#i could say a lot more about traveling and covid and long term effects on my brain but this is long enough

[kinetic-elaboration]

February 10: Ideal Vacations

I had a conversation at work today about vacations, specifically, my supervisor telling me about how her sister’s idea of a good vacation (cruise where you pay a lot of money to read books in the sun and have all activities organized for you) versus her idea of a good vacation (read books in a cabin in the woods—or just at home—or do a self-guided exploration of a new place) are very different. And it got me thinking about what my ideal vacation is.

It’s not that I’ve traveled so much or been to so many places, and in fact a significant amount of travel that I have done is to stay in a place for a pretty big chunk of time, so that I don’t have to really plan a strict itinerary. I’m just living in the new location for a couple weeks or months. Nevertheless, from these experiences and from what I know about myself, I can extrapolate certain things I really like or want.

First, I think there are too main categories of vacation. One is ‘I am going to the place to see the things and so I want to see as many things as I reasonably can’ and the other is ‘I want to use this change of scenery to rest and relax.’

Second, the biggest obstacle to travel in general, either category, or the toughest thing about it I should say, is figuring out how to move around in a place I’ve never been before. This is everything from using public transportation to figuring out the language if I’m traveling internationally, but it’s also stuff like… just not being able to picture things fully without being there, even with the help of innovations like Google Maps, because part of how I decrease stress is just imagining in detail each step of the thing that stresses me out. The bigger the geographic area of the place traveled and the less it is like the places I know and am comfortable with, the bigger this obstacle is.

Within the first category of travel, when I am going somewhere to see things specifically, I like to be self-guided, or mostly so, and I like to be moderately ambitious. By self-guided I mean that I don’t really need or want a tour guide or whoever shuffling me around from place to place. Sometimes I do see the attraction of a trip where everything is decided for you and you don’t have to figure out, for example, travel to monuments or meal options, etc., but I also don’t think I would enjoy a place if I were too herded. I like researching and I like figuring out my own itinerary and I like flexibility. I would be up to take, say, a tour of a specific area or museum exhibit or something of the like. But mostly I want to make my own plan. The upside of this is I get to be in control of everything and the downside is that I see less than if I were directed by experts or otherwise ferried around because of practical obstacles including but not limited to my own anxieties. Sometimes it is nice to travel with other people, presuming they have similar interests, because a big hindrance to me being truly adventurous is me being shy, and having a companion mitigates that.

It's also important to me to be self-guided because I want to be moderately ambitious, and by that I mean, I want to strike a balance between seeing as much as I can see in a place that it takes me a while to get to and not getting so stressed out and burned out on my vacation that I don’t even enjoy it. Pretty self-explanatory. This is the advantage of staying in places longer: you don’t have to be ambitious to see and do a lot in 2-4 months.

Within the second category of travel, all I want is to be in a place that is beautiful and be left to relax in it with no responsibilities. Going with A to his family’s cabin(s) in the Finger Lakes was my ideal of this type of vacation, literally some of the best days I have ever spent. We were right on the lake, and our daily itinerary was stuff like: take a long, slow walk to get lunch; sit on the dock with out feet in the water; read in various locations inside and on the porch; play cards; sit on the porch and eat cheese and crackers in the evening; be leisurely about everything. An extra upside to this particular vacation was that I really didn’t have to do anything, including worry about food and things like that, because there were a whole bunch of people there—very nice people, who never made me feel crowded or like I needed to be an extrovert all of a sudden—and they would do things like provide large communal dinners or drive a few of us to town for a couple hours to get groceries, etc.

But I can imagine doing a sort of trip like this by myself too. I would like to go back to SL and do this. I would stay at the fancy hotel and I would eat meals at restaurants that are familiar to me from literally growing up there, or else get room service, and I would fill my days by walking around the extremely walkable village or hanging out at the lake, or reading. I really like woodsy areas, lakes, and moderate temperatures leaning toward the cool. So cabin in the woods is a preferable setting to me than resort on the beach, worrying about sun burn.

The biggest obstacle to this type of trip, which I haven’t ever really done solo to be honest (the closest was my BFF’s wedding and I was only solo for one day of that), is that I would still have to do all the practical stuff: figure out how to get around minimally if I was in a new or unfamiliar place; get food; etc. I also don’t want to go on a big adventure to a new place just to solely do activities I could do at home, even if a change of scenery is a big part of the appeal of travel. So picking the right location would also be important. If it’s too busy, I’ll feel like I should be doing more stuff. If it’s too remote, you run into serious transportation problems, especially for someone such as myself who really doesn’t want to pretend she can use her extremely rusty driving skills to just “rent a car.”

Vegas was actually, for my purposes, a nice compromise location, because if you’re anywhere on the Strip (or around the corner, as I was), you can just walk to a lot of stuff, including about 20 gazillion restaurants that cater to tourists. I was there in August so parts of the day were so hot they were tailor-made for just lying around and resting. There was a pool in the hotel for further restful evening activities (by which I mean, floating in the pool and looking at the moon). Small towns with tourist infrastructure might also work. I would be a little worried to go to a small town in a place where I don’t speak the language because English becomes a lot less ubiquitous once you’re outside of urban tourist centers and I just get really nervous about communicating with gestures, grunts, and extended pauses to parse out travel dictionary phrases. (Hey, know your limits.)

My supervisor was telling me about a trip she and a retired former coworker are thinking about doing, in which they take a train tour of Scotland. The train drops you off at and picks you up from a variety of towns around Scotland, and you have 1-2 days at each to do whatever you want. This sounds like an ideal vacation to me: you can see quite a bit of the country without having to plan out driving yourself around a foreign land but you’re not being shuffled around on and off tour buses on someone else’s schedule, engaging in Peak Tourist activity.

Now that I’m comfortable actually traveling again, even on planes, and I don’t feel like the priority of spending time with my parents is the only excuse I can morally use to leave the area, I kind of want to start planning trips or at least… imagining the possibility of travel. Right before COVID I was sort of starting to recognize that, hey, I’m an adult in a decent financial situation with good annual leave: I can do stuff like fly to Las Vegas for 3 days, I can go on trips that don’t have a specific purpose, like someone else’s wedding or visiting extended family. But I never got to do much with that realization. So… something to think about, I guess.

[tomhenryyy]

Andy Robison- Mental Health On Tour

Andy Robison is a freelance front-of-house sound engineer and production manager.  

Robinson has worked with big names like Beabadoobee, and Ashnikko but has mixed for every sort of artist and bands. For the past twelve years, Andy has been working in the realm of live music, for the past nine years he’s been touring all around the world but worked at his local O2 arena when attending the University of Leicester. Robinson was lucky enough to meet award winning band Wolf Alice just before their success and started touring with them for a year. Andy has stated that touring with Wolf Alice allowed him to put his foot in the door of the industry which led to him getting more work in the future.  

Andy is very open about every part of his job and doesn’t shy away from the more realistic topics. He says “The best part about my job is I get to travel the world” he speaks about the people and friends he has met whilst doping so and speaks about all the existing adventures they all have, on the flip side of this he speaks about how the job is very fun but does come with some drawbacks like long hours, the unsocial hours, spend a good chunk of time is in forms of transportation, his longest day on the job was 27 hours, this included flying to LA setting up doing the show packing down and the travelling back to his accommodation for the night. Andy shared that at the beginning of his career, he loved the travelling side to his work, visiting all these new countries however as time goes by he has since found that the travelling side can at times be a tedious task and can absolutely have effects on his relationships, and family dynamics sacrificing not being around for big family events. 

When speaking about how being on the road can really affect your mental health Andy caught my attention. He said ‘There are many things that contribute to the effects of your mental health on tour, some of these might be the food that you’re eating’ ‘Sometimes tours are catered for and that's amazing, but often I find myself eating junk food and a lot of Deliveroo food’  

This is something that I would keep in mind because a big part of my life is diet and physical activity, I will try and eat as many whole foods as I can and try to stay away from fast food and junk chemical foods.  

Another aspect of mental health Andy speaks about is the stress and pressure of the job. “Personally, I like the pressure and stress” he feels that when in these situations he can often pull off some of the best shows that he has worked on. This is the complete opposite of me, when stressed and under pressure, I tend to shut down and lose my train of thought, so I applaud Andy to have the capability to achieve such results in stressful situations.  

A report from Music Ally written by Stuart Dredge shares the comparison in musicians with mental health problems pre-Covid and post-Covid.  

‘The comparison with pre-Covid numbers show a 396% increase in mental health consultations and a 357% rise in numbers of patients' (Dredge, 2024)

Stuart Dredge also wrote another article, this one focusing on a charity called ‘Music, Minds, Matter.’ this article is dedicated to helping the organisation set up a stand-alone charity that focuses on ‘mental health and the twin pressures of touring and social media.’  

Whilst Andy isn’t the most active on social media he is always on the job, whether it’s a stand-alone show or a run of shows Andy is always on the job and charity could be a massive help in terms of his al health when on the road.  

“Creation of the new charity will mean all fundraising income generated for mental health by the charity is solely dedicated to improving mental health,” 

Since opening the charity, the call lines to ‘Help Musicians’ have risen by 30% in the last year.  (Dredge, 2024)

I think that the call stats have risen due to the company being so public about the fact that the mental health portion of the company is now a separate company. The publicity of this change has opened up the eyes of people who are struggling with mental health issues.  

If I could sum up meeting Andy and hearing his talk, I would say I came away from it with more interest towards the behind the scenes side of touring, his honesty was very insightful and has made me consider getting into his side of the industry.  

Dredge, S. (2024) Report: Mental health issues surge in UK performing arts sector. Available at: https://musically.com/2024/03/18/report-mental-health-issues-surge-in-uk-performing-arts-sector/. (Accessed: 23/5/24).

Dredge, S. (2024) Help Musicians Turn Music Minds Matter into a single-focus charity. Available at:https://musically.com/2022/09/23/music-minds-matter-single-focus-charity/(Accessed: 23rd May 2024). 

[sugar-petals]

I’m so happy that people started to find more attractive yoongi and joon, like they’ve always been but beauty standars are that bitch

i agree, makes it more difficult in the idol world for them. but a lot of people are starting to see how interesting their visuals are indeed, combined with their personalities on top of that as the hyungs are getting more attention. RM being this perfect gentle giant who knows the answers to humankind’s pressing questions and yoongi being the textbook cozy honey boy that you wish was napping on your sofa right now. 

both are ironically the center of song production and the first two who joined the group. so bts at the very root was already meant to bring us something different. 

guys with an edgy look, full faces, wide shoulders, kissable lips, masculine tones and characters of subtlety (read: raging romantics).

now that bts’ popularity has become so all-encompassing, it opens the door for people looking twice and reevaluating their expectations. if you get into either of yoongi or RM, you’ve certainly thought about what the aesthetic demands (i think you can go as far as naming it that) to a typical idol are and what’s beyond that horizon, and what you’re really in for.

and it’s ironic, it’s confusing: they’ve always been close to classic, mainstream south korean idol archetypes/industry templates. “tall muscular guy XYZ” and “cute pretty boy XYZ”, all that jazz. so i often wondered why people didn’t catch on with their appeal. in their defense, if you like namjoon or yoongi, you’re probably the more reserved type not shouting things from the rooftop, especially IRL. 

they’re strong introverts themselves who dislike standing out all the time, it takes a while to get into what they’re all about. crushing on joon or yoongi is a long-term project lmao! it’s a slower but constant buildup because they’re visually and internally complex. you can’t sit down for half a day, browse, and emerge a yoongi or joon stan. not happening.

now that i think about it, they’re also the most intimidating-looking guys in the group if you have no idea how they are like. RM being so towering with a reputation for his sharp mind and being pretty hardcore back then, and yoongi keeping to himself a lot with a pokerface and candid words. it can easily deter someone who’s looking for upbeat and sexily forward idols to stan. 

joon and yoongi are the farthest from being ‘fast food’, they’re the love at second sight that lasts long. the risk is delusion here because you have to really get into their ways of being to understand them (which makes it feel less-one-sided even if it remains that way), while the chance is that people take them seriously. and, treat them as the opposite of a commodity as far as that is possible with how things are set up. 

in other words: how they look and sound inspires a different respect. you can’t use them as cheap thrills. try it, it doesn’t work. by the time you’re fully physically attracted, you’re already like “namjoon thinks this and this”. it’s inside out (!), not outside in. it doesn’t mean they’re not instantly perceivable as sexy, what i wanna show is that you get into them as a package deal from the get-go and the hook is what they’re saying. which arguably makes sense for rappers 👍

to touch on something else you mentioned. i agree it’d be easy to have resentments; just as you say — yoongi and joon were already attractive before the money came. but it’s a natural progress and beauty standards take their time to shift, people need to be exposed to alternatives for a while. RM and yoongi were falsely labelled due to that effect not kicking in yet, simply to have them in a visual category that was fast to gauge and circulate. gladly, that’s been dissolving and 2020 is good on them.

nevertheless i wanna emphasize, unless vastly experimental hair stylings are concerned, not a day were they not lookers that could make you gush👌i’ll show you. travel 7 years backward — there goes yoongi with his divinely shaped doll face, exactly how we know it. with the perfect jaw and nose and skin, the high cheekbones and cupid lips, the dark hair and dark cat eyes that give him such a captivating contrast. the serious look and adorableness that pulls a lot of people in these days wasn’t missing in the very least.

and joon, man... he was already a frame to behold. with his cool haircut and his dimples radiating all of his charm out to the world 😄 with the nice lips, the tan skin and brows and great arms, great teeth, cute ears, the unmistakable eye smile. the natural hair color was hot af on him by all means. and he’s already had that certain something. he looked exactly like the leader and was no less tall dark and handsome the way we know him now. (can i get an amen! ✊😭)

it’s still puzzling how often their attractiveness has been overlooked, the same can be said about hobi who’s never been lacking in handsomeness either. what i’m thinking is, it’s not the concepts or anything. the recent surge of interest is about covid making it clear who the two central driving forces are in bts so that pushes them into the limelight, their message has their time now, plus many portions of the fandom growing a bit older. 

yoongi and namjoon radiate an overall maturity if that makes sense — okay okay i’ll say it... wise man and cat guy grandpa — so that’s why it’s their time to deservedly shine at the benefit for the whole group. and i see it coming, next thing you know: jin and hoseok will get the long-due praise and attention as well. i’m confident it will happen. 😊

[alightwhendarknessfell]

Black Veil Brides VIP Meet and Greets

I just wanted to make a quick post since I've seen a lot of people talking about the VIP/meet and greet tickets for the rescheduled ITM/BVB tour. I know there have been some strong opinions on the COVID restrictions and questions about what will or won't be allowed.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with the band or management and don't speak for them. This is just my opinion/trying to share some helpful tips and information. I’ll give references for what I say, but please take specific questions to the email listed on their website EPICVIP@EPICRIGHTS.COM

I’ve seen some people criticizing the band for the COVID restrictions in place as if it is solely their decision as to what will be allowed and not allowed. More than likely it was a decision made by management, the team putting on the tour, venues, etc, and made to fit state health guidelines and CDC recommendations. The idea that they will be able to have meet and greets the way they were done prior to 2020 with no restrictions is unrealistic. While COVID cases are declining and around 50% of the United State’s population has been vaccinated the pandemic is not over. There may be another rise in cases this fall and with the tour taking place during flu season it will be hard to tell who is sick with COVID or just the flu/cold. All rules and regulations for both VIP and the shows are done for the safety of the artists AND the fans. Remember that it’s not just because you could get the band sick, they could potentially get you sick too. Therefore care must be taken to make the VIP M&Gs a safe but still fun experience for both parties.

Local venues are all going to have different protocols as to what is and isn’t allowed. This is due to states having different rules as far as distancing, masking, and sanitation regulations. This is completely out of the band’s control and they are obligated to follow the rules for the venue and state they are in. The VIP ticket upgrade is OPTIONAL, you are under no obligation to purchase VIP tickets if you feel it’s not worth the price. You can purchase just the regular ticket to see the show (this is also required for VIP tickets as that ticket ONLY is for the meet and greet). I get that people are upset about the limitations, but I for one, am grateful they’re even offering VIP tickets. They could just as easily have said no meet and greets at all.

Isn’t the band vaccinated? Andy and CC have both said publicly they are vaccinated. Andy's dad has stated the band is fully vaccinated. I’m sure others are as well, along with the crew and the other bands but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to not have safety guidelines in place. Remember, that there is still a question as to whether or not someone who has been vaccinated can harbor the virus and pass it on even though they are unlikely to become ill themselves. It seems that vaccines DO provide good protection against infecting others and becoming ill but none of the vaccinates are 100% effective. The band will be traveling all over the country meeting lots of people each night, therefore obviously precautions are going to be taken to reduce the risk for everyone.

