ve seen families packing their cars for long trips. It’s not looking like any kind of a mass exodus but it’s happening. Our building management put instructional memos outside all apartment doors and quite a few are still sitting there on doormats, indicating that quite few people that I just saw over the weekend have taken off for greener pastures. For now…

Life at the epicenter of an infection zone… It’s a glass half full or glass half empty scenario because you really just don’t know what it’s going to be like if you actually do become symptomatic. I’ve stayed mostly on the glass half full side regarding my own personal health. There is a strong likelihood, if one is to believe the scientists, that I could get it. There is no way of knowing what the impact will be. I have been mostly in the realm of positivity regarding any outcome, but there have been some moments. Last night was a bit of a bitch. I felt very isolated and alone. The only person in my very large family that’s actually reached out, and not vice versa is my younger brother. This isn’t new with my family. It was just a grim realization that I have been harboring hopes for resolution with people that I really thought I’d let go of. It was a wave of grief that hit me last night, of course very much fueled by exhaustion after a long day, but it hurt badly. It’s mostly passed but it feels rather blah this morning. It will require some imagination to move beyond it.

It speaks to what my son said about his generation and their lack of a collective vision for a better future, by whatever means. It speaks to everything I’ve learned about myself and my humanity and humanity itself, and the necessity of having some vision for a future. It’s there. I’m not exactly dreaming of robots, but I kind of am. Why not? It’s in nearly every positive memory of my childhood, this dream of the future.

I’m dreaming of robots.

Insert smiley face here.

Listen to music.