January 2026

Strategies for “Pandemic Disturbing Ennui"

By John Tuite
Posted: 08/19/2020

In honor of Labor Day, I want to put you to work.  We need some good ideas,
recommendations, suggestions, experiences, advice and counsel, guidance.

We’ve been living in something of a bomb shelter for six months.  When we
leave the trenches and chance an encounter in “no man’s land”, we strap on our gas
masks, wash hands for minimum required time, and spray ourselves with
protective chemicals!  Even then our fortune and future depends on the speed and
aim of microscopic viral spots hovering in aerosol droplets.  Even prescribed
protective distances aren’t absolutely safe, nor the assurances of plumbers, pest
controllers, or pizza men.  

What’s the result of this challenge to our security, our health, and our peace of mind?  
I heard a new term for it this week: “pandemic ennui”!  But “ennui” seems altogether
too quiet for this worrisome, threatening, invisible ogre.  Let’s add “disturbing”:
“pandemic disturbing ennui”.  (“ennui”: a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction
arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.)

Wouldn’t it be nice if this forced isolation were guaranteed to be over by November, like (perhaps) the other major present, but political and threatening disturbance in our lives.  
But that isn’t possible!  We haven’t learned how to get this under control.  We may be
in the same bomb shelter next September.  And that’s why I’m putting this subject on today’s agenda:  What are your best strategies, what’s your best mechanism, how do you suggest we supplement our daily life to handle this crisis?  How can we support  each other?  After all, we’ve bonded over the last few years, don’t we owe each other  some support?  Isn’t that the idea of the Village?  To support each other in our aging years?

 I’m looking for concrete suggestions and ideas that others of us haven’t thought
of yet.  I’m looking for other than the mundane as well as the mundane!  How can we best, with each other’s help, get through this next year?  Put on your empathic cape and share your best notions. It’s for the good of that guy across from you!John Tuite