What if I’m vaccinated? That’s wonderful! I would strongly encourage everyone to get their vaccines, especially before attending a concert. Because there’s no way to really check vaccination statuses (unfortunately fake vaccine cards are way too common and easy to make) the rules have to be made with the assumption that some people there WILL be unvaccinated. Theoretically, yes, it would be safe for a vaccinated person to be without a mask on with the band if they are also all vaccinated. Since again, that can’t be guaranteed (and because that would involve different treatment for different people) the best option is to just have rules that EVERYONE will have to follow. There are also variations in the vaccine's effectiveness. Pfizer/Moderna are both 90%+ effective while J&J (one-shot) is about 65-70%.

Hugs? These aren’t allowed at BVB M&Gs anyways, even before COVID. Their websites specifically states hugs will NOT be allowed. Please respect this rule.

Gifts? Andy’s dad (Chris Biersack) spoke about this on Twitter yesterday in response to some fan questions. He says he would discourage fans from bringing gifts. I know a lot of people like to bring them gifts but the best thing you can do is come to the show and sing along and show your love for the band by supporting them. Physical gifts can wait for now, and I think everyone should respect that. Besides, space is limited on tour anyways and when you think about how many people bring them gifts each night, logistically that is hard to accommodate. I do not see anything specifically about gifts on their website so that may be something you would want to email the VIP company about or ask in the BVB Facebook group if you're dead set on bringing something. However, the website DOES state that no "personal autographs" will be permitted, only the poster they are providing.

Photos? The rules on their website state that photos will be taken with 3 feet distance between the fan and the band. Fans may take their masks OFF for the photo, but masks will be required for the M&G and while in line for it (but you get a cool BVB mask!!!!). I know people are upset over this one too but think of all the cool ways you could do this photo. You can stand in front with the band behind you and strike a pose with yourself as the centerpiece! Three feet isn’t that far either, and honestly, that’s about how much room you’d give someone for personal space anyways.

It's so expensive!!: It's the same price as their M&Gs always have been. Yes, $100 is a lot of money for most people but it's the norm for band M&Gs. I am okay with paying that price even with the COVID restrictions because I want to be able to support the band. They haven't been able to tour in over a year and I'm sure that has cost them a lot of revenue. So I have no problem paying to see my favorite band.

TIPS

Read the rules BEFORE buying tickets for the M&G or show. Call the venue to ask for specifics if you want to or check their websites. Make sure you’re okay with the rules and if you purchase a M&G then follow all rules regarding safety and distancing.

Wear a mask/the one they give you during your M&G, please respect your health and the band’s.

While vaccinated individuals according to the CDC are at lower risk while attending concerts, unvaccinated people are still at a high risk of contracting COVID. It’s a very good idea to make sure you are TWO WEEKS out from your LAST shot before your concert date.

Monitor yourself for symptoms, and if you are at ALL feeling sick, coughing, have a fever, vomiting, etc. do NOT come to the show. Missing the show sucks, but you don’t want to run the risk of infecting others.

Personally, I plan to wear my mask while inside the venue even though I am fully vaccinated. If the venue is not requiring masks to be worn inside it is up to individuals to choose to or not but I know I will feel safer with a mask on.

Give people space while in the crowd. Now isn’t the time to be right on top of someone trying to push to the front. Please respect everyone’s personal space and remember that there may be people who are at an increased risk of severe COVID infection present.

If you are in a “high risk” group, talk to your doctor about whether or not it is safe for you to attend an indoor concert.

If you are bringing your vaccination card, get it laminated first or take a photo of it and keep it on your phone. They’re paper and you wouldn’t want it to fall apart because it got wet.

Bring extra disposable masks in case yours gets wet, dirty, or something happens to it.

Wash your hands!!!!!!!!

Don’t share water/drinks/food. I know “pass the water bottle” is popular at shows but let’s skip that for now.

I think it’s important that people keep perspective on this. The world just shut down for over a year and NO concerts took place. The fact that concerts will happen this year at all is a miracle. COVID is a fluid situation and there is no guarantee that things will be better or worse when the tour starts this Fall. This is a virus that has killed millions of people worldwide and hundreds of thousands in the United States. It’s not to be taken lightly, there are serious long-term consequences for some who get COVID. Guidelines are in place for a reason and the band, venues, and management should NOT be criticized for keeping everyone safe. If you don’t like the rules then don’t buy VIP tickets or don’t go to the show, it’s that simple. Following the rules and listening to guidelines is incredibly important. Doing everything you can to ensure your safety, other fan’s safety and the band/crew’s safety should be a top priority. One day there will be “normal” concerts and M&Gs again but for now, we have to still be mindful.

Respect the rules

Respect the health and safety of yourself and others

Have fun and celebrate live music again!

[comicalsansa]

I just need to scream into the void for a minute, feel free to ignore this or whatever. Sorry for the lack of break, I can't figure out how to do it on mobile.

Y'ALL LIFTED THE MASK MANDATES AND EXPECTED UNVACCINATED PEOPLE TO CONTINUE WEARING MASKS ON THE HONOR SYSTEM WHAT THE FUCK DID Y'ALL EXPECT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?!

Come on, did anyone actually expect the portion of America that has been protesting masks and downplaying the severity of Covid to a) get vaccinated and b) continue wearing a mask off they didn't? Like, with how stupidly politicized (and I do mean stupid) everything with the pandemic has been, how the fuck does anyone have the nerve to be surprised at the fact that the hospitals are filling up?

People aren't vaccinated, and they aren't wearing masking, of course the new variant is going to spread like wildfire. None of the kids are vaccinated (because we need to make sure their immune systems can handle it, there's a reason why the usual vaccines are on a schedule), and people don't make their kids wear masks.

There are literally people protesting mask mandates for the schools in my state. What the fuck. Have they already forgotten how fast illness spreads in schools? Fuck, there've been times an individual school or two has shit down because so many people (kids and adults) got the flu, or norovirus. And this shit spreads even faster. Why on god's green earth would you want your kids to not wear a mask?

Like, I get that wearing a mask is really uncomfortable and makes communication difficult. The precautions that we have to take are absolutely fucking up an entire generation.

You know what else will fuck up an entire generation? Dying. Long term effects from a serious respiratory disease. Watching their family members die; rather, watching their family members go into the hospital and never come out because they aren't allowed vistors.

Given the choice between the two flavors of trauma, I would much rather keep the kids alive and uninfected.

We are learning as we go about all of this, that's why the information keeps changing. That's how science works. Numerous studies have shown long term effects in kids already, so while it may not be as serious (oh wait, the new variant is), who knows what effects this will have on them in 20-30 years?

You know what else had serious long term effects? Fucking polio. You know why we don't have polio in the US now? Because everyone had to be vaccinated against it for decades. Fuck, they were still vaccinating against it in the 80s, I know because I remember getting a tiny cup with a swallow of liquid for one of my vaccines as a kid.

You know what else has serious long term effects? Chickenpox. And I know older people will be like, "BS, I had chickenpox and I'm fine," or, "My parents took me to a chickenpox party to make sure I got it, and I'm fine." Yeah, you ever hear of shingles? You know why you need a shingles vaccine? Because you had chickenpox. That's right, if you never had chickenpox you can't get shingles.

Point is, who the fuck knows what this is going to be doing to survivors 20-30 years down the road and if you gave a shit about your kid, you wouldn't want them to get it.

And I'm so pissed off because you know what? I fucking hate wearing a mask, too. I hate it. I don't care what the nurses with pulse oximeters say, I cannot breath as well with two layers of fabric covering my face, especially not for hours at a time (fun fact, pulse oximeters are not an accurate indicator of whether or not you can breathe as it takes time for an oxygen shortage to hit your blood--i know this from experience as an asthmatic). Everyone covering their faces and the plexiglass and paranoia and shit has been driving me nuts, I can't fucking live like this either. That's why I wore masks and got vaccinated as soon as I could, because the ONLY way this stops is with vaccines. And yeah, we're going to need boosters, we were always going to need booster shots, almost every vaccine we have requires more than one dose. And we had a period of time where cases were hella low and if you were vaccinated you didn't have to wear a mask and it was so great!

But some of you dumbfucks didn't want to get the vaccine because a) you didn't think Covid was a big deal b) it's made from aborted babies (I want to punch you if this is your objection) c) the vaccine is too new, they rushed it (it was in the works since SARS and they tweaked it, also the flu shot is new every year, your point?) d) it's the mark of the beast! (If you believe this or spread it please exit the gene pool) or e) we don't know what's in it! (This and a especially bothers me from hospital workers, who are required to get an annual flu shot).

There is exactly one valid reason to not get the damned vaccine and that is if your immune system can't handle it. So if you have a serious health condition that weakens your immune system or you're allergic to a vaccine component, you are absolutely off the hook, and none of this is directed at you. You're one of the ones who needs the rest of us to do our part to survive this, and I am so sorry.

And people keep screaming about my freedom! Look bitch, your freedom ends when it impinges on mine, and you are sorely impinging right now. You have the freedom to do what you want with your body, but not with other peoples. If you want to get Covid, fine. But you do not have the right to spread it, which is what is going to happen if you get it. Vaccinations used to be mandatory. You still need to get vaccinations if you travel to certain countries. If you join the military you are going to get injected with every vaccine we know of and probably a few we don't. Vaccines are one of the things that make modern life possible.

I understand being skeptical, I mean, I would've preferred a bit more time and more studies before getting vaccinated. But I did it anyway because:

Widespread vaccination is the only way we get out of this.

The alternative is over crowded hospitals (which is starting to happen again) and just accepting people dying. Sure, death is part of life, but this is needless and overtaxing already broken systems.

If you have not gotten your vaccine and have no medical reason not to, you are part of the problem. You are the asshole on the zombie movie who gets bitten and hides it until it's too late and you become a threat to the rest of the party.

Stop being a dumbass and do something for other people for once in your miserable life.

I am tired of wearing masks. I am tired of all the pandemic protocols. I have done everything I can do, as have many others. But it's not enough. Everyone has to do their part.

If you want this to be over, instead of protesting, get vaccinated, it's a hell of a lot more useful.

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Everything you need to know about day one of Brexit

By Ian Dunt

Oh sweet Christ not Brexit again.

Yes, you will never escape. It will never be over. Decades from now, as your wrinkled fingers grasp the remote for your 3D holo-viewer, the main news item will still be about Brexit.

At least we got a break during the coronavirus emergency.

Yep, say what you like about pandemics, but at least they take trade talks off the front pages. Still, it's back now. We leave at the end of the year. And deal or no-deal, things at the border are going to be very different.

OK lay it out for me.

For decades we have had frictionless trade with Europe in the customs union and single market. The customs union got rid of tariffs, which are taxes on goods entering a territory, and the single market harmonised regulations, which means goods are made to the same standards. Once you're outside of them, you need checks at the border to make sure people are paying the right tax and complying with the regulations.

And that's what's about to happen?

Exactly. And this will apply regardless of whether there is a deal or not. I want to issue a word of warning before we go any further: It's a horror show. The level of tediousness here is off the scale. This is like someone came up with a super-powered serum for the concept of bureaucracy and then injected it directly into your bloodstream. But you didn't turn into Chris Evans in Captain America, you turned into Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. The worst things are the acronyms. Everything has an acronym. But you need to get your head around it in order to understand what's going to happen to us next month.

I don't care. I hate this. I want this conversation to stop.

You can't, it's too late. You are trapped here with me and the acronyms. OK so here's the basic problem, the one from which all others follow. Our customs system currently processes around 55 million declarations a year. In 2021, it will process around 270 million. It needs to massively ramp up capacity.

It's just as well the government has such a good track record of implementing complex IT projects at speed then.

Quite. To be fair, the government has put a lot of effort into this, albeit belatedly. More than 35 government departments and public bodies are involved, including HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), the Home Office (HO), the Department for Transport (DfT), the Border and Protocol Delivery Group (BPDG) and the Transition Task Force (TTF).

Sweet Jesus the acronyms.

Actually, most of those are abbreviations, but let's not get caught up on details. We've barely scratched the surface. There are three key areas where the government needs to build capacity: IT systems to process the customs declarations, physical infrastructure at or near ports, and staff in government and the private sector to keep the customs system going.

That's a lot to do.

It is. But the government made things easier in one crucial respect: it delayed its own import declarations system until July next year.

What does that mean?

It means that stuff coming into Britain from Europe basically gets waved through. There are still technically customs requirements, but they've been pushed back six months. This allowed them to make sure goods would still enter the country and let them focus on trying to get the exports right.

It's hardly taking back control, is it?

No it isn't, but they're undertaking a systems-level change at an eye-watering timetable, so it was a necessary sacrifice.

Couldn't they have extended transition to prepare for this?

Yes they could, but chose not to. That's cost them. Covid seriously delayed preparations, dominated attention in business and government, paused ministerial decision-making and put communication with traders into deep-freeze over the summer.

So what are the biggest risks now?

The IT systems. There are 10 critical IT systems which are needed at the GB–EU border. Then there are the European systems which UK exporters will need to use to get access to the continent. We're not going to go into all of them here - we're going to massively simplify.

Thank heavens.

Don't worry, it'll still make your brain dribble out of your ears. We're also going to simplify by taking goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland off the table. That's its own separate hellscape. And we're going to focus on the Dover-Calais crossing. There are many others going from England to France, but this is the main route. It serves 'accompanied goods' - when a driver in a lorry takes the goods onto a ferry and then drives it off on the other side of the Channel. This is called RoRo, for roll-on-roll-off.

Acronym. Drink.

If you keep that up you'll be smashed by the end of the article and won't have any idea what I'm talking about.

I already have no idea what you're talking about.

Fair enough, drink away. The trouble with customs IT systems is this: Everyone needs to be filling in the right thing, in the right place, at the right time. If they don't, things break down. That doesn't just apply to the UK and French governments. It applies to exporters and importers, ports, hauliers and others. Customs is all or nothing. If one section is wrong, it's all wrong. Lorries are often full of lots of different consignments of goods from different exporters. Plenty of them travel with 100 individual separate consignments on them. This is called 'groupage'. So if one input of one customs form in one of those consignments is wrong, the whole lorry is delayed. And if that lorry is delayed, all the lorries behind it are delayed. The potential for breakdown is therefore very significant.

This is already making me anxious. It's like Jenga but it reaches all the way into the sky and is composed entirely of knives.

You also need to make sure that third party software used by places like the ports integrates with the government systems. And that assumes that the government IT systems actually work and have staff with the proper experience and training to operate them. And this too is interrelated. If one of the systems breaks down, it has a knock-on effect on the other systems. You keep seeing this same problem crop up. It's not one of error, exactly. It's about the consequence of the error, the knock-on effects of it.

How robust are those IT systems looking right now?

Not great. Some have been delayed indefinitely, some for a set period, some are in trials and some are online. But even when they're finished, you really want to give all the people using them time to understand them, to get used to them, so that when we leave transition there are as few mistakes as possible. All four industry representative bodies, including the Road Haulage Association (RHA) and the British International Freight Association (Bifa), have raised concerns about the government's level of preparedness, saying that they don't believe the border will be fully functioning by next month.

That's two more acronyms by my count.

I'm glad to see you sticking to the important information here. The trouble is that lack of government preparedness doesn't just affect it - it affects trader preparedness as well. If they're not getting clear communication from the government about what is happening and how it is happening, they don't know what to do. And the government has a bad record here. It has marched traders up the hill on no-deal several times over recent years, only to march them down again. Now many simply ignore it. Government communications have, until recently, centred on the "opportunities" of Brexit, which does nothing to indicate the urgency with which people need to make expensive and time-consuming changes. Even in October, just 45% of high-value traders who trade exclusively with the EU had started to invest in readiness.

Oh dear.

There are some reasons to be more optimistic. The first is that government communication has belatedly started to improve.  A new campaign in October was much better, telling traders that "time is running out". There's also one really important thing to remember about all this: it's not a long term problem. Brexit has plenty of those and they are severe, but this is not one of them. This is a short, sharp, embarrassing shock. Eventually, the market will adjust. People will see what happens in January and find ways around it so they can get their goods to market. Some people think that will happen very quickly indeed - no more than a month. Some think it'll take the first quarter of next year or longer. But very few people think it will last the whole year. What we're looking at here is the most dramatic, but also ultimately the most superficial, of Brexit impacts.

