HOW time flies.
It’s already March of 2021.
Still no vaccine for most of us.
Governments are running out of budget.
The economy needs our workers.
The hell with public health.
Let the workers get back to work!
***
I’m really proud of how Filipinos are responding to this pandemic.
I mean, I am also proud of the rest of the planet.
When governments fail us, we just try to cope on our own.
We have managed to develop our own routines.
We have established our “new normal.”
I just pray that we don’t give in to Covid fatigue.
I just pray we don’t get tired of protecting ourselves.
***
I am not like most people in the world.
I consider myself luckier than most.
I have not really worked in the last six years.
I have opted to retire from Nursing.
But I occupy myself with some kind of work.
Mostly producing Philippine literature.
And I got commissioned jobs writing textbooks for Philippine senior high school.
***
So, you see, working from home is not very new to me.
And I don’t get crazy, or bored, or depressed being homebound.
I have saved up a little money so I’m okay without a paying job.
Work for me is not to gain employment.
But something to keep me busy, involved, committed.
I can be in one beach island, drinking mimosas or margaritas, and just enjoying life.
But I choose to just be home.
Homebound like most people.
To be one with them in spirit.
***
Spring 2020 was ugly.
Covid-19 was declared a pandemic, and we didn’t know what we were against.
I retreated from the world early.
Except for me encouraging people to pray, I was basically absent from the world.
I was deep in prayers and reflection.
I didn’t feel the need to rush back into the workforce and be a hospital frontliner.
I turned 51 last year.
***
In the summer, I started to engage the people online, mostly on Facebook.
I figured, if I were to leave a Covid legacy, it would be this: that I was with the people online.
That I tried to be the voice of reason.
That I was the people’s comic relief.
That I was the necessary distraction to save them from boredom for being house quarantined and locked down, and to diffuse their anger from governments that didn’t know what they were doing as a pandemic response.
***
DepEd, of course, became my punching bag in July and August 2020.
Wattpad writing and its bad reputation was my thing in October.
In November and December, it was the Role Play Writers community.
It was the teenage smut writing in January 2021.
For most people, I was just an angry old man.
But I knew what I was doing.
I was far from being angry.
I am naturally a happy man, relishing how I make stupid people spin.
Again, my legacy: the comic relief, the influencer, the one who engaged the people online.
***
I always have the option to ignore and abandon society.
Retire on a beach island sipping mimosas before lunch, and gulping margaritas before dinner.
When you are retired at 45, you can do almost anything at 51 or 52.
I choose to do what I do best.
Be with people, albeit virtually, and engage them —
Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable.
***
I don’t know why people would be interested in my life.
But my column being “My Life as Art,” I thought you should know that for most of 2020, I slowly renovated my house in Maryland with a plan to sell it.
I’m trying to downsize.
I don’t need to own a house since I am single anyway.
In mid-February, I got an offer for my house.
If things go right, we will have the settlement this Wednesday.
So yeah, the renovation pumped up the price of my house.
Which in hindsight means that I made some money while being at home for most of 2020./PN
