Socialization
1) Connecting to others…unsuccessfully, sometimes successfully, and sometimes definitely not. Also, connecting on a national scale -- I'm rather amused by how Bradley James created his own Merlin fan video.
2) This article on mental health changes during the pandemic revealed more to me about people's behavior than their mental health.
"When we reviewed the best available data, we saw that some groups-including people facing financial stress-have experienced substantial, life-changing suffering. However, looking at the global population on the whole, we were surprised not to find the prolonged misery we had expected."
My suspicion on seeing this was two-fold. The first is that the reason this was true...
"But as spring turned to summer, something remarkable happened: Average levels of depression, anxiety, and distress began to fall. Some data sets even suggested that overall psychological distress returned to near-pre-pandemic levels by early summer 2020."
...had a lot to do with both getting past the initial shock (and inability to use denial as a transition) to the fact that lockdowns had largely lifted by then. Because if one talks to people, it became clear that by last summer many people had stopped acting as if a pandemic was on whereas during the month of March to April, the majority of people actually were sheltering.
If one reviews what people were talking about a year ago, many people were not only taking on many activities, including travel, but also getting together with others. And although many would say they were taking precautions, a recent study disproves how frequently that was true.
"Using health insurance claims data, they looked at the Covid rates of families in the two weeks after one of them had a birthday. Overall, their paper, published in Jama Internal Medicine, found that a recent family birthday increased Covid risk by nearly a third in counties where the virus was widespread."
So I think the data might have been quite different had people been observing lockdowns for a year vs what most actually did, which was to carry on at a reduced scale of what they might have done previously:
“when we talked to contact tracers around the country, they were like: Yeah, people are getting infected at these small gatherings.”…" the study found that birthdays led to increased Covid infections by similar levels in Republican and Democratic areas"
In addition, while people were unable to observe their usual routines, the fact that they had to devise workarounds or discovered new activities while in new circumstances was actually stimulating in a way keeping to routine is not. For example, AO3 had already released data on use early last year and has now released a set up through this June (with comparison to past years). Use increased enormously, and many people either returned to fandom activities they had dropped, or came to fandom and fanworks for the first time. For some time, physicians have encouraged us to keep our brains active by learning new things and creating new challenges for ourselves (particularly as we age). Last year few people needed to go out of their way to do this!
They may also have met new people or reconnected with old friends. I know that I have spent more time with my friends (online) in the past year than I have in the previous 5 years of going to see them. And at least one of those friends was able to connect to someone new in my circle as a result of joint activities. There are also likely many people who were relatively housebound pre-pandemic (for various different reasons) who actually did better last year as a result of more outreach or more social contact when they didn't have to deal with the difficulty of meeting in person.
And friends are not the only reconnections. Despite some early signals post-lockdown that divorces were on the rise,
this apparently had more to do with process delays than a surge of filings, with people already on the brink of divorce moving forward.
“Tough and traumatic times can change our priorities, our perspective and our devotion to friends and family for the better. When we face trials with a strong social network, the right perspective or a deep faith...adversity is more likely to lead to growth, strength, joy and self-improvement rather than the opposite.
In particular, COVID time has made plenty of us develop a new appreciation for how much we depend upon our spouse - to help care for older parents, tutor the kids, run to the grocery store, bring in a paycheck, or lend a listening ear when we’re at our wits’ end. In fact, a majority of husbands and wives report COVID has made them appreciate their spouses more."
Even the people whose divorces did occur, saw silver linings.
All of which is to say that I think the past year was a big time for personal reassessments but some of the tough ones may have produced as much hope as despair.
3) It seems odd to me that Kevin Costner, who once was the face of the optimistic Field of Dreams and the culturally open Dances With Wolves is now a capitalist right wing patriarch on Yellowstone and taking on revenge roles that tend to play to conservative audiences.
4) Saturdays are apparently laundry day. When I went for a walk around the neighborhood about a third of the buildings I passed were wafting out laundry detergent smells.
5) My hopes that fireworks would end after July 4th has been somewhat defeated. While there haven't been many, someone was doing so at 1:30 in the afternoon. Talk about literally seeing your money going up in smoke.
On the 4th I have never seen so many fireworks go on for so long. There were about 7 sites in a 180 degree arc from our apartment, and when I went outside to video tape it for a bit I was immediately hit by the smell of gunpowder. The tape is just a series of bang-bang-bangs which went on for about 4 hours, starting just before 8 PM. I was reading until late, given that the noise was not inducing sleep, and even when I was slipping away I was startled awake just after 1 AM by a big bang.
One thought was of the tens of thousands of dollars that had to be spent on this. Professional productions don't use so many fireworks given that they usually run for 20-30 minutes rather than hours and hours. I was also wondering to myself what they hauled these fireworks to the sites in -- moving vans?