Starting to feel a bit tipsy now.

Cool, then it might be a good time to start talking about the IT systems.

No. Stop.

What?

I don't want to hear it. I want to get out.

It's too late. You're trapped here in an imaginary world in which I am talking to myself and explaining customs procedures. And in fact your resistance to this conversation probably points to some kind of deep-seated psychological trauma which I'm working my way through.

Dog carcass in alley this morning. Tyre tread on burst stomach.

Very good, Rorschach. So look, there are really four forms you need to remember. First, the import/export declaration. Second, the safety and security documentation. Third, the sanitary and phytosanitary measures for agricultural goods. And fourth, the system that collects these data sets and connects them to the lorry which is transporting the good.

What's in the import/export declaration?

They basically state what the good is, its value and how much duty you have to pay on it. It's the tax bit. It's all very complex, laborious and crammed full of technical minutiae but that's the executive summary. It needs to be lodged before the good gets to the French border.

How do you lodge it?

You do it through a UK system called the Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight, or Chief.

Drink.

This is a really old system and before Brexit was even a twinkle in Boris Johnson's eye, the UK planned to turn it off and migrate all traders to a new system called the Customs Declarations Service, or CDS.

Drink.

CDS was meant to replace Chief from January 2019 and then switch off altogether by March 2021, but there were repeated delays. So instead they're keeping Chief for trade between Britain and the EU and using CDS for trade between Britain and Northern Ireland, because it has the capacity for dual tariff fields. CDS is then going to be scaled up until it can deal with all the declarations.

No acronyms there.

Actually trade between Britain and Europe is called GB-EU and trade between Britain and Northern Ireland is called GB-NI, but let's not worry about that. The government insists that Chief now has an increased capacity that can handle 400 million annual declarations - way higher than the 265 million which are expected. HMRC has paid Fujitsu £85 million to provide technical support. But others aren't convinced. They're not sure it can handle the load and nervous that there isn't enough support if something goes wrong.

Very reassuring.

Isn't it. Remember that the importer on the EU side also has to be doing all of this - at the right time, in the right place - on the European customs system.

OK so what about the safety and security thing?

It's a document outlining what the good is, so it can be assessed for potential risks. Again, it's a long complex thing with multiple data fields. Like import/export, it has to be done in advance of the goods reaching Calais. It's submitted to the UK government via a new system called S&S GB.

Drink.

It must also be submitted to the EU member state's Import Control System, which is called ICS.

Drink. OK tell me about the sanitary pad things.

Sanitary and phytosanitary measures, or SPS.

Drink.

These are there to protect people, animals and plants from disease or pests. They cover products of an animal origin, like cheese, or meat, or fish, as well as live animal exports, plants and plant products, and even the wooden crates used to transport other types of goods. It's painstaking stuff, but I think, given the pandemic we're all going through, we all understand why it's important.

Yeah, fair enough. You've sold me. I'm totally on board with this stuff.

These kinds of goods have to enter Europe through specific Border Control Posts, or BCPs.

Drink.

And there they undergo some, or all, of a variety of checks. There's a documentary check for the official certification which travels with the good. There are identity checks, which provide a visual confirmation that the consignment corresponds to the documentation. And there's a physical check to verify the goods are compliant with the rules, for instance temperature sampling, or laboratory testing. You know that whole chlorine-washed chicken thing?

Sure.

Well this is where they check whether it has been and stop it getting into Europe if it has. But it's actually the documentary check which is the hardest part in terms of UK preparedness. It includes something called an Export Health Certificate, or EHC.

Drink. Jesus Christ.

These are documents which confirm that the product meets the health requirements of the EU. So they might say that the animal was vaccinated, for instance. Some products, like a cut of lamb, will just have one EHC. But others, like a chicken pizza, will have more than one.

We've talked about this before. People shouldn't put chicken on pizza.

You are wrong, it's a perfectly legitimate pizza topping, and in fact you are so wrong that I have started using chicken pizza as my trade-good shorthand. Chicken pizza is the new widgets.

What even are widgets?

No-one knows, that's why economists love them. A chicken pizza, however, is a composite good for the purposes of SPS. The chicken and the cheese are different animal products, so they would need separate export health certificates. And all these certificates have to be verified by an official veterinarian, or OV.

You're just messing me about now.

No seriously, they use that acronym. This whole area of public life has been radicalised into extreme acronym use. Anyway, the OV goes through the details, queries the documents and signs them off. But there's assistance from a person pulling together all the paperwork. They're called a Certification Support Officer, or…

I can't believe this.

...CSO. These guys are mostly in private practices, usually farming practices. It's not a big part of their workload - maybe 20% of what they do. But if you don't have those vets, you can't send the export. That would be catastrophic for the farming, food and hospitality sectors. And that's where we have an issue. There are restrictions on getting that many OVs up and running. There's a tight labour market for vets and the UK is highly reliant on Europeans coming over to do the job, but the end of free movement makes that much more difficult and expensive, as does the covid pandemic.

So what has the government done?

It pumped £300,000 into providing free training for the role. Many vets took it up. The number of qualified vets has jumped from 600 in February 2019 to 1,200 today. But that still leaves a capacity gap of 200.

Well that doesn't sound so bad.

No it doesn't, but when you start to scratch away at the figures, they fall apart. The 200 figure is the number of 'full time equivalent' qualified vets required. And if vets only spend about 20% of their time doing this, it means we'll actually need an extra 1,000 vets training in the additional qualification.

Oh dear.

Yep. Groups representing the sector are seriously worried about this. And as with customs, the smooth functioning of the border will rely on the importer on the EU side doing all the bits they're required to do too, by creating a record in the Trade Control and Expert System, or Traces NT.

Drink. OK, what's the fourth bit of IT?

Transport. This involves wrapping all the other forms together and attaching them to a vehicle. In the UK, we'll be doing this through something called the Goods Vehicle Movement Service, or GVMS.

Drink.

It links export declaration references together into one single Goods Movement Reference, or GMR.

Drink. Bloody hell man these people are out of control.

The GMR should come out like a barcode, a one-stop shop for all the tied-together information we've been discussing. GVMS will be needed for certain movements in January, particularly for trade with Northern Ireland, but it won't be a requirement of all imports until July. It's currently being tested and there are dark murmurs about its functionality from those who have come into contact with it. Mercifully, exporters into Europe on January 1st will be using the French system, SI Brexit. This was operational a year ago and has been fully tested several times.

Those lazy French with their useless romantic dispositions.

It's almost like they're a nation that cares about shopkeepers.

Speaking of which, how're British businesses going to deal with all this additional paperwork?

Many companies will be OK. Very big corporations are well ahead and in many cases have set up a European entity so that they can sell directly from their UK entity to the EU one. Then they'll probably just reflect the customs costs in a subtly increased retail price. Smaller companies who are used to exporting to the rest of the world outside of Europe also have an advantage. They're used to these kinds of things. The people who are most at risk are the small-to-medium-sized enterprises who have traded exclusively with Europe.

Small-to-medium-sized… Oh no.

Yeah, that's right. SMEs. Which, by the way, comprise the vast majority of companies in the UK. If you send just two or three loads of your product a month to Europe, it probably won't be worth the cost in manpower and money preparing for all this stuff. They'll likely just accept a shrinkage in their business. For many of them, the whole thing is a bafflement. Honestly, you read the guidance on all these systems and it's like it's in an alien code - a garbled assault of acronyms and complex systems. Many small firms, already suffering from covid, just throw up their hands in despair.

Bleak. It's always the little guys that get it.

Yes, although paradoxically, that actually presents one of the few reasons for optimism. Well, not optimism exactly, but a hope for least-badism. Now that so many people feel January will be chaotic, they might just decide not to bother trying to send anything. Goods will get stuck at a warehouse instead of on a truck.

Seriously? That's your good news? Aren't you just displacing disruption from the ports to other parts of the supply network?

Yes precisely. But there really are no good outcomes here.

Because if that doesn't happen, the system seizes up?

Yeah exactly. Lorries head to Dover then get held up because they don't have the correct paperwork. Then lorries behind those lorries get caught up, pushing the queue out, dominating Kent, creating a huge singular blockage. The government's own Reasonable Worst Case Scenario, or RWCS…

Drink.

... estimates that between 40% and 70% of lorries may not be ready for border controls, leading to queues of up to 7,000 trucks.

But that would only be going out right? The stuff we bring in to the country would be unaffected because we're not putting in place controls.

Kind of. It's certainly true that most imports should have a clear run into the UK. You can keep those two lanes separate. But most hauliers are from Romania, Lithuania, Hungary and Poland. They pay a lease on their trucks, which means they have to keep them going if they're to make money. They can't afford to get stuck in a queue at the border. So there's a good chance they'll look at the log-jam in the UK and think: 'I'm not touching that with a barge pole'. This would mean Britain struggled to get its imports, including potentially fresh food and medicines.

Wow.

Yeah, it could be bad. But there are plans for that eventuality. The government has set up some emergency routes, for instance on the Newhaven-Dieppe crossing. There's additional ferry capacity at eight ports, with the Department for Transport acting as the referee on which vehicles get onto their crossing. But it's not a like-for-like replacement. Many of these crossings take much longer than the short gap between Dover and Calais, and they often operate for unaccompanied goods overnight. If the import is urgent, or fresh, or, like some covid vaccines, needs to be kept at a certain temperature, then you may have a problem.

What is the government doing to make sure this doesn't happen? How will they control the blockage?

There's three parts to that really. The first is controlling access to Kent, which the trucks head into to get to Dover. This project has no acronym, but instead adopted one of the least elegant names in the history of British policy-making: The Check an HGV is Ready to Cross the Border Service.

Wait but...

Yeah. HGV: Heavy Goods Vehicle.

I fully accept now that it was a mistake to adopt this drinking idea.

Before the lorry gets to Kent, the driver will fill out an online form with a bunch of information - the registration number, the destination, details of the consignments, confirmations that the import/export documents have been filled in, export health certificates, the whole lot basically. Those that are judged to have all the documentation are given a Kent Access Pass, or KAP.

Drink.

And that allows them to go into Kent. Police can hand out £300 fines to lorries found on the Kent roads without the permit.

But this is all done on trust right? It's a self-assessment form.

Yep. It'll rely on people filling it out right. It's not linked to EU customs systems. So there's no guarantee that documents they claim to have completed will be accepted by EU customs authorities. But on the plus side, the software was launched recently and most people think it'll work OK. It's better than nothing, basically.

Alright so what's next? Traffic management?

Exactly. It's uncanny how naturally your questions lead me onto the next thing I want to discuss.

That's because I am you.

Don't talk about that, it makes it weird. Alright so first up we have the traffic flow plans. The Department for Transport is taking an existing temporary system to create contraflow on the M20 and putting it on a permanent footing, allowing 2,000 lorries to be held on the motorway while traffic still flows in both directions on the London-bound side.

OK, what's next?

Well then there's the issue of actual sites. HMRC has identified seven locations outside the ports. There's prep work being done at a site in Sevington, Ashford, at a cost of £110 million, to act as a clearing house for another 2,000 lorries. Some 600 lorries can be held on the approach to Manston airport, with more at the airport itself. These two sites, along with the M20 contraflow, are for holding traffic. There are also plans for Ebbsfleet International Station, North Weald Airfield and Warrington to be used for bureaucratic checks away from the border. Other sites, potentially in the Thames Gateway and Birmingham areas, are also being considered. They insist that this should give them capacity for 9,700 lorries, which is above the 7,000 in their worst case scenario.

Assuming that scenario is correct.

Right. Covid and other unrelated events, like a fire breaking out for instance, could mean that even the worst case scenario is an underestimate. We just don't know. Plus that relies on all of this being up in time. The government has passed legislation to streamline planning processes, but the timetable is unbelievably tight. The same thing goes for staff.

These are the customs officials who check all the paperwork, right?

That's certainly part of it. They're split into two departments: HMRC and Border Force. HMRC needs 8,600 full-time equivalent staff in place for January 1st. They still need another 1,500 but seem confident they'll have them. Border Force recruited an additional 900 staff ahead of a possible no-deal last year and is trying to bring in 1,000 more. Ministers are confident they'll have enough people in place by January 1st, but trade experts are less convinced.

Recurring theme.

Indeed. It's easy to get fixated on numbers but it really matters how well you've trained people too. You can have someone helping with customs work after a day or two, but for them to have any real sense of what they're doing, you're going to want a year's training. And then there's the question of personality type. Customs is a very specific kind of work, full of extremely complex documentation which must be got right. For some people, that is unimaginably boring. For others, it's very satisfying. But you need the right ones. And that's not what typically happens when people get desperate on a recruitment drive.

What's the other part of the staffing problem?

The private sector. It's a job called 'customs broker'. They're basically people who come in and help companies with their customs forms. Like I said, this stuff is mind-meltingly complex. You really do need someone to come and help you do it. And that's what the government wants too of course, because the more people getting it right, the fewer delays at the border. But as of last September, just 53% of traders said they planned to use a customs broker, with 30% unsure and 18% saying they were going to do the work themselves. Those aren't good numbers.

Are there enough of them to meet demand?

No. This has been a long-running problem. Almost two-thirds of customs brokers do not have enough staff to handle the increased paperwork from leaving the EU. And actually capacity seems to have reduced over the year due to the covid pandemic. The UK needs thousands more.

What's the government doing about it?

It's invested £84 million since 2018 into training, recruitment and IT system development. But many customs brokers are still hesitant about taking on new salary costs to build a capacity that won't be fully required until next July and they're nervous about taking on unprepared customers.  Of the £84 million on offer, just £52 million had been taken up in mid-October.

Is that… is that it? Please say that's it. I'm wasted.

It is.

OK so give me the executive summary.

We're about to experience the sudden implementation of complex customs processes in a nation which forgot they existed. This involves the introduction of numerous interrelated IT systems which have been under-tested. It's not clear that either government or traders are fully prepared for what's about to happen. In order to minimise the disruption the government is introducing various traffic management projects and trying to bulk up staff capacity. But there's just too many variables to know how it'll pan out. Maybe the systems will hold out and many traders will anyway sit out January because of concerns about queues. Or maybe the systems will fail, traders won't fill in forms right and the whole thing will blow up in our face. The most likely outcome right now is somewhere between shambles and catastrophe. We have to hope it's a shambles.

Can you do it in acronym-speak?

Amid RHA and Bifa concerns about the lack of progress, HMRC, Defra, the HO, the Dft, the BPDG and the TTF are building up IT systems for post-Brexit GB-EU trade and particularly for RoRo at Dover-Calais which will involve exporters submitting import/export declarations to Chief and the CDS, S&S information to S&S GB and ICS, and collating their SPS documentation - including an EHC filled out by an CSO under the supervision of an OV sent via a BCP - with the importer logging it on Traces NT, while generating a GMR via GVMS and SI Brexit, and then HGVs getting a KAP, all to avoid the RWCS.

D… Drink?

Yes I think so. That seems very sensible.

[sickcyclist]

This is the story of my day. It actually starts yesterday, when a heaven-sent rain swept in and cleared the smoke and cooled the air and tamped down the dust on the trails. I went on a bike ride because days like that are a gift. I have exercise-induced hypoxemia, which basically means that my oxygen drops when I exercise for reasons that we still don’t understand. Exercising with oxygen helps, but I still drop into the mid-80s. I knew I was too sick to ride and that doing so would make me much more sick, but I needed it for my mind so I was willing to sacrifice my body.

So that’s the first lesson of being sick. Everyone tells you that you have to be active and it will make things better and all you have to do is just push yourself hard enough. We’ve internalized this message to the point that many people believe sick people could get better if they just PUSHED. But that’s not always true. Sometimes pushing makes you worse. Sometimes it makes you much, much worse. And that can be true even if being active and pushing hard is something you love so much that it feels like it’s core to who you are.

I knew I would have to sleep for 12+ hours to make up for the ride, and I knew that I would have bad oxygen saturation stats because of it. And since I don’t have a real job, it should be easy to just take a lazy day (or week, or month) and get better, right? But actually I do have a real job and that job is to keep myself alive. It’s the job of a lot of us who are chronically ill, and it’s not a profession I would recommend. It’s not fun and it’s not rewarding and no one admires you for it and you’re not asked to speak to 5th graders on career day and you rarely get to move on to a newer, more interesting project.

