Well....it’s getting to me, too. It’s become my mission to remind my co-workers of the following:
If you want to "return to normal" you have to start acting normally! Masks aren’t normal. Spraying yourself with alcohol isn’t normal. "Distancing" isn’t normal. Allowing yourself to be injected with an experimental treatment that never went through thorough testing isn’t normal.
Sep 8, 2022·edited Sep 11, 2022Liked by DW Shumway
Time to go indeed. On one side ( Montana ), you've got nature, actual living, and sanity, and on the other ( Japan ): the irredeemable alienation of urban, comatose — masked — conformity. The surfing environment / community provided a safety valve, making the intolerable more bearable, but is it worth it to spend one's life "on oxygen", so to speak ( like a fish trapped in an aquarium )? . . . Time for fresh horizons, and perspectives.
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it!" — Yoggi Berra
Had a similar experience you had with your software engineers. Mine was a a nursing school. Through they actually barged into the class and demanded I wear one in front to the students. I refused. I had my ever present travel mug of coffee for the same reason you had for the water bottles. It was to no avail. They actually started chanting, “It’s the rule, it’s the rule” like some kind of cult. I refused to wear a mask, so they brought in a plastic shield and placed it between the class and myself to protect the students. That was my last day on that campus. We switched to zoom after that and they never communicated with me again. No “Thank you.”, at the end of the semester. Not enquirers over how I would be testing the students, no emails telling me of the deadline for the grades. Nothing. Just zoom lesson to a classroom of masked, future nurses. Until that moment, I was on excellent terms with all there.
It was and remains an asylum here. An asylum run by the inmates.
I remember the first time i went unmasked in the UK. It was in a small express supermarket just a few weeks after the first mask mandate in 2020. I has this enormous feeling of paranoia come over me, even though I was literally in the shop for 1 minute just to get some milk, but then the feeling once I had done it once was fantastic. I didn't wear a mask again. Luckily, in the UK, I didnt really get any grief or comments from anyone with the exception of the door monitors in the shops who would politely ask you to put a mask on and sanitise, to which I would simply reply "I dont wear masks or sanitise, thank you". No excuse or lanyard or exemption bollocks. Its the only way, you have nothing to explain to anyone. We are simply living our lives.
Y'all will want to click that picture and listen to John Denver's song. Emmylou Harris singing harmony makes it near perfect.
And the comments today are real good!
Well....it’s getting to me, too. It’s become my mission to remind my co-workers of the following:
If you want to "return to normal" you have to start acting normally! Masks aren’t normal. Spraying yourself with alcohol isn’t normal. "Distancing" isn’t normal. Allowing yourself to be injected with an experimental treatment that never went through thorough testing isn’t normal.
Time to go indeed. On one side ( Montana ), you've got nature, actual living, and sanity, and on the other ( Japan ): the irredeemable alienation of urban, comatose — masked — conformity. The surfing environment / community provided a safety valve, making the intolerable more bearable, but is it worth it to spend one's life "on oxygen", so to speak ( like a fish trapped in an aquarium )? . . . Time for fresh horizons, and perspectives.
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it!" — Yoggi Berra
Had a similar experience you had with your software engineers. Mine was a a nursing school. Through they actually barged into the class and demanded I wear one in front to the students. I refused. I had my ever present travel mug of coffee for the same reason you had for the water bottles. It was to no avail. They actually started chanting, “It’s the rule, it’s the rule” like some kind of cult. I refused to wear a mask, so they brought in a plastic shield and placed it between the class and myself to protect the students. That was my last day on that campus. We switched to zoom after that and they never communicated with me again. No “Thank you.”, at the end of the semester. Not enquirers over how I would be testing the students, no emails telling me of the deadline for the grades. Nothing. Just zoom lesson to a classroom of masked, future nurses. Until that moment, I was on excellent terms with all there.
It was and remains an asylum here. An asylum run by the inmates.
I remember the first time i went unmasked in the UK. It was in a small express supermarket just a few weeks after the first mask mandate in 2020. I has this enormous feeling of paranoia come over me, even though I was literally in the shop for 1 minute just to get some milk, but then the feeling once I had done it once was fantastic. I didn't wear a mask again. Luckily, in the UK, I didnt really get any grief or comments from anyone with the exception of the door monitors in the shops who would politely ask you to put a mask on and sanitise, to which I would simply reply "I dont wear masks or sanitise, thank you". No excuse or lanyard or exemption bollocks. Its the only way, you have nothing to explain to anyone. We are simply living our lives.