Am I Being...Insensitive?

While the world is being terrorized by the worst pandemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu, here I am sitting in my basement blogging away about my insignificant fiction project. As people are dying in scary numbers, I find myself preoccupied in my own little made-up world.

Is that wrong?

Shouldn't I at least acknowledge that we are living in frightening times, that not only are people dying, but the global economy is in free fall and the prospects on both accounts are grim? Shouldn't I at least find some way to contribute to the cause? Shouldn't I stand in front of a hospital and thank those brave souls who are busy saving lives while endangering their own? Run around and deliver meals to elderly shut-ins? Contribute to food banks? Give blood? Make phone calls for political candidates in hopes of getting rid of Trump?

Well, I do some of those things. Our charitable giving has gone way up and I will give blood. But mainly I'm doing what the experts recommend. I stay home and maintain social distancing, which is really important since I'm in a high risk category.

Still, under the circumstances, isn't this blog just a selfish indulgence?

I say not really. Sure, the pandemic is front and center in the news and has profoundly affected our lives. But the pandemic isn't 100 percent of our lives. People are still engaged in other things. Many people are working from home in jobs that are not especially significant when compared with the magnitude of the virus.

And many are using their extended time at home learning new skills. They're baking bread, fixing up the house, learning a new language, dusting off the old guitar, etc. It doesn't mean that they're ignoring the menace of Covid-19, they're just going on with their lives despite Covid-19.

So it's perfectly right that I keep writing, which means tweaking my current novel and working on my next...as well as writing these posts. So, if you don't mind, I'm going to stick with the premise of this blog and will avoid addressing that ugly pandemic in future posts.