Here’s what this particular day at work looked like for me. I woke up to a voicemail saying that my pulmonology appointment for Friday had been cancelled. I’ve been waiting to see a pulmonologist since March and was supposed to have an appointment weeks ago, but that was cancelled because the doctor quit two days beforehand. The other doctor in town couldn’t see me until the end of October, so I looked for a doctor in a bigger town hundreds of miles away. She comes highly recommended and in a way I’m happy because I strongly prefer female doctors, but for whatever reason she had to “clear her morning.” My new appointment is five weeks from now. I got off the phone and sobbed, which is not a good thing to do when your lungs don’t work. I probably could have toughed it up and avoided crying if I hadn’t worn myself down so much biking yesterday, but such is life.

I emailed my primary care provider asking for a note saying I could travel with my portable oxygen concentrator. I was supposed to get this letter from my pulmonologist, but now I won’t have a pulmonologist before I travel. The letter has to say that I use oxygen for sleep and activity, but it also has to specify that I won’t use oxygen on the plane. Which is a little funny because airplanes have extremely powerful oxygen-producing systems for emergencies, but they don’t like people who need oxygen because they don’t like the risk that comes with having sick people on board (think emergency landings). So people who need oxygen all the time need their own oxygen concentrator and battery power for the equivalent of 1.5x the time they will be in the air. I’m going on an 8-hour flight and it would cost about $400 to get strong enough batteries for that length. So I need them to let me carry my machine, which has lithium ion batteries that are otherwise prohibited. But in order to carry my machine I need to prove that I won’t be needing it.

I have a great primary care provider. I knew she would write the note. Easy peasy.

My next voicemail was from the specialty pharmacy that my insurance provider uses for certain drugs. I am allergic to a hormone all women produce as part of the menstrual cycle. This allergy is so severe that it has been responsible for 5 miscarriages, and it also means that I’m more miserable than usual for half the month. The good news is that all you have to do to stop it is take out your ovaries, but when you do that you go into full menopause. Which is not desirable because it increases your risk of cancer and osteoporosis and just overall mortality. Like not even from one thing. Just people who go into menopause early die early from all causes and we don’t know why.

That gives you some perspective on what the benefits have to look like in order for the cost-benefit analysis to still auger in favor of ovary removal. But since it is such a serious choice, you have to be sure. And the way you make sure is to stop your ovaries from working with a drug. The drug has hideous short and long term side effects, so if you feel better while taking it, that’s a pretty strong sign that an oophorectomy is the choice for you.

Approval for me to receive this particular drug was in limbo because the provider accidentally entered the wrong diagnosis. I have, as you can imagine, a lot of diagnoses. Entering the wrong diagnosis in this case was particularly funny because I’ve spent the last 6 months fighting with Blue Cross to get an expensive medicine that helps with my allergies. This medicine (Xolair) is approved for chronic urticaria (hives). It is not approved for progesterone hypersensitivity. I have both, which means I itch a lot for two weeks of the month and itch so much that I want to peel my skin off for two weeks of the month. Blue Cross argued that I wanted the drug for progesterone hypersensitivity. No medical provider said that, but it was the diagnosis they could use to deny the drug. Xolair costs $4000 a month. At that price it’s worth it to them to grind people down and hope they give up. It took four appeals and my lawyer (husband) to get the drug approved because I do indeed have chronic urticaria. It’s worked wonders for me, especially being allergic to the sun. You have no idea how easy it is to descend into madness when you are itchy all the time.

I went over all this with my new OB. I explained that, while the allergy shot solved the itching, it didn’t fix any of my systemic problems, which is why I was still interested in removing my ovaries. And because the conversation focused on how this ovary-suppressing drug (Lupron) specifically wasn’t for urticaria, it’s perhaps not surprising that she accidentally listed urticaria as the reason for the prescription. It’s like when you’re afraid you’ll mispronounce someone’s name. You tell yourself, “Say Kee-a, not Ky-a,” so many times that you’re basically guaranteed to call the person Ky-a.

So my ovary medicine was denied, of course, but I contacted my doctor’s office last week explaining the problem and they were very quick to apologize and resubmit. I returned the call from the specialty pharmacy but apparently they had just wanted to let me know that they were sorry for the delay. It was very polite of them but maybe didn’t require a phone call.

Then I got an email from Blue Cross Blue Shield. I logged in to read that coverage had again been denied (no reason stated) and that if I wanted to appeal the decision I would have to appeal through their specialty pharmacy. They gave me the name and number. Of a different specialty pharmacy than the one I had been dealing with for the past month. The one that I had already wrangled account numbers and diagnosis codes and special customer service phone lines out of. I typed up a polite response inquiring why I need to change pharmacies. And then I cried, but only just a little this time.

Then I called Walgreen’s because my medication for muscle spasms had been delayed and I received a note saying the pharmacist needed to speak to me. I am hypermobile so my connective tissue is just a little too bendy. My joints slip in and out all the time and my muscles have to overwork to hold my body together. Frequently they overwork so much that they lock up. This happens much more frequently in the progesterone-dominant phase of my cycle. Physical therapy is the best treatment, but sometimes I need muscles relaxants before I can even start physical therapy.

The man I spoke to at Walgreen’s told me I didn’t have a prescription for that drug. Then he told me I had a prescription but it had expired in March of 2020. I knew that wasn’t true because I hadn’t used it for years but had to start again when I got COVID. So I had no prescription in March of 2020 but I definitely did in March of 2021. No big deal. Just a simple computer error. Totally understandable in a pandemic, and I knew my doctor would refill it anyway. But he apparently felt that it was a big deal and wouldn’t submit the refill to my provider. I have no idea why. Maybe he thought I was engaged in drug-seeking behavior. Or maybe he was having a bad day. But he wouldn’t submit the refill. I hung up the phone and screamed. Loudly. Which really is not a good thing to do when your lungs don’t work.

Murry came up and rubbed the spasm out of my shoulder and listened to me vent and offered to be my medical power of attorney so he could deal with these people for me. But he’s the one with the real job that earns real money and when I’m sick he also cooks and cleans and does the shopping and walks the dogs. I may not be any good at the shitty job I had, but there’s no way I’m going to make him do it.

I switched tactics and chatted with someone through the Walgreen’s app. He was lovely and had no problem submitting my prescription for a refill. Easy peasy.

My final task for the day was calling to find out about the status of my CPAP prescription. I don’t have sleep apnea but while I’m asleep my breathing does slow down significantly enough that my oxygen drops (hypopnea). I need a special CPAP that adjust the pressure to my breathing, but it will get me off of oxygen at night. I’m very excited for it.

My insurance does not require prior authorization for CPAP prescriptions. However, St. Pete’s has its own prior authorization department that I guess makes sure you are not lying about not needing prior authorization? This department is, apparently, understaffed. I called my oxygen “rep” to find out how it was going. She very kindly bypassed the prior authorization department and called Blue Cross directly. Blue Cross informed her, as had I, that a prior authorization was not necessary. She could officially get me a CPAP.

Except that there is a national CPAP shortage. So she will try her best to get me one as soon as they get more. Hopefully this month. Even the rare, wonderful people who try to help you are sometimes as helpless as you.

I didn’t cry this time. Crying doesn’t fix anything and I can’t risk losing more oxygen. So I turned to writing therapy instead.

This was a bad day at work, but there are rarely good ones. It sucks to be sick, but I’m smart, articulate, overly educated, wealthy, and white. It could suck so, so much more. Someday I’ll turn all of this knowledge that I never wanted into something that helps people other than myself. Until then maybe someone will read this and know they are not alone. If being sick is your job, I see you. I would give you a hug—or a bonus!—if I could.

[above-eternity]

Black Lives Matters and the moon signs

I am south asian and this is meant for non-black activists. The fight is far from over and here are some ways the signs can help the cause long-term, you should also check for your sun, rising, and mars signs. 

Quick note: Everyone should support the movement in the ways they can, there’s so much you can do from signing petitions, donating to organizations, shopping in black owned businesses, volunteering your time to organizations, protesting, and so many other ways. I thought it would be interesting to make an action plan for how everyone can contribute, based on their moon sign. Of course you should help in all ways you can but I was trying to highlight your strengths and how you might most successfully help. Let me know what you think! 

Aries moon: I’ve noticed that so many politicians have Aries moon and I think this is because you guys love, and are great, in leadership roles. If your school, college, or region doesn’t have a black lives matter chapter, consider starting a chapter. I think Aries moon would be best in vocal roles where they can clearly tell people why they support black lives matters and can clearly support politicians. I think you guys would be a great help in campaigning, taking to social media to show your support, and write blogs or articles to explain the need for this movement. Do research on politicians who vocally support black lives matters, look into what your council members have been saying so you know who you can support. Really consider joining a campaign for a politician you support and when we can go outside again, consider hosting info sessions and meeting with potential voters to get support for your politicians.

Taurus moon: I think of Taurus moons as doers, as relentless workers, and so I think you would be great helpers to the organizations such as ACLU, Equal Justice Initiative, Black Lives Matters, mutual aid funds etc. If you can’t go outside, I think you would be a great remote volunteer for the ACLU People Power, where you can spread information by call, text, and translate information for people to support the ACLU. Also, consider making master-posts with information and resources, because I know you guys can make very visually pleasing ones that are also easy to navigate. If you can leave the house, I think you could be very helpful as an on-ground volunteer that can navigate resources for protestors. Consider starting a book club where you read books by black authors about the black experience, or read books about privilege, the black lives matters movement, etc. (just google for it, you can find amazing reading lists) and hold discussions to discuss how you can be a good supporter.  

Gemini moon: Similarly to Aries moon, I think you guys would be amazing activists by vocally showing your activism through social media -- let’s be real, you are probably already big on social media -- and by doing research on the history and writing articles about the need for black lives matters. If you haven’t already, watch documentaries like 13th read some of the recommended books like Between the World and Me (just google for more recommended readings and documentaries). Take to social media and vocally support black community leaders, black owned businesses and art, and research and post possible black business alternatives to currently used companies that exploit prisoners with prison-industrial complex. A lot of gemini moons I know are artists, so consider writing about and making art for the black lives matters movement, and maybe selling art and donating some of the money to organizations. 

Cancer moon: I swear, you are some of the kindest people in the world, and you can use this to your advantage by talking to your racist family and friends to explain what’s happening and why they should be supportive as well. Do your research by watching documentaries like 13th and reading some of the recommended books like Between the World and Me (just google for more recommended readings and documentaries). I can see you successfully fight your racist friends and family members with so much evidence and logic that they have nothing to do but give in, and I think you’d do it in such a nice way people won’t shut down. In the same way, I think you’d be great on social media, I can see you successfully explain to people why the protests are needed etc. and doing it in a nice way that the conversations don’t lead to fights. Also, as cancer moons, I know how much your family and home space means to you, so you may be interested in learning more about systematic housing discrimination and be interested in joining grassroots organizations and supporting politicians who care about finding solutions to these issues. 

Leo moon: I’ve noticed that a lot of you guys are interested in the arts, and especially interested in film. Consider hosting over-zoom movie sessions where you watch movies and documentaries about the black experience, black lives matter movement, privilege etc. and having discussions afterwards. You may also be very interested in self-care and skincare products, so consider researching black owned makeup, skincare, apothecaries and pharmacies that you can share with your friends and followers on social media. Consider writing a blog post, article, or twitter thread about possible beauty care alternatives because I swear, you guys are the RULERS of self-care. If you can attend protests, I can see you guys playing music and dancing in protests and helping to keep the morale high. Also, be vocal about your support for the movement, because whether you’re being vocal on social media or with your family and friends, those who know you, listen to what you have to say. Keep bombarding your social media with support for BLM because you may lose some followers, but really, do you want to have those followers in your page in the first place? 

Virgo moon: Consider volunteering for organizations such as the ACLU people power and other grass-roots movements, where you can spread information and help these organizations function in an orderly manner. I think a lot of you guys have spent a lot of time developing a routine for yourself and finding ways to be neat, and I think it will be very appreciated by these organizations to have volunteers that can help them function. There are a lot of volunteers to some of these organizations, and it can be so difficult to keep order, but I can see you loving an organization and continuing to volunteer there for years and years, helping the organization’s work flow and new volunteers with your years of expertise. If you are not already doing research for living, consider doing research and writing about the history and the necessity of the black lives matters movement. I think one of the most complicated issues that a lot of people have a difficult time understanding is the public health crisis, how and why black and brown communities are more disparately effected by crisis such as the Covid-19, than other communities. As virgo moons are great at analyzing and writing, and I noticed that a lot of virgo moons are also interested in health issues in general, I think this is some important research you can do and simplify. If you are twitter, consider making a thread with information you find, it will be very appreciated. 

Libra moon: Your presence is so calming and harmonious, if you can get out, I think you guys would be amazing at the protests, where you can provide snacks, first-aid, water and other goods to protestors. If you are a law student or legal worker, consider getting training to become a legal observer so that you can provide legal protection to protestors. You will likely be very interested in shopping in black owned vintage shops, high fashion, and jewelry shops. A lot of libra moons I know are very interested in the arts, and you can take to social media to amplify the voices of black artists and community members. I’ve noticed that a lot of libra moons are interested in working with children and care a lot about youth, so maybe consider learning more about education reform and decolonizing the curriculum, and look into how you can act as a mentor to black and brown youth. There are many programs that are centered around mentoring black and brown youth to passing high school and getting into college, so consider joining one of these programs. 

Scorpio moon: Continuously write letters and emails to your council members, mayors, governors, and senators. If you can, get out there and protest because with your creativity, I know your posters and signs will not be missed. I swear your intuition is just insane, I think you guys would be amazing at outing racists and holding people accountable for what they say on social media. I’ve also noticed that many scorpio moons are interested in the arts and film especially, so perhaps consider hosting over-zoom movie sessions where you watch documentaries about the black experience and black lives matters, where you can also hold discussions afterwords. If you can come forward and discuss your privilege during these sessions, or really any other time you talk with your friends and family, they will listen because anyone that knows you, will know that you will end their whole career if they don’t listen to you. As I can see you discussing culture and arts with your friends and acquaintances, I think you’d also be interested in researching the strong influences black artists and musicians had to our culture as well. 

Sagittarius moon: Did you know you could use your credit card or travel reward points to donate to black lives matter organizations, like through JustGiving. Google this to learn more but we both know you have so many travel reward points. If you can go out, get out there and protest because I swear, no one has as much energy as you. I can see you, sag moons, making very interesting protest signs. I can see you playing music and dancing in the streets to keep up morale during protests. Also, you know you’d love shopping at a black owned vintage, etsy, thrift store for you and your friends. You can also take to social media to spread factual information about protests and what’s really happening because you guys have like a million acquaintances. As the eternal student, I think you guys in particular may also be interested in learning more about systematic racism in education and decolonizing the school curriculum, and may be interested in joining grass-root organizations for these issues. 

Capricorn moon: I swear no one can find deals like you, and so I think you would be amazing researching possible black owned business alternatives to exploitive companies that follow a prison-industrial complex. Also, let’s be real, I am yet to meet a cap moon that doesn’t enjoy retail therapy. I think you would love doing some shopping at black owned book shops, vintage shops, etc. and letting your friends and family know about these awesome businesses. If you are interested in writing-- from rambling on social media to writing in a blog-- I can see you writing very informative blogs and articles about why we should transition from using these companies that use prisoner labor to small businesses. I think you can write in a very clear way that shows anyone how the logical thing to do is to shop in small businesses. Also, as cap moons, I think a lot of you likely spent a lot of time thinking about (stressing over tbh) what job you want and what you need to do, so I think researching systematic hiring discrimination is something that will interest you, you can join grass-root movements, reach out to politicians, and do research on these issues. 

Aquarius moon: I think you are probably already subscribed to ACLU, change.com and gofundme, and honestly, I am yet to meet another aqua moon who isn’t a strong activist for some cause. I think aqua moons would love joining ACLU’s people power volunteers, where they can remotely call, text, and translate important information to send people. Or really consider volunteering for grass-root movements, if you are a student, consider joining and starting a black lives matters chapter is your schools and colleges. As you the humanitarian, you may also be interested in long term criminal defense reform and should look into volunteering for a grass-roots movement focused on this major issue. If you are a law student or legal worker, consider getting training to become a NLG legal observer so that you can fight to protect the rights of protestors. Even if you’re not in the legal profession, I think you are probably not a stranger to debates, so honestly, consider going on social media and just outing racists and holding people accountable for what they say-- I think you’d be great at it. 

