Wednesday evening. The work project that I’d spent most of my vacation checking up on has been rescheduled for some later, indefinite date. Now I’ll get to enjoy my three days of vacation in peace. Heh.

Another fight with gf. I’m the immature and less self-aware one in this relationship: said a dumb thing, then kept saying dumber things and digging a deeper hole for myself. Her therapist told her to dump me. Her I-Ching told her to be like a wanderer. Her Tarot told her it’s about emotional depth and maturity.

I can’t tell if this is all because we’ve spent 40 days locked together, with no other people and no time apart – to the point where we’re both getting on each other’s nerves, and time apart (or just physically leaving for work) would help. Or maybe it’s that there are legitimate incompatibilities that we would’ve found months or years down the road, and this 40-day-long lockdown is helping us discover those permanent structural faults ahead of schedule, saving us both time, though not nerves.

I know that outside these windows, the world is getting progressively worse. Thousands are dying every day. Millions may starve as bottlenecked supply chains start to collapse. The world will never be the same. I’m aware of all that, and of how damn petty and insignificant it is to complain about work delays or personal relationships in a time like this. Compared to the giant global tragedies, these personal little tragedies and disappointments are nothing – but they still feel huge to those of us who experience them. History is made of individuals. This pandemic’s chronicle is made up of over seven billion voices and countless stories, no matter how mundane.

Cumulative US death total: 47,861. In Canada, 2,081. My novel: zero new words, obviously.