Saturday night. The first day entirely on my own, no work and no xgf, since the pandemic began. Feels strange.

…I’ve never tried crack, but I imagine it feels a lot like Stardew Valley. That game is filled with dopamine reward structures. On top of that, it also embodies the Millennial dream: no debt, no bosses, your own house, the ability to do whatever you’d like, friendly neighbours. I’m a late bloomer – I got the game four years after it was released, and have been playing it on and off while hiding away at AirBnBs. (Xgf is more of a point-and-shoot video game fan, but she thinks my obsession is cute.) Between that and streaming random TV shows, it’s been a fairly easy escapism mechanism. (HBO’s “Watchmen” was strange but impressive.)

Today was the 10-year anniversary of becoming a full-time Amazon employee. My actual anniversary was six months earlier, since I was a warehouse temp first. That amount of time is hard to imagine… Another year or so, and I will have been with the company for a third of my life. Posted an eloquent update on LinkedIn, got a bunch of likes from VIPs and connection invites from people I don’t know. Chances are, nothing will come of it – but who knows.

So much has changed in those 10 years… I was a broke college student in Reno. (Nevada was hit by the recession harder than almost any other state.) I got hired as a warehouse temp, packing boxes. Ten years and five cities later, I’m a financial analyst in Toronto, with my own office, as well as the license and the autonomy to pursue any worthwhile projects I deem interesting. A lot has changed. I honestly can’t even imagine where I’ll be in another 10 years. I have some long-term plans and strategies, but it’s hard to say whether or not they’ll play out as planned. Ten years from now, I’ll open up this anniversary post and look back, and probably chuckle. Hey there, future self. Cambodia or Costa Rica?

In the pandemic news, the White House is almost certainly a hotspot by now. Dozens of Secret Service agents have tested positive, which means every VIP has been exposed by now. (If not, they’re incredibly lucky.) Given the age range of senators and Supreme Court judges, it’ll probably be only a matter of time before major US politicians start getting sick and developing complications. Prediction: at least one VIP will die within a month. (Right now, the hope is that warm weather will halt the spread of the virus, but that strikes me as wishful thinking. It’ll be nice to be wrong, though.) Meanwhile, several children in New York have died due to unusual covid-related complications. Here is hoping it’s not the beginning of some new and even worse trend.

Cumulative US death toll as of right now: 79,814; in Canada, 4,693.