Pisces moon: As the artists, I can see you creating art of any type and using profit from your art to donate to organizations. If you can, your sweetness would be very appreciated in protests, I can see you, pisces moons, gathering donations and buying snacks, first-aid kits, water and providing other necessities to the protestors in the streets. I can see you playing music and trying to keep morale up in the streets. I can also see you hosting and joining zoom book clubs where you read books by black authors, or books about privilege-- and of course, the books can be from black owned bookstores. When you shop, you should check out black owned herbal shops and spiritual shops because let’s be real, you are always looking for crystals. You are no stranger to being vulnerable, and I think it would be very impactful if you have conversations with your family members about your privileges. 

[musette22]

I work in PR so here's an insider's take: All press is good press and often bad press is better. If they had just done an interview, would we still be talking about it, would their names be trending, would there be this much debate? All exposure is a plus for PR, not matter the context, as long as they stay on the right side of the law. Fandom has a short memory, so since no major news agency has picked up on it (e.g. "SS/CE SLAMMED for travelling...") they have pulled this off successfully 1/5

The identical Europe trips are either because a) they’re real relationships and it’s pure coincidence (doubtful), b) they’re on their way to work in Europe anyway (possible) or c) Although travelling is tone deaf, if you need to be seen maskless and frolicking outside with a stranger, going to a country where there is a much lower covid rate and doing so is within regulations is both safer and better optics. If Seb had done this in the centre of NY the reaction would possibly have been worse 2/5

Also, travelling to a European GF makes the relationships seem more real because it’s a significant thing to do right now. It adds a “star-crossed lovers separated by covid” narrative that a lot of celebs are playing on. The identical timing is very beneficial for Seb – he is less famous so got less coverage, but he has successfully hitched himself to Chris by doing it at the same time and is getting a shout out in bigger articles about Chris. I can’t imagine this wasn’t planned 3/5

It’s important to be aware that this will have 0 negative effect on their careers or reputations – not just because there has been no evidence of them clearly breaking rules (you don’t have to wear a mask while eating dinner or swimming in the ocean guys, come on) – but because, and don’t take this the wrong way, fandom doesn’t matter in the long run. They have millions of followers and at most a few hundred people are complaining. Most don’t even know about this. 4/5

Directors, producers etc. will either never find out, or won’t care, because they’re rich privileged men too and will probably have done the same thing. Sometimes the hate in the tags can seem like their career is in jeopardy but they’re shouting into the void. Even if all of them never spend a penny on SS/CE movies again, it would not hurt the boys in any way. Overall, the PR is little clumsy and tone-deaf but ultimately very successful, and I’m fascinated as to where it will go next 5/5

Thank you so much for sharing your insight! Much appreciated. I definitely agree with you for the most part, particularly about how fandom is just a small percentage of the target base for these guys’ managements, and how the  negative aspects of this will be forgotten soon enough and not actually affect their careers in the long run (except for positively). Assuming both cases are PR and not coincidences, I feel like saying it’s definitely PR to benefit their careers while also saying ‘most people don’t even know about this’ is a bit of a contradictio in terminis. Also, I think the outrage over the fact that (particularly Seb) is holidaying sans mask might be a little bit more significant than that and could actually lose them some hardcore fans, but like you, I definitely don’t think any of it is harming their careers in terms of securing roles or contracts or anything. 

The thing about how the romantic narrative of being reunited with European girlfriends will make people coo, and the fact that this kind of thing is more palatable when happening in Europe than in New York or LA or Miami or wherever in the US right now definitely makes sense too, I’ve thought that from the start as well. Also add in the convenient fact that it’s much easier to make these relationships believably peter off after a while due to the fact that it’s hard to maintain long-distance relationships and it makes even more sense. 

As for the part where you say the fact that this is happening simultaneously is because being hitched to Chris’s name it gives Seb’s story more visibility and clout; I can see that that would be the case, definitely, but I personally feel like there’s more to it than that. I’m not debating that’s true, but to me it seems more like clever spinning of a tricky situation into a to a convenient one (of course, I could be wrong, but that’s how it comes across for me) than fully premeditated. And yes, as an Evanstan shipper I am of course biased lol, but even if I try to put that aside for a moment, it doesn’t feel like a completely satisfying explanation to me. 

First of all, there’s still the question of why Chris is doing this, why like this, and especially why right now (I know there’s several possible explanations but none of them have me convinced yet). Then there's still also the fact that both Chris and Seb have been single and not linked to any women for quite a while, and they both suddenly have 'girlfriends' (which is good PR but also conveniently proves they're straight, which is especially important considering the long stretches of single-ness ‘at their age’, which in itself is quite interesting) at exactly the same time. While I could well be wrong, there’s something to that part of the whole situation that I think is definitely significant, though I still can’t put my finger on exactly why. In any case, there’s definitely more to all this than even we (as in, us intense fandom folk) are seeing, but in what way exactly still eludes me 🤷🏻 But yes, like you, I am also fascinated (and a lot apprehensive) to see where this goes next...

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

Evanescence: “Guitarists need to be honest. Use your voice. We don’t need fake – we need humanity and real people”

Jen Majura and Troy McLawhorn wax lyrical on the high-octane gear, influences and themes behind the band's upcoming fifth album, The Bitter Truth

The Bitter Truth, the fifth full-length from Evanescence set for release in March 2021, will be their first album of new material in a decade. The American arena group led by singer/keyboardist Amy Lee had already released three singles, though the record’s completion was stalled by the virus pandemic that dominated headlines for much of the year.

The first sessions took place at the beginning of 2020 with rock super producer Nick Raskulinecz [Foo Fighters, Rush, Alice In Chains] in his Nashville studio, spawning the tracks we’ve heard so far – Wasted On You, The Game Is Over and Use My Voice. Then, of course, came Covid, putting an end to safe travel and forcing virtually all plans to change.

For the members in America, it was incredibly problematic. For German guitarist Jen Majura, who joined in 2015, it was an absolute nightmare. Nevertheless, the group kept chiseling away and fleshing out their parts for album number five.

When Guitar World tracks down Majura and co-guitarist Troy McLawhorn towards the end of 2020, things are still very much in the process of being finalized...

Looking back now, that session in Nashville must feel like a very long time ago!

Majura: “Definitely! What hit me so hard was that we’d recorded that first chunk of songs and waved goodbye at the airport, thinking we’d be back in a couple of weeks. And then suddenly this pandemic hit, airports were all shut!

“I had never felt more apart from my friends in the States than since this all started. It’s so unnatural for me not to be there! I’m very old-school – I like my tube amp and 4x12 cabinet. I like to sit in the studio with the humans I’m working with and creating in the moment.

“Being away from Amy and the boys while working on material has felt so unnatural to me, but that’s the we have to do it and we have to make the best out of it. The time we spent with Nick in Nashville was the happiest ever.

“It felt amazing to see these songs coming to life – you have this idea but when you are all in a room creating, things change and become better, you end up trying out different ways. It’s such a vibrant and beautiful way of working. But I get it, there’s this thing called corona, so you know…”

This will be your first album working together on new material. How do you go about splitting guitar parts?

McLawhorn: “Whenever we’re jamming, if someone comes up with up something cool, they play it. There’s no set thing. So far I’ve probably played the majority of the lead guitar – if Jen comes up with something she is always welcome to play whatever it is. It’s a good working relationship. The first batch of songs, the first three that came out, were done in one session before the coronavirus hit. We were all together for those ones.

“But then Jen flew home back to Germany and we were supposed to tour in Europe, but it all got cancelled. Everything we’ve done since then has been without Jen with us, we’ve been kinda flying sessions back and forth. I probably played a lot of the guitar on the album, but she’s been coming up with cool ideas and putting her stamp on it too.”

The Game Is Over definitely feels like the heavier side of Evanescence…

McLawhorn: “There’s a lot of good stuff like that on this one, stuff that people will be surprised by maybe. There’s a fair amount of that aggressive type of music, but it’s a good mixture. So far everyone’s heard the lighter side of the album, like Use My Voice and Wasted On You… but then there’s The Game Is Over. It was a lot of fun to play and there’s more heavy stuff on there too!”

Majura: “That bridge is so heavy, I love it! It’s going back to the real rock roots and having lots of fun. When you have a low-tuned guitar you have to be a bit careful – you can’t just smash your strings but they will warp a bit.

“I remember forcing myself, especially during the bridge, to play gentle even though it had this badass attitude. It took me a couple of takes… the first ones were completely out of tune [laughs]!”

Jen, it must have been a rollercoaster five years for you. How did you end up getting the gig?

Majura: “What happened was that I was playing bass in another band, not really being happy as I’m a guitar player. We happened to play two festivals, one in Germany and one in the Czech Republic. And it turns out Testament were playing the same days as us.

“I’m a huge Alex Skolnick fan, so we ended up talking and keeping in touch. A couple of days later, I got this very mysterious email from him saying, ‘Jen! Some friends of mine are going to contact you and I can’t reveal too much but I think it’s something you should say yes to!’ I was wondering what the hell he was talking about…

“And then a day later, I got this email from Evanescence’s management asking if I would be interested in… and I didn’t even finish reading the email. I just immediately replied ‘Yes!’ and sent it. That was a total no-brainer.

“So this was around July 2015 and the next evening I was on the phone with Amy talking. She invited me to come visit her in New York and hang out. I thought, ‘Okay… cool!’ and three days later I was on a plane flying to fuckin’ New York wondering if this was really happening. It was insane.”

Did you bring your guitar?

Majura: “I didn’t! I asked her if I needed to bring one and she said, ‘Nah, I know you can play, I’ve seen plenty of videos – let’s just hang out!’ And that’s exactly what we did for the next three days. Hanging out, long walks and talks, going out for dinner or to a concert. Becoming friends and getting to know each other on a more human relationship kind of base.

“I realize now that’s the biggest deal when you have to replace a member. A band is a family. I’d like to quote Rob Zombie on that, because he said it in the movie Hired Gun!

“Finding a good player is the easy part – the world is full of virtuosos. You also need someone who can commit to touring, being on the road and that whole lifestyle. The third and last thing, also the toughest, is that you need people you can stand hanging out with 24/7.

“Concerts are only 90 minutes – what about all the other hours in the day? You need to all fit together. Within those first few days with Amy, I realized we both had a strong work ethic and know exactly what we want, which is beautiful.

“She’s a very strong character. I appreciate her musicality and personality too, she quickly became one of my best friends because we laughed about the same things and then figured out we both love Sex and the City [laugh]! I am so grateful and thankful to have experienced everything I have with her and the boys.”

Troy, you’ve been a member of Seether and filled in for Sevendust on some tours, but you’ve been an on/off member of Evanescence for over a decade now…

McLawhorn: “Yeah, to be honest, I never really left Evanescence. We have big breaks between albums. When I did my first tour with the band, Amy told me she was taking a long break, probably around four or five years. I just went out to find something to do in the meantime and ended up playing in Seether for a few years…

“When it was time for me to leave, it coincided with Amy being ready to do another album. And it was a huge coincidence. I ended up in New York and went to Amy’s house. I was having trouble in Seether and wasn’t happy there, and she said she’d love me to come work on the new album. That’s how it all went down.

“There seems to be some pretty long breaks in between albums with this band but I think that’s part of Amy’s creative process. She likes to take her time when she’s writing the lyrics. The final product always turns out really nice that way, so why mess with it?”

What can you tell us about the gear responsible for the guitar sounds on this album?

Majura: “I signed up with Synergy Amps in November last year. When I joined, I think Steve Vai was the only big name working with them, but I figured if it’s Steve Vai it’s gotta be fucking great. So I went over to check their amp out and I was very skeptical. It looks like a tube amp but with all these holes and parts missing!

“But I plugged in, hit one chord and realized it was actually phenomenal. They’ve sent all the different modules to me, like the Diezel, and the perfect solution for me was the Friedman HBE. It has the perfect rock and roll sound for my solos but it also has the mighty depth of high-gain stuff too – which are all frequencies you need for Evanescence.

“I was originally expecting I’d go with the Diezel one, but the Friedman felt more right for me. I’m very open-minded when it comes to technology. You have two modules, each with two channels, so you get a four-channel amp made out of your favorites.

“For example, I could combine a Vox AC30 Brian May sound with a Diezel VH4. It’s phenomenal what they’ve managed to open up for us musicians in terms of sound options. It’s been my tour rig and studio rig ever since.”

McLawhorn: “I used a combination of different things on this album. On The Game Is Over, it was basically my live setup which is an Orange Rockerverb 100, with an analog pedalboard.

“A big part of the tone I get from the amp comes down to a 10-band EQ I use to boost the mids on the lead channel. That’s about it – I don’t really use overdrive pedals or anything like that and probably use less gain than most modern guitarists. I almost use EQ to find a modern sound, instead of more gain.

“I also have a Fractal Axe-Fx III, which I’ve used here and there on the album, especially for clean parts – it’s really good for that. I’ve done some overdubs with the II as well, stuff that has a lot of effects or sounds really wet – Axe-Fx is great for that, too. I also have a 1969 Marshall Superbass 100 which we split with a Bogner Ecstasy or Uberschall, and used for the rhythm tracks on a couple of songs.”

And how about for guitars?

Majura: “I’ve been with Ibanez for many years now and I’m very happy. They deliver the most perfect instruments. You pick up an instrument and either like it or not. Some of them seem to instantly merge with your system – you become one – and that is true of most Ibanez guitars, at least for me.

“Of course I’ve played Les Pauls and other things, but they’re really not my style. I have so many Ibanez guitars now. I think the AZ series was such a smart move – the family is even bigger and better now… Look at players like Tim Henson, who is just amazing. He makes me feel so old. He’ll be nailing it and I’m at home just playing along to AC/DC or something!

“For pedals, I stick with the Line 6 Helix pedalboard because I remember at my first rehearsal in 2015, they would tell me certain parts would need a chorus or flanger or this or that. At the end of the rehearsal I had a battery of pedals in front of me and realized I couldn’t do it. I’ve never been a pedal dancer. I went to Line 6 asking for a solution and they were just about to come out with the Helix… it was perfect.”

McLawhorn: “I was using a baritone PRS SE. I changed the pickups out, but that’s it – I love the guitar and how it plays. I tried a few different sets, most by Seymour Duncan. One of my seven-strings has a Seymour that my tech put in on the road and I don’t know which one it is! He just found it in my guitar coffin and asked if we should throw it in. It stayed for the rest of the tour – it was probably a JB, who knows!

“But the one on the record is the Distortion (SH-6). I really like how they sound. At first, they were a little hot for what I like – I tend to prefer somewhere in between modern metal and classic rock. It felt like really high gain, way too much, especially when switching from my other guitars. But he really lowered the pickup down and that fixed everything, making everything super-tight and adding some nice mids.”

Use My Voice has a really powerful message behind it…

Majura: “Yes! Another thing that connects me and Amy very strongly is that we both went through moments in our careers where males would tell us, ‘You’re just a girl – what do you know?’ It’s time for strong women – in rock or wherever – to stand up and say being good at a craft has nothing to do with gender. It’s been happening for way too long.

“That feeling of our voices being suppressed needs to change, because every voice matters. We’re all the same. It does not matter if you are male or female or transgender… humans are humans. I think we should spend more time understanding why we’re the same. Use My Voice is an important message for women to stand up and be heard.”

Where do you think your influences differ as guitar players?

Majura: “The first guitar hero I had at around 10 or 11 was Steve Vai. He was so revolutionary in terms of what he’s done for the guitar world, both sound-wise and crafts-wise. Electric guitar wouldn’t be what it is today without Steve Vai.

“I respect him so much for how he feels and talks through his instrument. He’s influenced my thinking about a lot of things. He’s an amazing person, not just an amazing musician.

“Then I got into Nuno Bettencourt, who plays for the sake of the song instead of showing off. Which is what I tried to do on my first solo album, Inzenity, everyone expected a shred album and it wasn’t. I played for the song. If it didn’t require a guitar solo then fine, I’d just leave it. I didn’t need to prove to the world how good I was.

“Nuno also has the percussive style of playing, which brings this tone that I really like. And finally, Angus Young. I’ve been playing in an AC/DC tribute band for four years and I love his playing.”

McLawhorn: “A lot of them for me were the classic players while I was growing up. So Ace Frehley for sure… KISS were like Slipknot for us who grew up in the '70s [laughs]! Then there’s Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. Tony Iommi as well, he was a massive influence on me as a kid.

“Eddie Van Halen was a huge influence on me, too – it was very sad that we lost him so early and so young. When Van Halen came out, I started taking guitar very seriously. The bluesy side of his playing always appealed to me but he also had all that technical prowess, too. A very inspiring guitar player for so many people.”