View poll: Kudos Footer-299
Comments at Dreamwidth
.
2) This article on mental health changes during the pandemic revealed more to me about people's behavior than their mental health.
"When we reviewed the best available data, we saw that some groups-including people facing financial stress-have experienced substantial, life-changing suffering. However, looking at the global population on the whole, we were surprised not to find the prolonged misery we had expected."
My suspicion on seeing this was two-fold. The first is that the reason this was true...
"But as spring turned to summer, something remarkable happened: Average levels of depression, anxiety, and distress began to fall. Some data sets even suggested that overall psychological distress returned to near-pre-pandemic levels by early summer 2020."
...had a lot to do with both getting past the initial shock (and inability to use denial as a transition) to the fact that lockdowns had largely lifted by then. Because if one talks to people, it became clear that by last summer many people had stopped acting as if a pandemic was on whereas during the month of March to April, the majority of people actually were sheltering.
If one reviews what people were talking about a year ago, many people were not only taking on many activities, including travel, but also getting together with others. And although many would say they were taking precautions, a recent study disproves how frequently that was true.
"Using health insurance claims data, they looked at the Covid rates of families in the two weeks after one of them had a birthday. Overall, their paper, published in Jama Internal Medicine, found that a recent family birthday increased Covid risk by nearly a third in counties where the virus was widespread."
So I think the data might have been quite different had people been observing lockdowns for a year vs what most actually did, which was to carry on at a reduced scale of what they might have done previously:
“when we talked to contact tracers around the country, they were like: Yeah, people are getting infected at these small gatherings.”…" the study found that birthdays led to increased Covid infections by similar levels in Republican and Democratic areas"
In addition, while people were unable to observe their usual routines, the fact that they had to devise workarounds or discovered new activities while in new circumstances was actually stimulating in a way keeping to routine is not. For example, AO3 had already released data on use early last year and has now released a set up through this June (with comparison to past years). Use increased enormously, and many people either returned to fandom activities they had dropped, or came to fandom and fanworks for the first time. For some time, physicians have encouraged us to keep our brains active by learning new things and creating new challenges for ourselves (particularly as we age). Last year few people needed to go out of their way to do this!
They may also have met new people or reconnected with old friends. I know that I have spent more time with my friends (online) in the past year than I have in the previous 5 years of going to see them. And at least one of those friends was able to connect to someone new in my circle as a result of joint activities. There are also likely many people who were relatively housebound pre-pandemic (for various different reasons) who actually did better last year as a result of more outreach or more social contact when they didn't have to deal with the difficulty of meeting in person.
And friends are not the only reconnections. Despite some early signals post-lockdown that divorces were on the rise,
this apparently had more to do with process delays than a surge of filings, with people already on the brink of divorce moving forward.
“Tough and traumatic times can change our priorities, our perspective and our devotion to friends and family for the better. When we face trials with a strong social network, the right perspective or a deep faith...adversity is more likely to lead to growth, strength, joy and self-improvement rather than the opposite.
In particular, COVID time has made plenty of us develop a new appreciation for how much we depend upon our spouse - to help care for older parents, tutor the kids, run to the grocery store, bring in a paycheck, or lend a listening ear when we’re at our wits’ end. In fact, a majority of husbands and wives report COVID has made them appreciate their spouses more."
Even the people whose divorces did occur, saw silver linings.
All of which is to say that I think the past year was a big time for personal reassessments but some of the tough ones may have produced as much hope as despair.
3) It seems odd to me that Kevin Costner, who once was the face of the optimistic Field of Dreams and the culturally open Dances With Wolves is now a capitalist right wing patriarch on Yellowstone and taking on revenge roles that tend to play to conservative audiences.
4) Saturdays are apparently laundry day. When I went for a walk around the neighborhood about a third of the buildings I passed were wafting out laundry detergent smells.
5) My hopes that fireworks would end after July 4th has been somewhat defeated. While there haven't been many, someone was doing so at 1:30 in the afternoon. Talk about literally seeing your money going up in smoke.
On the 4th I have never seen so many fireworks go on for so long. There were about 7 sites in a 180 degree arc from our apartment, and when I went outside to video tape it for a bit I was immediately hit by the smell of gunpowder. The tape is just a series of bang-bang-bangs which went on for about 4 hours, starting just before 8 PM. I was reading until late, given that the noise was not inducing sleep, and even when I was slipping away I was startled awake just after 1 AM by a big bang.
One thought was of the tens of thousands of dollars that had to be spent on this. Professional productions don't use so many fireworks given that they usually run for 20-30 minutes rather than hours and hours. I was also wondering to myself what they hauled these fireworks to the sites in -- moving vans?
View poll: Kudos Footer-299
Comments at Dreamwidth
.