Exhausted Yet?

I meant to kick off this new decade with renewed vigor and focus.

I thought 2019 had been the tough year – filled with travel, weddings, births, and a very tough funeral. There were multiple trips to my home town, and only two were planned.

There was a high school reunion that – although fun – was a stark reminder that we’re moving into that era when we’re observed with bemusement by the kids around us.

While scheduling a pub crawl for my graduating class, I was making arrangements at one of the craft breweries that has helped revitalize our downtown, and the owner/manager said he’d put up a sign to welcome us. 

“What year did you graduate?” he asked.

“We’re the class of 1974,” I answered quickly.

I heard a sharp inhale, followed by a “Really? That’s the year I was born,” he said.

Yep – we’re in the year when we are all living our Beatles’ birthday – same as Tom Hanks, it turns out.

I greeted 2020 with the goal of making this decade count – more writing, finally finishing the book(s), and just enough work to keep me from getting bored.

Yay, I thought. Finally, 2019 is finished and we spent the end of the year celebrating a truly lovely marriage with dear friends in California before heading to Florida for the start of the New Year.

It was a trip that included a chance to celebrate with college friends, a long-delayed visit to the Florida Keys, and wonderful time with friends on the east and west coast, ending in The Villages just to satisfy our curiosity about that fabled retirement community. And that’s a whole different story for another time.

We made it home by the end of January, fully intending to go off again in February, because, well, February in Minnesota is rarely ideal. And then we started paying attention to the news. It became clear we wouldn’t be traveling in February.

We’re still here - halfway through the year when everything stood still. And there is no vigor and my focus is shot.

I’ve spent the better part of the past four months working with the University of Minnesota’s Medical School as it mounted its broad response to the emergence of this novel coronavirus handling media relations for the faculty and researchers doing basic science, clinical trials, and innovative biomedical engineering projects.

It has been remarkable to watch science take place in real time, with a sense of urgency that encourages a lot of mistakes along the way. That’s the normal course of science – we learn by doing, make adjustments, and then finally, publish results.

That’s not happening now – ideas are posted online, scientists rush to test hypothesis, and media that is hungry for hopeful stories push out results that aren’t really ready for prime time.

With the NIH and FDA relaxing all sorts of standards and requirements in order to speed up roll outs, we’re stuck with the impact of relaxed standards. For example, speeding diagnostic tests to market before they meet sufficient criteria means the tests aren’t all highly accurate. We’ve traded accuracy for speed – something I’ve learned can be a problem when I text my friends. And it’s a bigger problem when you’re asking a population to trust that the test results they’re getting have meaning.

So I’m back to this blog – because I’m not done with Stunning In Silver. Writing is how I process the world around me. It’s how I come to terms and begin to understand my responses to this huge shift in the world around us - the sharp and deep divides, the cultural clashes and transformation taking place, the violent responses to long-standing inequities, and the deeply confusing emergence of extremist groups across the spectrum.

This is an invitation to come along on my mid-point in life musings at this mid-point in the year of significant change – I’d like to hear how you’re processing all that’s happening now. And stay well, my friends.