What advice can you offer anyone out there hoping to become a good session player?

McLawhorn: “You need to know how to communicate with people. I’ve done sessions with some Nashville guys that have this shorthand way of writing music. Reading music and knowing theory is always important… I wish I knew more myself.

“It puts you at ease walking into a session knowing you read and play anything back. I can’t really do that – I just really really listen and learn things by memory. I can read some music but that’s going back to trumpet at high school [laughs]. So I rely on communication always!”

Majura: “I think guitar players need to be honest. Use your voice. Be real. Be pure. We don’t need fake, we need humanity and real people. What I love about people like Mattias IA Eklundh is he’s just himself. He’s pure and innovative in a really interesting way.

“I’ve gotten to know guys like him, Guthrie Govan, Richie Kotzen and Jeff Waters – they’re all awesome and very honest players. I think one should never think one has seen it all and learned it all.

“We need to keep in mind we’re all on a journey in search of becoming better. In terms of advice, I always have to say being open to different styles is so important. There’s something to learn every day. You should never stop trying to improve to make the world a better place. You should never stop learning… that’s what makes you human.”

[reel-em-in]

Pre-Production:

I feel that the pre-production for Coming Out Country went really well. We researched a few different things in relation to country music, but there was a big focus on the stereotypes held about the genre and those who listen to it, wether country always had ties to conservatism and right-leaning ideals, and examples of country artists that are/were more progressive or queer themselves. I also created a survey during pre-production which I posted in some groups online, as well as sending to people that I know. This was to find out a surface level view of the demographics of people who consider themselves fans of country music and wether these fans feel they had been treated unfairly within the country music fan base due to their identity. It also had a section for people who did not consider themselves fans of the genre, and instead they were asked what their feelings were towards country, if they disliked the genre they could tell me why, and what there stereotypes were about country music fans. This was interesting as something I noticed was that many of the stereotypes had their origins in classism (many felt that country fans were less educated and less progressive and suggested that this was due to their rural/less well-off upbringing).

We also conducted some zoom interviews during pre-production. With the group formulating questions to ask me. This allowed us to get an idea about the sorts of things I would be able to talk about in the film, and what was of interest to the group. This was very useful as country music is a special interest of mine so I would find anything about the topic to be interesting, whereas I understand that to the general populace it probably wouldn’t be that interesting. These interviews fed into the questions that would later be asked during the interviews during production.

I also spent a lot of time collecting the archive photographs. I managed to get a large selection of possible photos, whilst also learning that we have more photographs of agricultural machinery in the house than of me as a child. An amusing fact.

Production:

I feel that for the most part the production of our documentary was successful, though there are definitely a couple of things that I would improve upon.

Production began with me getting the b-roll footage of me working on the farm. This footage worked well within our documentary, though it is also something that I would have done differently had we not been in a pandemic. In a perfect world I would have liked to have had the group (or at least Luke as our DoP) come to the farm and film the b-roll footage properly with a camera. Though due to travel restrictions this was not possible. I had also left my camera in Edinburgh as I was not anticipating being home for so long. This meant that I had to film the b-roll footage on my phone, and ask my mum to be my camerawoman. Telling her what footage I needed, and then getting her to point and shoot. She now knows all about the rule of thirds!

Once I was back in Edinburgh, Luke and I shot the rest of the footage. We spent a few days in my flat filming the interviews as well as some of the songwriting process, and eventually the song. I think this worked really well as due to Luke being a friend of mine I felt much more able to open up in the interviews than I would have if someone I didn’t know that well had been the one asking questions. This meant that our doc took a much more personal direction than it was originally going to.

A lot of the song writing process was also filmed, though much of it wasn’t as it was a long process. I am pleased with the final song, though it was definitely difficult to write. Now that I have proved to myself that I can do it, I plan on writing more of my own music though.

We also recorded the song during this time, something that I think was really well done! I would have liked to record the song in a studio, but unfortunately to to time constraints and Covid restrictions this was not possible. With that being said I think the recording is of a really good quality for being recorded in my room, with sound equipment that Luke had access to.

Post Production:

The post production was also mostly successful, though once again there are a couple of improvements that could be made.

Beth began the editing process, putting together the first cut before I joined her for the rest of the editing process. I spent several days with Beth working on the edit, creating the narrative of the film from things that had been discussed in the interview. This was a difficult process as we had so much footage from the interviews with so many interesting points that deciding was to keep in the film and what to discard was a bit of a nightmare. I feel like what made it into the final cut worked really well though. We were working under more time constraints than initially planned due to other projects we were working on simultaneously, but each day we would send our cut to Sana and Leo for feedback, and act upon that feedback the next day.

One thing I would have done differently though is to have included the sound from the interviews underneath the archive photographs, as the lack of dialogue did impact the flow of the film. I don’t think this was too much of a problem, but having dialogue there would have definitely improved the final film.

Once we had picture lock, we sent everything off to Jess for the sound design. This was also done with more time constraints than we would have liked, but I feel that it was mostly successful. I think that the levels of the mix were great for the most part, and the different audio clips blended into one another nicely. Without any noticeable or jarring cuts. Though Leo mentioned that the water sounds over the archive photograph of me sitting by a pond was somewhat jarring. If we were to revisit the sound design I think that this could be fixed by either bringing it lower in the mix, or by adding similar linking sound effects to the other archive photographs. Or perhaps a mixture of both.

The final step of the post production process was to send it to Luke for colour grading, and for Luke and I to add the titles. The colour grading was really well done, and made the film link together much more than in our non-graded cut. The titles and credits were inspired by westerns, something that I think worked well within our film both through its thematic links to country as well as through the fun and quirky atmosphere it created. We also chose to have the credits appear in time with the final part of the song, and be in the colours of the trans pride flag.

A couple of other things I would have changed during post-production I should have done during this final step. The first is that I would have liked to have added subtitles to the song, as the lyrics draw on a lot of the topics discussed during the film. The use of subtitles would have been a great way to draw attention to this. The second thing I would change is the way that I am credited. I realised after submitting the film that at no point do we introduce the character that is the focus, for all the viewer knows this is just some dude with green hair and no name. Even if I didn’t include a name or anything earlier in the film, it would have been a good idea to have clarity given in the credits by perhaps saying ‘starring and directed by’ or something similar.

Overall:

Overall I feel that Coming Out Country was a success, both in terms of the final film, and the fun that we had making it. It is also a project that I plan to improve by acting on feedback from the crit, as I want to make sure it is as good as it can be and can be added to my portfolio.

Feedback From the Crit:

I know that some of this was covered in the rest of this post, but I have included it anyway :)

Sana:

What Worked Well:

The hand held footage on the farm

The structure

That it took a more personal route than originally intended

What Could Be Improved:

The cutting back and forth between interview, archive, and b-roll didn’t work as well. It would have been nice to remain with the b-roll for longer

It would have been good if my grandfather had been reintroduced into the narrative again, later in the film

The archive photographs could have been used more effectively. Some of them feel as though they were added a bit randomly

Leo:

“This is a really enjoyable film for people who know Tom, and don’t know much about country music. If you touch up the edit a bit it can also be a really enjoyable film for people who don’t know Tom, but enjoy country music.”

What Worked Well:

Fun to watch and listen to

Luke was included as a character (both visually and through audio), but he did not feel overbearing. The choice to not include his face even when he was on screen playing guitar was well made.

The titles

The song was well written and recorded

What Could Be Improved:

Dialogue should have ran under the archive photographs

The water sounds were a bit jarring

The narrative ‘sections’ could have been made to intertwine more, rather than being in distinct blocks

The Class:

What Worked Well:

It was fun to watch

It represented who I was well (it’s just a shame if people didn’t already know me they wouldn’t have known who the person represented was).

What Could Be Improved:

Could have played more on the juxtaposition between the country stereotype of right wing ideologies and my identity

It could have been interesting to have my trans identity act as more of a reveal

[stevishabitat]

The summer wasn’t meant to be like this. By April, Greene County, in southwestern Missouri, seemed to be past the worst of the pandemic. Intensive-care units that once overflowed had emptied. Vaccinations were rising. Health-care workers who had been fighting the coronavirus for months felt relieved—perhaps even hopeful. Then, in late May, cases started ticking up again. By July, the surge was so pronounced that “it took the wind out of everyone,” Erik Frederick, the chief administrative officer of Mercy Hospital Springfield, told me. “How did we end up back here again?”

The hospital is now busier than at any previous point during the pandemic. In just five weeks, it took in as many COVID-19 patients as it did over five months last year. Ten minutes away, another big hospital, Cox Medical Center South, has been inundated just as quickly. “We only get beds available when someone dies, which happens several times a day,” Terrence Coulter, the critical-care medical director at CoxHealth, told me.

Last week, Katie Towns, the acting director of the Springfield–Greene County Health Department, was concerned that the county’s daily cases were topping 250. On Wednesday, the daily count hit 405. This dramatic surge is the work of the super-contagious Delta variant, which now accounts for 95 percent of Greene County’s new cases, according to Towns. It is spreading easily because people have ditched their masks, crowded into indoor spaces, resumed travel, and resisted vaccinations. Just 40 percent of people in Greene County are fully vaccinated. In some nearby counties, less than 20 percent of people are.

Many experts have argued that, even with Delta, the United States is unlikely to revisit the horrors of last winter. Even now, the country’s hospitalizations are one-seventh as high as they were in mid-January. But national optimism glosses over local reality. For many communities, this year will be worse than last. Springfield’s health-care workers and public-health specialists are experiencing the same ordeals they thought they had left behind. “But it feels worse this time because we’ve seen it before,” Amelia Montgomery, a nurse at CoxHealth, told me. “Walking back into the COVID ICU was demoralizing.”

Those ICUs are also filling with younger patients, in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, including many with no underlying health problems. In part, that’s because elderly people have been more likely to get vaccinated, leaving Delta with a younger pool of vulnerable hosts. While experts are still uncertain if Delta is deadlier than the original coronavirus, every physician and nurse in Missouri whom I spoke with told me that the 30- and 40-something COVID-19 patients they’re now seeing are much sicker than those they saw last year. “That age group did get COVID before, but they didn’t usually end up in the ICU like they are now,” Jonathan Brown, a respiratory therapist at Mercy, told me. Nurses are watching families navigate end-of-life decisions for young people who have no advance directives or other legal documents in place.

Almost every COVID-19 patient in Springfield’s hospitals is unvaccinated, and the dozen or so exceptions are all either elderly or immunocompromised people. The vaccines are working as intended, but the number of people who have refused to get their shots is crushing morale. Vaccines were meant to be the end of the pandemic. If people don’t get them, the actual end will look more like Springfield’s present: a succession of COVID-19 waves that will break unevenly across the country until everyone has either been vaccinated or infected. “You hear post-pandemic a lot,” Frederick said. “We’re clearly not post-pandemic. New York threw a ticker-tape parade for its health-care heroes, and ours are knee-deep in COVID.”

That they are in this position despite the wide availability of vaccines turns difficult days into unbearable ones. As bad as the winter surge was, Springfield’s health-care workers shared a common purpose of serving their community, Steve Edwards, the president and CEO of CoxHealth, told me. But now they’re “putting themselves in harm’s way for people who’ve chosen not to protect themselves,” he said. While there were always ways of preventing COVID-19 infections, Missourians could have almost entirely prevented this surge through vaccination—but didn’t. “My sense of hope is dwindling,” Tracy Hill, a nurse at Mercy, told me. “I’m losing a little bit of faith in mankind. But you can’t just not go to work.”

When Springfield’s hospitals saw the first pandemic wave hitting the coasts, they could steel themselves. This time, with Delta thrashing Missouri fast and first, they haven’t had time to summon sufficient reinforcements. Between them, Mercy and Cox South have recruited about 300 traveling nurses, respiratory therapists, and other specialists, which is still less than they need. The hospitals’ health-care workers have adequate PPE and most are vaccinated. But in the ICUs and in COVID-19 wards, respiratory therapists still must constantly adjust ventilators, entire teams must regularly flip patients onto their belly and back again, and nurses spend long shifts drenched in sweat as they repeatedly don and doff protective gear. In previous phases of the pandemic, both hospitals took in patients from other counties and states. “Now we’re blasting outward,” Coulter said. “We’re already saturating the surrounding hospitals.”

Meanwhile, the hospitals’ own staff members are exhausted beyond telling. After the winter surge, they spent months catching up on record numbers of postponed surgeries and other procedures. Now they’re facing their sharpest COVID-19 surge yet on top of those backlogged patients, many of whom are sicker than usual because their health care had to be deferred. Even with hundreds of new patients with lung cancer, asthma, and other respiratory diseases waiting for care in outpatient settings, Coulter still has to cancel his clinics because “I have to be in the hospital all the time,” he said.

Many health-care workers have had enough. Some who took on extra shifts during past surges can’t bring themselves to do so again. Some have moved to less stressful positions that don’t involve treating COVID-19. Others are holding the line, but only just. “You can’t pour from an empty cup, but with every shift it feels like my co-workers and I are empty,” Montgomery said. “We are still trying to fill each other up and keep going.”

The grueling slog is harder now because it feels so needless, and because many patients don’t realize their mistake until it’s too late. On Tuesday, Hill spoke with an elderly man who had just been admitted and was very sick. “He said, ‘I’m embarrassed that I’m here,’” she told me. “He wanted to talk about the vaccine, and in the back of my mind I’m thinking, You have a very high likelihood of not leaving the hospital.” Other patients remain defiant. “We had someone spit in a nurse’s eye because she told him he had COVID and he didn’t believe her,” Edwards said.

Some health-care workers are starting to resent their patients—an emotion that feels taboo. “You’re just angry,” Coulter said, “and you feel guilty for getting angry, because they’re sick and dying.” Others are indignant on behalf of loved ones who don’t already have access to the vaccines. “I’m a mom of a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old, and the daughter of family members in Zimbabwe and South Africa who can’t get vaccinated yet,” says Matifadza Hlatshwayo Davis, who works at a Veterans Affairs hospital in St. Louis. “I’m frustrated, angry, and sad.”

“I don’t think people get that once you become sick enough to be hospitalized with COVID, the medications and treatments that we have are, quite frankly, not very good,” says Howard Jarvis, the medical director of Cox South’s emergency department. Drugs such as dexamethasone offer only incremental benefits. Monoclonal antibodies are effective only during the disease’s earliest stages. Doctors can give every recommended medication, and patients still have a high chance of dying. The goal should be to stop people from getting sick in the first place.

But Missouri Governor Mike Parson never issued a statewide mask mandate, and the state’s biggest cities—Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, and Columbia—ended their local orders in May, after the CDC said that vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks indoors. In June, Parson signed a law that limits local governments’ ability to enact public-health restrictions. And even before the pandemic, Missouri ranked 41st out of all the states in terms of public-health funding. “We started in a hole and we’re trying to catch up,” Towns, the director of the Springfield–Greene County Health Department, told me.

Her team flattened last year’s curve through testing, contact tracing, and quarantining, but “Delta has just decimated our ability to respond,” Kendra Findley, the department’s administrator for community health and epidemiology, told me. The variant is spreading too quickly for the department to keep up with every new case, and more people are refusing to cooperate with contact tracers than at this time last year. The CDC has sent a “surge team” to help, but it’s just two people: an epidemiologist, who is helping analyze data on Delta’s spread, and a communications person. And like Springfield’s hospitals, the health department was already overwhelmed with work that had been put off for a year. “Suddenly, I feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day,” Findley said.

Early last year, Findley stuck a note on her whiteboard with the number of people who died in the 1918 flu pandemic: 50 million worldwide and 675,000 in the U.S. “It was for perspective: We will not get here. You can manage this,” she told me. “I looked at it the other day and I think we’re going to get there. And I feel like a large segment of the population doesn’t care.”

The 1918 flu pandemic took Missouri by surprise too, says Carolyn Orbann, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri who studies that disaster. While much of the world felt the brunt of the pandemic in October 1918, Missouri had irregular waves with a bigger peak in February 1920. So when COVID-19 hit, Orbann predicted that the state might have a similarly drawn-out experience. Missouri has a widely dispersed population, divided starkly between urban and rural places, and few highways—a recipe for distinct and geographically disparate microcultures. That perhaps explains why new pathogens move erratically through the state, creating unpredictable surges and, in some pockets, a false sense of security. Last year, “many communities may have gone through their lockdown period without registering a single case and wondered, What did we do that for?” Orbann told me.

