at mom’s in Florida, trying not to get murdered

The flight was no big deal. I was a bit worried that on a plane to Florida there would be Florida Man antics of a vehement anti-masker sort but nothing like that happened. Every middle seat was empty and I was wearing a K95 plus I’ve had two doses of Moderna at this point. But still, the variants. The variants! There was no real food service on the flight, which is fine because I wasn’t planning on eating anyhow. It’s only four hours from LA to Tampa. I worked the whole time and was glad to arrive with most of my to-do’s crossed off.

I’ve been here since Tuesday and mostly have just stuck to mom’s house. She usually gets antsy when I’m here because she thinks I’m bored. Which is true, I am bored — but I come here to be bored. I want to have nothing to do. I want to fill my days with naps and the bland nothingness of the suburbs. Being here is a deliberate reminder of what life was like when it wasn’t a constant fire-hose of things I had to do. There’s no temptation to go out and do things. I’ve been coming to Florida since 1978 – I’ve seen it. My main objective while in Florida is to do as little as possible and spend time with my mom. Going out and doing things here is an invitation to trouble. Now obviously I don’t like it here. The local news is a parade of sensationalized racist attacks and persecution of trans people. The weather feels like the inside of a fetid and filthy locker room where they’ve been running hot showers at full blast and storing used diapers. A blast of sulphuric humidity hits you as soon as you step outside only to be quickly followed by the stings and bites of insects warning you, “leave now while you still can.”

Little things make me crazy. Like how when I have to reschedule a zoom meeting my colleagues want me to “send a new link.” How can we be this far into the pandemic and they don’t understand that the link doesn’t change just because you reschedule the time? I don’t bother trying to explain this. I just copy and paste the same link and send it to them. “here you go!” It’s the little things. I’m in a mood. I have a short fuse. I need… what do I need? What exactly would break me out of this foul temper? Good thing though, I’ve been very respectful toward my mom. I have, on past visits, reached a breaking point with her, too. But now I think I’m better attuned to her passive-aggressive habits. Like I know that when she asks me a question it’s not a question at all but a request. I know that I don’t really have a choice about what we’re doing on any given day. We’re going to take a road trip up to Georgia next week, not because I want to, but because she wants me to drive. She’s very excited for me to drive her to go see her brother, my racist uncle who lives on a farm in rural south Georgia. I’m going to take one million 3D pictures of his barn. That’s my plan. My nerdy hobby: stereo photography.

I’m here for two weeks. I decided to come here for two weeks because once travel really opens back up the pent-up demand is going to be insane and I do not want to travel again until things settle down. I imagine any travel we do this summer will be by car and limited to the local area. There’s something very strange going on at school. We usually have a class of 28 screenwriters each fall. This year our class will be much larger — we’ve accepted 44 screenwriters into the program. It is going to be intense. Of course, we’ll hire more faculty to deal with the larger workshops (normally 6 students per workshop) but it’s going to be interesting managing that many more students on campus. The parking for one. I hope that maybe some of the mysterious administrative departments will move to a permanent work-from-home arrangement and free up some space. A full 2/3rds of the campus is given over to administrative offices. This is also why tuition is so high, layers and layers of bureaucracy making sure that our jobs are as difficult as possible.

I’ve been in a bad mood for about six months now and it shows no signs of lifting. I’m going to say that it’s trump’s fault. Four years of that nightmare capped off by the pandemic broke me in some chemical way. Grammarly is showing me a green frowny face. I can only imagine what it must think of me — 23 “advanced errors” that I’d have to pay to have them revealed to me. You know what? I’m fine with my advanced errors. I’m going to sign off before I can rack up a 24th.