Thread by @alexdschiller

We lost power for like 8 days after hurricane Irma. Our phones only worked sporadically, if at all. On maybe day 3, I drove about 9 miles to a parking lot near a working cell tower. I checked in w/ friends & family, submitted some documents & pictures to insurance companies...
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...sought out locally relevant news and timelines. Where to go for water. If the tax deadline had been extended. How to make my mortgage payment. What stations had gas. When we might get power.

It was all so present. So immediate.

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I remember looking at facebook. My local friends feeds were of devastation and largely unsolvable problems, and so, so many questions. While for everyone outside the blast radius, life just goes on. Birthdays and pet pics and memes and life, as it should be.

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And I've been on the other side. Scrolling past an FB friend's flooded house in the Carolinas, or a burnt down home in California, or a missing child, or a fundraiser for someone's medical bills...

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...but I'm on there checking the comments on some whiny bullshit political post I wrote, or seeing who's gonna be at that art thing later, or if the restaurant I want to go to changed their happy hour specials.

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I recognize other people's immediacy, their present-ness. And I think about it. I think about them. I've been there. It sucks. I'll drop a heart. Or maybe a sad face. I usually don't comment.

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I just keep scrolling. Looking for who-knows-what... just flipping channels through people's lives and contributing a channel for them to flip past.

It's eerie that almost all of us will be dealing with the same life-interrupting forces at roughly the same time....

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Today's stories out of Washington will be tomorrow's San Francisco and next weekend's NYC and April's Miami and on it goes. Each of us on a slightly different timeline to the same destination.

It's poetic and grand and universal but also deeply personal.

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I'm not sure that humankind has ever experienced anything like this. A shared experience by a nationwide interconnected hive-mind, and a meritocracy of information that brings what you need and want to know bubbling to the surface in real time.

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I remember, before Irma, first jobs dropped off. Cancellations and postponements. Then came preparing and shopping and hunkering down a few days out. Filling the gas tanks. Following the weather charts. Hoping for a last minute turn. Knowing that turn wouldn't come...

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...Knowing that if it did it would bring that storm to someone else's doorstep. Maybe someone less prepared. Recognizing that the answer to my neighbors prayers would mean a whole different set of problems for a whole different set of people.

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Then the wait. That beautiful electric weather before a storm. That cut grass smell. Some fast moving clouds and the occasional ping of drizzle on the metal roof.

The proverbial and literal calm before the storm.

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That's how I feel today. The wait for that storm was measured in hours, while this one is measured in agonizing days. But it's coming. I can hear the drizzle on the roof.

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But, in a funny way, I'm comforted to know that we all will experience it together, in the present. And I'm thankful for each of you that read and follow and contribute to our collective conversations...

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...And for all the things I learn from each of you when I'm just scrolling by, waiting for the storm to begin.

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