She also suspects that Missourians in 1918 might have had a “better overhead view of the course of the pandemic in their communities than the average citizen has now.” Back then, the state’s local papers published lists of people who were sick, so even those who didn’t know anyone with the flu could see that folks around them were dying. “It made the pandemic seem more local,” Orbann said. “Now, with fewer hometown newspapers and restrictions on sharing patient information, that kind of knowledge is restricted to people working in health care.”

Montgomery, the CoxHealth nurse, feels that disparity whenever she leaves the hospital. “I work in the ICU, where it’s like a war zone, and I go out in public and everything’s normal,” she said. “You see death and suffering, and then you walk into the grocery store and get resistance. It feels like we’re being ostracized by our community.”

If anything, people in the state have become more entrenched in their beliefs and disbeliefs than they were last year, Davis, the St. Louis–based doctor, told me. They might believe that COVID-19 has been overblown, that young people won’t be harmed, or that the vaccines were developed too quickly to be safe. But above all else, “what I predominantly get is, ‘I don’t want to talk to you about that; let’s move on,’” Davis said.

People take the pandemic seriously when they can see it around them. During past surges in other parts of the U.S., curves flattened once people saw their loved ones falling ill, or once their community became the unwanted focus of national media coverage. The same feedback loop might be starting to occur in Missouri. The major Route 66 Festival has been canceled. More people are making vaccine appointments at both Cox South and Mercy.

In Springfield, the public-health professionals I talked with felt that they had made successful efforts to address barriers to vaccine access, and that vaccine hesitancy was the driving force of low vaccination rates. Improving those rates is now a matter of engendering trust as quickly as possible. Springfield’s firefighters are highly trusted, so the city set up vaccine clinics in local fire stations. Community-health advocates are going door-to-door to talk with their neighbors about vaccines. The Springfield News-Leader is set to publish a full page of photos of well-known Springfieldians who are advocating for vaccination. Several local pastors have agreed to preach about vaccines from their pulpits and set up vaccination events in their churches. One such event, held at James River Church on Monday, vaccinated 156 people. “Once we got down to the group of hesitant people, we’d be happy if we had 20 people show up to a clinic,” says Cora Scott, Springfield’s director of public information and civic engagement. “To have 156 people show up in one church in one day is phenomenal.”

But building trust is slow, and Delta is moving fast. Even if the still-unvaccinated 55 percent of Missourians all got their first shots tomorrow, it would still take a month to administer the second ones, and two weeks more for full immunity to develop. As current trends show, Delta can do a lot in six weeks. Still, “if we can get our vaccination levels to where some of the East Coast states have got to, I’ll feel a lot better going into the fall,” Frederick, Mercy’s chief administrative officer, said. “If we plateau again, my fear is that we will see the twindemic of flu and COVID.”

In the meantime, southwest Missouri is now a cautionary tale of what Delta can do to a largely unvaccinated community that has lowered its guard. None of Missouri’s 114 counties has vaccinated more than 50 percent of its population, and 75 haven’t yet managed more than 30 percent. Many such communities exist around the U.S. “There’s very few secrets about this disease, because the answer is always somewhere else,” Edwards said. “I think we’re a harbinger of what other states can expect.”

[cvid19]

COVID 19 PANDEMIC

COVID-19 Effects on the Philippines

    According to Pharmaceutical Technology Philippine is one of the high-risk countries from the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. The first case of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV, now COVID-19) in the Philippines was confirmed on 30 January 2020, in a 38-year old woman who arrived from Wuhan. Two days later, the Philippines recorded the first death outside China on 01 February 2020.

    The Philippines government declared a health emergency on 09 March, following a spike in new confirmed cases and local transmission. The COVID-19 Code Alert system was revised upwards to Red Sublevel 2 on 12 March.

    The Philippines government announced the entire country will be placed under a state of calamity for a period of six months. The declaration will enable national and local governments to quickly access relief funds to curb the spread of the disease.

    They started announcing local lock-downs (home quarantine) following the increase in global coronavirus cases. The entire Luzon island is locked-down affecting more than 50 million people. The lock-down prohibits people from going outside their homes except for getting basic necessities.

    Quarantining (lock-down) will be imposed in the Philippines barangays, municipalities/cities and provinces if at least two COVID-19 coronavirus cases are recorded in two different households in the respective locations.

https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/coronavirus-affected-countries-philippines-measures-impact-tourism-economy/

Economy

    Covid-19 make a lot of difference on the economy of the country. Philippines witnessed a slower economic growth in the first half of 2019, compared to 2018. The country saw a sustained economic growth of 6.3% between 2010 and 2018, while the growth slowed down to 5.5% in H2 2019. The World Bank estimates Philippines to witness full-year 2019 economic growth of 5.8%.

    The Central Bank of the Philippines (BSP) noted that the coronavirus outbreak could have a major impact on Philippine economy over the next few months.

    Ruben Carlo Asuncion, chief economist for Union Bank of the Philippines, noted that the coronavirus outbreak could cost the Philippine economy $600m or 0.8% of economic growth if it lasts for six months, as quoted by CNN Philippines.

    A series of unforeseen events caused an abrupt halt to the Philippines' strong growth momentum in early 2020. The Philippine economy carried its strong growth momentum from the second half of 2019 into early 2020 thanks to positive consumer confidence, robust macroeconomic fundamentals, and an improvement in the external sector. However, the eruption of Taal Volcano in early January, the spread of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in the region, and the rise of COVID-19 infection cases in the Philippines in March, forced the economy to a near halt in the latter part of March due to severe disruptions in manufacturing, agriculture, tourism and hospitality, construction, and trade. The economy contracted by 0.2 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2020, the first contraction in over two decades, and was a sharp reversal from the 5.7 percent growth over the same period in 2019. Leading indicators that track economic activity in real time suggest that the contraction would be even more severe in the second quarter as most regions of the country entered an enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in mid-March.

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/33879

Tourism

      PWC Philippines indicated that given the travel restrictions and closure of businesses, 88% of the respondents expect losses of over 50% of their 2020 revenues. Sixty-three percent of the respondents also say that they expect their businesses to normalize within six months to over a year. Such findings are worrying because the tourism industry contributed 12.7% of the country’s GDP in 2019, and provided 5.71 million jobs in the same year.

    Tourism industry is a major contributor, accounting for 12.7% of the Philippine economy in 2018, according to data from the Philippines Statistics Authority. More than seven million foreign tourists visited the country during the first ten months of 2019.

    Globally, the World Travel and Tourism council estimated that it could take up to ten months for the industry to recover.

    Nine months since the virus was first detected in China, there is still no sign that the spread is slowing down. The road to recovery can take longer than initially anticipated. Fitch forecasts that tourist arrivals and tourism receipts will not go back to pre-COVID levels even five years hence.

    The tourism industry, however, is expected to witness a major impact as the country closed its borders with China and other countries due to the coronavirus infection, Philippine Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez noted. Dominguez added that the exact economic impact of the outbreak is too early to be estimated but remained optimistic that the country can sustain its economic growth.

https://www.pwc.com/ph/en/publications/tourism-pwc-philippines/tourism-covid-19.html

Business

   Drawing on a survey of more than 5,800 small businesses, this paper provides insight into the economic impact of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) on small businesses. The results shed light on both the financial fragility of many small businesses, and the significant impact COVID-19 had on these businesses in the weeks after the COVID-19–related disruptions began. The results also provide evidence on businesses’ expectations about the longer-term impact of COVID-19, as well as their perceptions of relief programs offered by the government.

    Firms in the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region have been hit hard by the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, with dramatic and widespread falls in sales and employment. Firm sales in some EAP countries were 38 to 58 percent lower in April or May 2020, compared to the same month in the previous year. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been particularly affected.

    The pandemic will have a lasting impact on productivity growth as firm indebtedness and increased uncertainty inhibit investment, and firm closures and unemployment lead to a loss of valuable intangible assets. Support for firms is needed but must be based as far as possible on objective criteria, related not only to past performance or current pain but to the potential for firms, including new firms, to thrive in the future. To avoid unduly prolonging assistance, governments should build exit strategies into the design of support measures and commit to phasing support out by linking it to observable macroeconomic indicators of recovery.

https://www.pnas.org/content/117/30/17656

Lesson that We’ve learn during this Pandemic

"Not only does self-care have positive outcomes for you, but it also sets an example to younger generations as something to establish and maintain for your entire life."

CREDITS TO AARP ORG

    -This pandemic thought us to become stronger or having a courage in time of crisis. We must always be on a positive side that we will strive and cope this challenges that we are facing  because as the years will pass by this pandemic will be a reminder or a lesson that we must thought the next generation that no matter what happens as long as you will not give up and fight for everything that will come up you can reach your goal and strive. This also thought as about caring for others and working as one because once achievement will be more greater if there are people that help you to do great things just like our front liners we must learn how to cooperate by following the protocols that they give because if its not for them we will have more harder times that we even face before and we wont know what are we going to do.

 Ø  As a reminder if your experiencing the signs and effects of COVID-19 do not think of it that much just think on a positive way to feel better again. Positive mind could be a great help to cope anything that bother you even if it’s a deadly virus. We all know that we are all facing in the same situation but I believe that we can do it, we can wipe out this virus in this world for ones. Just follow the protocols that we are given and I know that we will all be better and we can do all the things that we’ve missed when the time comes.

[theschizoidblog]

Loneliness and Solitude

Blog 2: 14/06/2020

After nearly a month, I’ve returned with another blog post.

I’ve had a few interesting therapy sessions in the meanwhile. It turns out I’ve also got severe depression along with my schizoid personality disorder. Next session we’re starting with EMDR – which is eh… something I don’t fully understand myself - yet. I’ll gladly talk more about it once I have a better idea of what it actually does. It sounds a little bit like hypnosis, but not fully, and it would probably be considered an insult to the practitioner to label it as hypnosis. I might write about it in an upcoming blog post.

But for today, I’d prefer to stick to a topic I understand better. Solitude. Loneliness. The two are not the same for many schizoids.

The shortest way in which I can put it, is to say that many schizoids don’t experience loneliness when they’re alone. But they might feel it when they’re in a group.

Let me elaborate.

The definition of Loneliness according to Google, might already offer some insight:

Loneliness; sadness because one has no friends or company.

You often hear loneliness described in old people. They’re in a home, they get no visitors, and they are lonely. Or people who lose their partners then die of loneliness because suddenly they are physically alone and cannot bear it. They ache in the absence of others.

For the majority of people, being the only person in a house could trigger feelings of loneliness. With covid-19, many people that were in lockdown also felt terribly alone because they could not see their colleagues or visit random friends whenever they wanted to. They complained about the loneliness and lost productivity and some parts of their sanity as a result.

During the lockdown, I felt better than I had in a very long time. Not seeing friends or family gave me an energy boost. Then the lockdown restrictions were slowly lifted, I got to visit family again, got to see colleagues again, and the energy boost is gone again.

My brain is perfectly content being alone for weeks in a row. I do not experience loneliness when I’m at home. I do not cry myself to sleep at night because I feel lonely. I do not long for companionship or make plans to invite friends the moment I can – far from it. I didn’t do that before Corona so why would I do it now?

Yet the concept of loneliness is not alien to me, nor is the feeling.

I have felt overwhelmingly lonely at festivals and parties, in the midst of both strangers and friends. And if the definition is “sadness because one has no friends or company”, it is not fully true. Because at parties we might be among our friends. But maybe we can’t talk to them. Maybe the music is too loud. Maybe they’re distracted by other things and you’re just a wallflower that doesn’t get any attention in that moment. Maybe they’re drinking or doing dumb stuff you can’t relate to. Maybe you’re questioning why they are even your friends in the first place. Maybe they aren’t doing anything wrong at all but you still feel like the odd one out.

Even that can be the moment we feel like we are without company, even if the company is standing 3 feet away.

Maybe whatever makes people feel connected to others, isn’t working 100% the way it works for other people in us schizoids.

Where does it come from?

Why do we enjoy solitude? Why don’t we feel lonely?

I can only make an educated guess that our childhood trauma and probable emotional neglect have taught us to rely on ourselves from a terribly young age.

If you look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, you see that Psychological needs, in the middle of his pyramid, are described as “Belongingness and love” – but I don’t think we are very likely to reach that stage. We are stuck at the bottom two layers of the pyramid. Maybe our physiological needs and safety needs are met, but that’s only the case for us privileged schizoids who have a place to live. In the homeless population in New York, they discovered there were way more schizoids than is the norm. To those people, even the bottom of the pyramid isn’t met.

But even the privileged schizoids like you and me, who are able to read this blogpost, probably will have trouble feeling like their psychological needs can be met or are being met. Or maybe you can “think” they are being met, as in “I have family and friends”, but you don’t feel it. As in: you don’t feel the love or intimacy that comes with those relationships. You cognitively know it’s there and you can acknowledge it, but feeling their love is harder, as is feeling your own love for them.

If you have feelings of love, they’re likely to be hidden so deeply within yourself you don’t feel it at all.

In a way, we are “the walking dead” – sure, we’re still walking around and we’re not completely falling apart, but what are we truly feeling anyway? Don’t ask us, we’re not sure if we’re not feeling anything at all or if we’re burying it deep inside. (And then usually it erupts in bursts of anger or incessant tears of sadness.)

As a result, I think we don’t experience loneliness a lot because we’re cut off from our own emotions most of the times anyway. And being alone is one of the only comforts we have in a cold and uncaring world. To us, it’s great. It’s safe. It’s secure. And we like feeling safe and secure.

Stopping traditions

I used to love going to a pagan festival in the Netherlands. It was a rather quiet festival, with nice food and people who were dressed up and not giving a fuck about anything, and there was nice (not too loud) music and it was a welcoming place to all. I travelled there once a year, for about ten years in a row, and had some friends at the festival who I only saw on Facebook during the other months, and I would listen to bands, browse the stalls, even sometimes dance and eat so much of the good food there.

I knew a lot of people there. Not intimately, but enough to know their names and recognize their faces and know which ones were fans of which bands and music. Enough to have a stop and chat when I saw them.

But the final time I went, I wasn’t in a great mindset in the first place, and I went there and I tried to look for some of the people I knew, but I saw none, just strangers. The festival had been growing exponentially and with the influx of visitors and the commercialization of the event also came the side effect that many old folks no longer went – and that it was harder to find those who did in the crowd. Even the bands had changed.

I couldn’t find a friend (and she was also not really into meeting me first thing in the morning, she was content bumping into me later in the afternoon), and I was sulking and feeling like an alien in a place that I had considered home for so many years. Suddenly I felt like the stranger and the outcast, and I was not in the mood to mingle with new folks. There were too many, it was too loud, the crowd was too much. (And yes, I’m aware it was probably a mild anxiety attack that was making that feeling worse.)

I did see some friends later on and spoke to them, but it all felt terribly hollow and I stopped going afterwards. I did feel very lonely that weekend, even among my friends and acquaintances of the event, and I just wanted to go home and never return.

That event was like Christmas to me, something I looked forward to all year, but I just felt like “Fuck it, I don’t care if it’s tradition, I don’t want to do this ever again, it’s not worth it.” I haven’t gone in years now. I wouldn’t go again now, I don’t think it’s gotten better.

At family gatherings I might also look at the people there like I’m the alien looking in, and feel like I have no one to talk to or connect to. I feel like I’m constantly engaging in conversations on other people’s terms, about their topics of interest, not about mine, and I’m listening to them, but they’re not listening to me. They might ask me questions, but only about things I don’t want to talk to them about. Everything feels cringe. It’s terribly lonely when you feel like you’re speaking a language no one understands or is interested in learning, and when you’re expected to respond to people on command, like a dog forced to do tricks no one is even giving him a reward for.

So naturally, I have also stopped attending family gatherings. No one there is like me, it’s draining, and I gain absolutely nothing from it, except the feeling of loneliness among your own kin. It’s not a charming feeling.

Then what’s left?

I can enjoy crowds at conventions, since these people usually skip small talk and would prefer talking about geeky stuff that I enjoy as well, so I hardly ever feel lonely there. Some of the folks there have interesting brains to pick and there are usually activities (watching Q&A panels or gaming) that you can do alone.

I do not feel lonely among my colleagues on the work floor. I like it there. I like my colleagues. I can even go for a drink with them sometimes. However, I would not enjoy going to a party with them, where there are strangers. Then suddenly I’d feel like the alien again and I’d just want to go home. (Mind you, at first I was just neutral about being there and it took years to develop into a like.) (But now with covid-19 I don’t mind if I don’t have to see them until 2021 when a vaccine is found.)

