Bonus Expansion Packs

While in the pool today, I had some thoughts.

And the thoughts led me to imagining my family as Sims.

I think from 2017-2019, it was like we were playing the pets expansion pack.  We all had pets before, but in those years, the pet thing kind of blew up.

My parents adopted two dogs.

We adopted Annie and Yeti

One of my sister's family ended up with five dogs. Though they might have gotten the fifth dog during the pandemic.  I forget.  

Anyway....

In 2020, we were supposed to install the university expansion pack. Jack and his cousin were starting  college. And we did play that. But it's like we unknowingly also installed two bonus expansion packs: Pandemic! and Disaster! 

Our house was very damaged in the Texas winter storm.  Ever since then, I have felt weird.

I guess life has felt less real to me?  

It feels sort of like I'm in a long dream, or we're all living in a movie.  

Another analogy I came up with is the end of the school year where you have classes but you're just watching movies or hanging out...or having a field day. But maybe you do have one class that is supposed to be taken seriously, and you have a test, but you're not giving it as much thought as you usually would have.  

This morning I was reading the news...about climate change and the disasters it's causing. So that got me feeling that my feelings are maybe about the world ending. I don't mean a literal end...like everything exploding and everyone dying. Or almost everyone dying.

But it looks like there's going to be more and more disasters...more pipes bursting, more houses swept up by tornadoes, more buildings collapsing, more fires, more floods. 

Pandemics will probably become less rare. I mean instead of having a hundred years between them, we might start having them every decade.   Or it might be like an alternating thing. 2020-2022 pandemic; 2022-2024 no pandemics; 2024-2026 a pandemic; 2026-2028 no pandemics....

On top of all that, there's the political drama.  It seems that's going to get worse and worse.

 But....

Despite all this doom and gloom, despite my doing horribly in screenwriting contests, despite my friendship woes, despite online psychology tests telling me I'm depressed, am similar to Hitler, and have an IQ of 71, I usually feel pretty okay.  Or I could say I don't feel depressed. I'm not sure that feeling life is unreal is "okay", but I think it's probably a better feeling than depression.  

How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-departed to talk to us via the Internet?   

The Dead are Online, a novel by Dina Roberts