By Shannon Williams
I do my best to try and stay neutral in my writing, I have way to much drama and conflict in my normal life to add to it by upsetting people by what I write. In today’s world, it seems very important to many people that people know how they feel about a subject or a situation. I guess I want to see how people feel about something in how they ACT about that thing, not just what they say or posted, I want to see it in what they do. Also, it seems that we are just overwhelmed with people who think of themselves as celebrities and what to tell us how they feel about a situation. I want to hear what actors think about acting, and what singers think of music not politics or religion or health matters. I seek out experts and I mean experts in the field of what I want to know more about to help decide how I WILL ACT, not so much speak, but how I will act.

Today was a rough one for me, you see Covid is very real in my world. I oversee housing for about 2000 seniors and the 100 employees who work with them. We are an independent living situation, so we do not provide health care, but anytime you have a group of seniors under one roof, you deal with health concerns and health care. I have many very ill people in our communities and I have some very sick employees and their families, all because they did not take a vaccine when one was offered. Covid has been around for almost 2 years and in the early months, when we thought it was bad, there was so little that could be done. Now there is something that can be done and it is not being done. There is a thing going around Facebook that starts with “I don’t know what is in the vaccine now or the ones I had as I child nor in Big Mac, hot dogs” and so on. I thought it really had some good points but each time it is posted the fight is on and people take it so personal. I don’t want to giveaway any of my rights, but I don’t want to die! I hate masks but cannot even think what a ventilator would feel like. It seems we are spending more time talking about what we should do about COVID instead of doing what we need to do. How can we know everything about the vaccine, they are just trying to keep people from dying? We are so caught up in the though of it, that many are not taking the action.

I stood in line many a time at military bases to take vaccines that were needed. I am sure my parents had no clue about what was in it, they just trusted. I also never had smallpox’s or polio and so did most of the world because of vaccines. We have expectations that someone somewhere should know everything about COVID and, how could they? I know our government (or should I say people in our government) have done things that made us all lose trust in them regardless of which side you are on, but we still are going to have to trust someone someday and yes they might fail us, but at least we acted or tried to take action.

This is not a pro vaccine writing, it is an anti-dying writing! Until something else comes up that will give me any help with staying alive during this, I want us all to act. How many funerals do we have to attend, how many people dying alone? How much more can our nurses, doctors and hospital take? I am doing my best to cope with our “new normal” but I want my life back. I want to go without masks, I want to HUG! I want to have a shorter prayer list! You can help me and everyone get back to that, but instead of fighting about it, you need to do it.

[August-31-2021]