I didn't quite make it. Just yesterday, I posted that I was planning to stay inside and not go shopping until I could receive my booster shot. And then today, I started thinking about the logistics of that: while in normal times I could make rice easily, my previous experiences with the vaccine had left me extremely fatigued. So I imagined being stuck inside, dragging myself to the kitchen and eating feta cheese straight out of the bag because I had nothing else. So today, despite a somewhat rare White Christmas snowfall I walked all the way to the Grocery Outlet to get some tortillas and cheese and plant-based meat. And then I went to Trader Joe's to get tofu and vegetables and 2 one pound blocks of chocolate.
This is the type of moral calculations we have to do. Are my exceptions to my rule justified? People need food. They don't specifically need chocolate. Something that might be reasonable for a single person becomes unreasonable when enough people do it. Right now, when I focus on the idea of being stuck in bed, with fever and chills, the idea of having an alternative to eating bowls of cold rice seems to be a reasonable one. But in retrospect, as we continue to deal with the pandemic, a lot of ideas that seemed like a good idea at the time might turn out to be terrible.