I’ve been trying to motivate myself to write for the last two weeks.  Writing, normally, is therapy for me so I’ve been surprised at the difficulty.  Lord knows I could use some therapy these days!  I’m starting this essay on Friday, knowing my posting deadline is Sunday.  Nothing like a self-imposed deadline to get you started!  I just haven’t felt like writing about leadership topics.  Rather, it is hard to make these topics more humorous and based on the response to my last two essays y’all want to laugh, not think.  Wait.  That didn’t come out right.  My clearly intelligent and discriminating readership would prefer to laugh while they think.  So, instead of delving into a single topic, today I am going to share with you a number of observations I have made about myself and the world over the last few weeks and how I might in the future weave some of these into essays of their own.

Maybe I shouldn’t have gone off of Prozac  Let’s start strong!  Like many a Woman of a Certain Age, I had some difficult times with inhuman hormonal swings several years ago and at the insistence of my doctor (“Don’t be afraid of chemistry, Sherri.”) went on Prozac.  I stopped a couple of years ago when various internal chemicals and my life evened out.  My coping energy has generally been fairly strong as of late.  These past few weeks, however, anxiety has come roaring back.  As usual, it has expressed itself by keeping me from sleeping which, in turn, messes with other rather important bodily functions leaving me tired, cranky, lazy, and bloated.  This state is different from my usual tired, cranky, lazy and bloated condition by the addition of feeling both helpless and angry.  I am a joy to be around.  Why am I feeling helpless and angry?  Read on.

Hair Salons Should be Essential Businesses  It is the little things.  I remember when I lost power for four days after Super Storm Sandy.  Electricity is something you really take for granted until you don’t have it.  Those were four miserable days.  Thank goodness for a fireplace and two very warm cats.  When the power came back on, I channeled Scarlet O’Hara yelling, “With Gd as my witness!  I will never take Electricity for granted again!”  I am replaying that emotion now with respect to my hair salon.  It has been 43,200 minutes since I’ve been to the salon.  Not that I’m counting.  It is not, as you might guess, about hair color.  I am one of those lucky few (thanks, Mom and Dad) who is graying late and in a nice salt-and-pepper way, so I don’t color.  No, it’s the Waxing Room of Torture that I miss.  I have taken to plucking hairs that should never have to be removed one at a time.  The concept makes Trish literally gag, so I can’t even tell her about it.  I’m sure she’s gagging editing this paragraph.  I have written to the CIA, explaining in detail how they can now do away with water boarding and just use strategic plucking.  Although I’m guessing this is prohibited by the Geneva Convention, too.

I Have a Righteous Streak a Mile Long  “Really?” says everyone who’s ever known me, rolling their eyes.  “I’ve never noticed.”  OK, but I come by it honestly and I’m clearly not alone.  We are all self-isolating.  And we are doing it for a rather altruistic reason:  in most cases, it’s not so much about us getting COVID-19 ourselves, but making sure that we break the chain of contagion thus keeping our health care system from totally crashing.  Yes, most people have very manageable symptoms.  But this virus is contagious enough and enough people are asymptomatic long enough that without us all staying home, this thing would pass through the country/world like wild fire.  Even the relatively small percentage of people that have a serious time with this illness would be enough people to totally overwhelm hospitals.  Think about that: we are staying home so that people we don’t know won’t die.  That is incredibly selfless and community minded.  And American culture is diametrically opposed to those two characteristics.  But we DO believe in fairness!  That happens to express itself as “If I am going to stay home 99% of the time and wear an uncomfortable face mask when I do go out, then I am going to judge like hell the people that DON’T do that!”  This is partly why lines at gun stores have been a mile long.  This and the fact that Pennsylvania inexplicably closed the liquor stores. If there ever was an essential business!  Anarchy is just one bad day away.  Thank goodness the sun is out today.  “The Individual vs. the Community” will undoubtedly become an essay in the future.

The Average Person Does Not Understand the Scientific Process  I have previously indicated that I would like to write a series of essays entitled “Everything I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned in Freshman Chemistry” and an explanation of the Scientific Process will be a key part of that.  Let me give an example: Having a gut instinct about the efficacy of a drug combination to fight COVID 19, based on a few anecdotal cases, does not replace a well-designed study.  Why not just try it?  What do you have to lose?  Remember thalidomide?  That’s a drug that was found, anecdotally, to reduce nausea in pregnant women.  It was then prescribed widely for this problem, until they realized that a high percentage of babies born to women taking this drug had horrific birth defects.  This is also why I can’t stand “sound bite” journalism.  It is very easy to find isolated examples to prove whatever point you want to make.  A well-designed study that proves cause and effect is critical. And don’t get me started on people who read one article, written for non-scientists, and are now self-proclaimed scientific experts.  Stay in your lane.

Speaking of Correlation vs. Causation  Did you know that there is a strong correlation between number of shark attacks and people eating ice cream?  Well, clearly then, people should stop eating ice cream if we want to prevent shark attacks! (Actually, they are both correlated with warm weather and people taking a swim in the ocean.)  Check out this one:

Clearly Scripps needs to be very careful of the words they choose in the final round!  Just because two events or actions are correlated doesn’t mean that one caused the other.  Just because a couple of people took a particular drug and recovered from COVID 19 doesn’t mean that the drug caused the recovery.  This relationship is oh so important in all aspects of our lives!  (Fans of Malcolm Gladwell’s writing already know this maxim.)  Expect this to show up again.  And remember, if something seems simple or obvious, it just means you don’t know enough about it.  See also: self-proclaimed scientific experts, above.

The Center is Relative  There is so much more about basic scientific principles applied to life that I want to explore.  The Law of Unintended Consequences.  The Importance of Significant Digits.  The Dose Makes the Poison.  But I will touch on just one more here:  The Theory of Relativity.  While we are all trying hard, kind of, to not politicize this pandemic there sure seems to be a lot of complaining tied to political party.  What I find interesting is that almost everyone considers themselves Centrist in their thinking.  Most people can easily find others who are both to the right and left of their own position on any given topic.  As such, by definition, they are “centrist”.  (“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right and here I am: stuck in the middle with you.” Bragging rights to the first person who identifies those lyrics!)  And, your own ideas seem so eminently reasonable to you that they MUST be centrist and anyone who disagrees is either an idiot or a maniac. (Who gets THAT reference?  Clue: comic from, um, the 80’s?)  Just chill, people.  The center moves around a lot.  It is relative to where the majority is at any given time in history.  No one ideology has all the right answers.  And in complicated situations like what we are wrestling with today, there IS no one right answer.  There are just different pathways with different consequences.  We are all right and we are all wrong.  “Balance” is another topic I’m sure I will dive into.  We don’t need to open up the whole country at once; nor do we need to stay in 100% quarantine until 2025.

Which brings me to my final thoughts.  Last night I had a Zoom happy hour with my college friends (the famous crew from Miami).  We were all talking about hitting a “pandemic wall”.  We’re tired of the constant stress of the unknown and uncertainty.  I will leave you with a thought from my friend, Jackie, who said “learn to relax into it.”  So perfect!  Control what you can control.  Breathe and relax into the rest.  And wear a damn face mask when you go out!

Be safe out there.