Put a schizoid in a house alone, and we enjoy our own company. There won’t be feelings of loneliness there, but put us in a crowd, and you’re more likely to cause sadness in our hearts because we feel out of place and out of touch.

And many schizoids don’t even want to belong to particular crowds of people. It’s not a direct wish to be included in the particular group we are beholding. Take any group you can think of, we might see them and think “hell no I don’t want to be a part of that” and simultaneously think “they do seem happy though, I wish I could be as content”. But faking it is draining, and not rewarding at all with the wrong crowd of people, so you won’t see us try to mingle in such cases. (And practically everyone is “the wrong crowd of people” – we aren’t generally very trusting of strangers.)

The idea of a group of like-minded people that you can trust and have fun with, who really see you as you are, is alluring though. But most of us have given up on dreaming such groups exist for us. Some schizoids might have hope that they will encounter such groups to belong to, but have to be content with just being allowed to “exist” as part of a group. I don’t think it will be easy to feel full elation or full grief along the other members in the group, and thus we might feel a need to fake it or to just blend in. In doing so, we are, perhaps only subconsciously, also reminding ourselves we were never truly part of the group in the first place, since we do not fully fit into the collective. And thus our souls will feel alienated even more.

True connection with other people is rare.

I’d like to believe it’s not impossible though. There are schizoids who have found love and have long-term partners. So I’d like to believe there is still a possibility for true connection out there. We can be fiercely loyal to those who we deem worthy, but we can also be easily hurt if that person decides to break our trust.

I think those schizoids that don’t struggle with loneliness are also the ones that have accepted that love and connection is probably not going to work out for them in the long run. Why hope for an impossible dream when it’s more comfortable to just enjoy your own company and try to be content with that?

I won’t make a declaration on whether it is healthy or not to think that way. That’s up to a psychologist to decide.

But in my opinion, being able to be alone is an undervalued skill in modern day society. Especially in these covid-19 times when you see people go nuts when they can’t be alone for a day. So don’t let anyone make you feel bad for being different in that way, and for enjoying solitude.

Maybe we have this skill because we have been broken before, but the skill of comfortable solitude in itself is an asset, not a curse. And even when we are ‘fixed’ by therapy, it is still a skill we can rely on for the rest of our lives.

And as a final note to today’s blog post, allow me to add a very cheesy song as a recommendation in the same theme. From the soundtrack of the Phantom of the Opera movie, Learn to be Lonely, or as someone in the comment section on youtube said: “Ah, the anthem of the emotionally neglected child.”

[anjreyes]

From Full-time Employee to Freelancing Virtual Assistant

Once was a Freelancing Skeptic

now a Freelance Virtual Assistant

When COVID-19 Pandemic happened it reveals all the uncertainties in life. This is when I realized more that nothing is really sure in this life; even a full-time, safe and secured job could not guarantee to support you forever. Back then when I was still at the hype of my full-time physical set-up job I considered freelancing as an unreliable and undependable source of income. It was 10 years ago when I used to question my friends who chose to work in a virtual set-up thinking that there is no firm future in this endeavor and this is not a “real” career.

Years past and in 2019 I worked with a single-mom who’s a bread winner to her family with a lot of side hustles and one of it is an online job. I was still skeptical about freelancing but silently admiring her determination to earn and to provide for her family. She also invited me but because of my skeptic mind I was not then ready and let the opportunity slide.

One after the other I was exposed to different friends, workmates and even churchmates who work online and hear their experiences.

“Time after time I slowly see the beauty and advantages of working from home. Time after time I was being convinced that freelancing is real. I now understand that this is a growing community that offers real life and freedom which is far way different than a physical work set-up..”

I appreciate the freelancing more and more when I was forced to work from home due to COVID-19. It was those moments that I can somehow relate to the feeling of a real online worker but still I am bound by the 8am-5pm working hours (and beyond) with close monitoring and no overtime pay. Yet, this is when my desire grows to be a freelancing virtual assistant that offers virtual services.

With earnest prayers and after seeking the Lord’s approval, I set my heart and my mind to engage with full dedication to my new found community. Thus, I enrolled myself to a freelancing training course through FVA Academy Business Consultancy to help me equip and grow. Now, I am about to finish the course and by faith I could be able to graduate with the gold certificate, Lord willing.

My 5 WHYs in Switching to

a Freelancing Virtual Assistant

1. To have More Time with the King and His kingdom

Cliché as it may sound but this has been my long desire since I committed my life to the Lord—to have more quality alone time with Him and more time serving His people. Without any cover ups, neither to recruit nor persuade my readers, I confess that I’m a born-again Christian, a firm believer, follower and servant of Christ Jesus. No, this is not to offend other groups of faith or to cause trouble but I just want to share my heart in this particular area.

I am not saying that my 8-5 physical set-up work hinder me to take time with God or to serve His people, but as for me personally I know can do more and better when I can take control of my time and not being pressured by the rush of going to the office day by day, wrestling the feeling of unscheduled overtime without pay; and having my quiet time with the Lord being sacrificed. By God’s grace, I made into practice that as I start my day He should be my first priority before I do anything else. I don’t like it when I start the day without talking to God first and without reading His word just because of my work. I know that God can totally understand whatever time I could spend with Him but this is my commitment to Him and I don’t want to give God my leftovers—leftover time, leftover strength.

In a working from home set up, I am at peace that I don’t need to rush my alone time with God and I can spend more quality time, anytime with God’s people without waiting to end the 8-5 and beyond office hours.

2. To Serve My Family

As a wife, desiring to be a mother and a homemaker, I wanted to fulfill this by having more time at home where I can serve my husband and praying to homeschool our future children while earning a reasonable income. I came from an “almost” broken family and I don’t want my own family to experience the same. Also, with freelancing I know I can have all my time and freedom to visit both of our family sides and have more opportunity to honor and serve them anytime I want; not needing to file an application for leave and wait for approval or wait for holidays to be permitted to travel.

3. To Spare Myself  from Office Politics

People-pleaser is tiring and exhausting especially when it goes with terrible work competition with unstable organization policies. It is very painful to experience that one cannot be promoted and can easily be demoted just because of personal issues from one of the known “high-valued” personalities in the office without proper basis. Office gossip and dramas are disturbing which can highly affect work performance and person’s life. Thus, I choose to work from home on my own where I can avoid toxic people who can ruin the day and assassinate people’s character.  

4. To be Free from Office Unreasonable Policies

Time is precious especially to those family-oriented people and I’m one of them. It is just so tiring and draining to be repeatedly being stolen by your time that is meant for your family or more valuable meetings just because of unannounced and unpaid overtime. And it is more tiring to hear when you heard somebody would say that it is not counted as overtime because you are being paid by your salary. Back off. In the freelancing world, according to Interaction Design Foundation, “If you’re working, you’re earning. You charge clients for work, and you don’t work unless you’re getting paid.”

Another unjust treatment-- unable to avail bonuses and other perks just because of unreasonable agency ruling and discrimination of job status while others are enjoying their 13th month pay, 14th month pay and other bonuses; and others are suffering in the long wait of their scanty salary.

Thus, I prayed to be blessed in this journey where all my efforts and time will be given proper justice.

5. To be Able to Do the Work I love and have the Potential to Grow

Being a freelance virtual assistant, I can have spare time to do the things I love and can make my knowledge about it grow. I love arts, I love plants and  handcrafted products. Now I can have time to avail online classes on how to improve my other skills and more time to express myself in an art which can help my mental health as well.

5 Things I Prepare in Transitioning

from 8-5 Employee to a Freelancer

1. Heart and Mind

This is not an overnight process and it definitely requires willingness to do hardwork. Leaving behind a “secure job” is always risky that is why I earnestly prayed this to God and asked His guidance because I won’t go without Him. I set my mind that once I started this journey I must have a full commitment or I only be wasting. I encountered a lot of tiring and discouraging moments but I chose to pursue my dream future with my family and remember my whys. I also watched videos and read articles about freelancing and being a virtual assistant to help me have a full heart and mind in joining this community.

2. Resources: Money for Training and Gadgets

Along with the heart and mind preparation, I face the reality that this entails money and that I have to invest for a training to make me effective. With the help of my supportive husband we find ways to fix my laptop problem. I acknowledged that these resources are necessary things to be able to achieve my goal of offering freelancing virtual assistant services.  

3. Enrol in a Reliable Company that Offers Freelancing Online Trainings

I am really thankful to God that I was able to discover the FVA Academy Business Consultancy through an advertisement in social media. One of the things convinced me to enroll in their academy is that they have this commitment to never let go of their students until having its first client. And indeed, the training is worth the pay and I could say that Coach Keren Cajes-Ame is one of their best and hands-on coaches. FVA Academy will surely help you expand your skill set.

4. Peaceful Corner to Work

It is not an immediate need but it is very important especially when having a virtual meeting with the client. Peaceful corner is being specified to be able to help me focus with what I am doing. Noisy and crowded places are usually destructive for me and can affect my work output.

5. Find a Sure and Long-term Clients before Leaving My 8-5 Job  

Be prudent in making decisions – a reminder to myself. I cannot gamble my family’s well being just because of my personal dreams without calculating the future result. That is why I enrolled at FVA Academy knowing that they are committed to help their student grow and find its client. But before taking the path of becoming a freelance virtual assistant, I said to myself that I have to secure first a number of sure and long-term clients before handing over my resignation to my 8-5 job.  

Quitting my 8-5 job may not sound right as I was thinking before, but considering the thought of having a break free from a toxic workplace and having more time to spend with my family is worth all the time I am taking to pursue this new career.

Recommended Sources to Prepare

If you are planning to pursue any online career path, as I repeatedly mentioned, I highly recommend FVA Academy Business Consultancy. You can be assured that you are not wasting your hard-earned money for nothing.

As a freelance virtual assistant, I am also offering affordable virtual assistant services. You may also check my portfolio to see my outputs. To know me more please see my resume and online profile. Please don't hesitate to contact me for more details or any queries. I am also willing to share the basic skills I learned.

To end this blog, allow me to share a few points I learned from my freelancing online course and related video I watched. Let me quote this line from the YouTube Channel The Girl and The Word that says “We are blessed to live this era where there isn’t a traditional career path in making a living”, therefore take advantage of every opportunity we have. Take your time and get all the foundations you needed. Don’t compare yourself with others because it is unnecessary to compare. Take your journey with the One [God] who knows everything and please only Him. Make the move when you are completely ready and fly high!

[botnation]

If you’re looking to travel to another world, tune in to Angela Ho.

Angela’s fine mashup of pointillism and retro/pop surrealism frames each of her high-spirited imaginary playscapes. This unique style sprouted over a decade ago and flourished when she decided to place paid work on hold for nine months. It was this gestation period for personal, artistic growth that gave birth to the comprehensive portfolio that altered the course of her career. By honoring herself, she found the fertile foundation needed for a vast land of dazzling, hypnotic, characters that suggest the truth.

For a deep dive Q&A with Angela on her background, character personalities and flow states...

What were you like as a child?

I was very quiet and incredibly shy around people I didn't know well, although I messaged my sister to help me with this question and she says I was cheeky. My sister and I would always be drawing and with my older brother, we'd have our own mini drawing competitions, I'm not sure if this was good in terms of sibling rivalry though. Our parents gave us a lot of educational-type toys which involved drawing, painting, crocheting and making plaster models. I read a lot, I loved Snoopy comic strips.

At what age did you take a break from paid work to focus on your own art? What were some of the phases and internal struggles you went through during this time? How did this decision impact where you are now?

I was in my mid-30s when I took a break, I was thinking about how time can pass so quickly, our lives are just a tiny blip in the scheme of things so we might as well make the most of it. During this roughly 9 month period I spent a lot of time in my small workspace drawing a lot, reading and looking at anything which caught my attention, like old Fleischer Studios cartoons and anything scifi. The self-imposed isolation wasn't easy as I can be quite social but after this experience I think I've learnt an emotional self-reliance I hadn't had before. I think this has made Covid-19 bearable. I also got over some thoughts I had about choosing to pursue my artistic inclinations and whether it could contribute to the world in some way.

Have you ever felt limited in your expression? How were you able to overcome these limitations? 

Yes. It's still something which I'm working through, how to handle it. I'm realizing that if you're able to express yourself truly openly it is a privilege, although it should be a universal right.

What role (if any) would you say spirituality has with your art?

Initially I was going to answer this question with a "no" in terms of a spirituality guiding me with my work. I have mythical creatures in my art, spiritual ones borne of nature or characters which personify abstract concepts. I like the idea of omnipotent mostly well-meaning beings inhabiting my art but they come from imagination and fantasy and stay firmly within the borders of the board I'm painting or the screen on which I'm drawing or animating.

But aside from mythical creatures, I have had experiences while working where I've felt that there is some outside force helping me along, I'm not sure how to explain it, I've thought it must be some biochemical result of intense focus but haven't explored the concept of it much for fear of sounding flakey. But I brought it up with my artist and designer friend Calvin Ho and he recommended I read a book called "Flow" from the 1990s. So I may have a more clear answer at a later time but for the moment I'm referring to it as The Force. I love Star Wars.

Are there any defining moments in particular where you've felt this force/flow most?

Yes and when I think about these moments they're associated with music, maybe it's music which produces this flow. When I began working as an illustrator and was working on a digital artwork of a kaleidoscopic storm, it was probably the first time I really felt like I didn't entirely produce the work, that something else assisted. I'm wondering now whether there is some kind of musical trance state involved. Also, when working on my 'Interspecies Utopia' show and perhaps more recently having slowed down along with the world while working on a commission for a musician in San Francisco. I feel it when I've switched off from everything, am lost in music and am purely into the work. I could be listening to anything from Four Tet to The White Stripes which I've been listening to again recently or Science Noodles, a Hong Kong-Taiwanese band I've been listening to on repeat. Right now I'm listening to Brian Eno's 'Music For Airports'.

How important is nature to your wellbeing and what effect does it have on you? Do you have any favorite hiking trails in Hong Kong?

Walking in nature is extremely important to me especially in a fast-moving city like Hong Kong where I've lived since 2008. The rhythmic motion of walking and breathing and not being distracted by various things has the instant effect of calming me and recalibrating me. Hong Kong is full of walking trails and green areas, my favorite trail would be Tai Long Wan in the area of Sai Kung, it's a bay made up of four beaches with hills behind it. The Peak Morning Trail is also a favorite as I live near to it and walk it regularly.

Do your creatures ever “speak” to you — and do they have different personalities? If so, what are some of them?

I'm waiting for my creatures to speak to me. I'd like to work more with narrative whether in picture book form or animation so I'd like them to lead me but they do have nascent personalities. A lion character I have is stoic yet kind, it doesn't speak much but when it does the words are important so you'd better listen and never ever cross the lion as it has the power of all nature within it, it can become poetic justice incarnate. A female head I use in short animations represents the inner world of an every-woman, she gets buffeted about by everyday and world events but easily expresses joy too. She thinks too much, I guess she only has a head, maybe I should draw her with her body more often.

In what ways have you been exploring augmented reality and animation in your works? Do you have any upcoming projects that fuse these mediums?

I'm still working on how augmented reality can more significantly extend the narrative of my static artwork, mainly they have been experiments in subtly adding meaning via animation. I've used AR with my 'Interspecies Utopia' exhibition, the HKwalls mural and a work in the Paste-Up Festival in Berlin. Currently, I have a singular artwork idea in mind I'd like to generate but I'm not sure of the physical space it will occupy yet.

What is your intuitive sense regarding the art in the future? In 2120, what do you foresee as the mediums? How much value will be placed on art and artists?

This question makes me think of the Singaporean survey by The Sunday Times which did the rounds of social media in June. It was about the top 5 most and least essential jobs within the context of the pandemic. I was skeptical of this survey but I think a lot of people would have nodded their heads in agreement at artists being at the top of the non-essential list. But I think art and the arts are incredibly important. I think we need to tell stories about ourselves through fiction and emotive means which may elicit empathy and an understanding which news cannot give us. I think there should be more to us than survival and living in their most basic forms. I'm not sure about predicting the future 100 years from now but I wish I could see how things are in 2120, perhaps art will be more interactive and immersive and work somehow with science more. But closer to our present, I really hope that art and artists will make it through the pandemic and current instabilities and that they'll be intact when we eventually settle into a new normal or get back to how we were. I think art is needed for escapism and to make sense of this surreal time of dramatic change.