Relative Something

Have you received a lot of unexpected emails from businesses recently? There is a common format you may begin to recognize. A communication professional, Karen G. Anderson, offers tips for organizations that want to email their primary audience with assurances in the face of the ongoing pandemic.

• Say Something
• Talk About Customers (Not the Organization)
• Send Links
• Make Sure People Can Contact You
• Message Should Come From Individual

This morning I received this very message from a business I made one online purchase from years ago for a replacement bowl to match a long-discontinued tableware pattern. It struck me for it’s classic adherence to the recommended guidelines for prudent good practice in times of a national emergency.

It was the 5th or 6th such message to show up in my inbox in the last few days. Being a natural contrarian, my mind quickly jumps to concern about all the entities that haven’t contacted me yet. Why haven’t I heard from them? Are they not all on the same side when it comes to taking all the precautions to keep everyone safe?

Well, let me just assure you, my dear readers, I am fully aware of the risks and ramifications that have materialized from the worldwide spread of the coronavirus COVID-19 and I am taking specific steps to control the spread. Before I started writing this post, I sanitized my keyboard and made certain to maintain plenty of space between myself and Cyndie, Delilah, and Pequenita.

To be doubly cautious, you might consider wiping the surfaces of your devices before you read my posts.

There is a discussion conference in my online community where members write their life stories. Yesterday, I posted this:

I was alive during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. At first, it was a news story about an illness that was spreading in China. At that initial phase, the impact on my life was zero. At work, we wisecracked about the possibility of our supply chain experiencing some future delays.

After the spread of the illness reached other countries of the world and increased at alarming rates in some of them, the reality set in that eventually we would be impacted more directly.

When the financial industry started to fall at a record pace, the idea set in that we were at risk of suffering from not just our health but from economic pressure, too.

Then, billion-dollar professional sports leagues canceled their seasons and shit got real. Just as quick, concerts and plays were canceled, schools closed and life fell apart before anyone I knew had been positively identified as having the virus.

By the middle of March that year, I was in a waiting game for the moment when I might feel the first sensation of having a fever. Each morning when I woke up, one of the first thoughts I had was to assess how I felt.

Since the belief at the time was that the incubation period was between 5-days and some undefined larger span of time, I never knew if I might have it and be contagious, or not, let alone whether those around me were.

Cyndie’s brother wasn’t able to take advantage of the tickets his brother finally scored for them to go to a major golf tournament for his 60th birthday celebration. Our friends had to cancel their long-awaited family trip to one of the Disney resorts in the last year before their daughters grew out of their prime childhood fascination with the idea.

At that point in March, it wasn’t the fear of illness that burdened our minds, it was the disruption of life as we knew it and the complete uncertainty over how much worse it could possibly get and whether or not there was any hope of it all being just a temporary disruption.

I remember the time as feeling like a moment of historic milestone, but without any ability to measure it adequately against some comparable reference.

I didn’t think about it while originally writing those words, but just now it gave me the impression I might have been composing that now in case I wouldn’t have a chance to do it later. That was not my intention. I just thought it would be interesting to mess with the time frame and write about the present moment as it might be perceived in a distant future.

Maybe that came from my recent writing about what my parents’ lives were like 75 years ago.

I’m not just social distancing myself, apparently, I’m time-distancing, too.

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