Is Cabin Fever Setting In?

Right about now, cabin fever is setting in.  You’re ready to gnaw through drywall just to get out and have some fun, see your friends, have a life!  Bored, you say?  Then you must be boring.  Because there is no way that anyone should be bored in their own home. 

Everyone has a laundry list of things they’ve put off doing for days / months / years. There are things that need doing, (clean the slats of your window blinds.  They’re filthy!) to things intended to do, (finish that novel?  Don’t be ridiculous.  At the very least, button up that short story.) to much simpler, pleasant things, (a manila envelope full of recipes you’ve lusted to make and eat, but were too lazy or time-strapped to make because it involved more than twenty minutes and one sauté pan.)

No matter what your fears or lack of common sense might tell you, that pandemic thing, that which “shall not be named,” will end, peter out, fizzle.  And when it does, will you be left lamenting the lost time spent listening to the same news story over and over ad nauseam?  Will you be guilt-shamed at the lost opportunity to actually finish something? Or will you have a little cheshire-cat grin of smug satisfaction, knowing that you accomplished something, ticked an item or three off of your well-intentioned list, “wasted” hours reading books, exercising, meditating, learning a few phrases in a foreign language well enough to actually speak them with confidence.

Don’t dally, people.  You won’t have the luxury of hiding behind a social-distanced, self-imposed exile forever.  People will respect you for your discipline and self-denial for the good of humanity.  Hah!  Little will they know.  In these weeks, you mastered the chiffonade, translated PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT into Esperantu, and sat in half-lotus for twenty minutes, three times in one day!, with nary a thought of CV-19.

Bravo.  Well-played.  Mankind is proud of you.  Bored… indeed.  Now go out and play.