The Quarantine Life- Early Days

We’re living the quarantine life and though it has been all of two weeks it is really the early days of our semi-collective efforts to flatten the curve.

The doctors and scientists who we trust the most tell us to be prepared for things to get far worse than they are now and thus I have had multiple conversations with the children to try and help them.

I told them we’re living through a historical event and that I expect it to change things for all of us but that I am not sure exactly what that will look like.

“It is a very bad situation and very fluid. We don’t know what things will look like when we come out the other side but I do expect we will know people who will have lost friends and family.

Hopefully we won’t be in that crowd, but we won’t know for a bit.”

I made a point to say we were going to continue to do our best to do our part to stay safe and healthy and that our extended family was going to do the same.

And then I said I hope for the best but left out my usual comment about hope not being a strategy.

Life Experiences

Been making a point to reach out to old friends by telephone to check in and have a better conversation than we get via the odd text or email.

Everyone provides the standard update about where they are, what they are and doing and how the kids are, assuming they have some.

Than we do our exchange of thoughts and ideas about what now is like and what might happen.

I always tell everyone I expect to see the other side and that I plan on being around for decades.

“I have far too much to do and I found something pretty good on a professional level. I intend to take advantage of it”

Some tell me not to be cocky and too certain but I don’t engage in the doom and gloom. Not because I don’t believe it is impossible for things to go south but because I don’t need to feed on negativity.

Part of it is because I have been to hell a few times.

A large part of my forties includes some of the worst and hardest times of my life in which I learned first hand how nasty and hard life can be.

The benefit of that experience is I know a little bit about adversity and how to buckle down and gear up to get to the other side.

It changed me in some good and some bad ways, but the overriding message I took is proof I am a survivor.

If you don’t believe that in the core parts of your heart and soul the whirlwind can take you.

It is a big part of why I say I know things, because I do.

Write What is Right

Been doing a tremendous amount of reading and writing which to some extent isn’t any different than how I normally live.

But this time around I am feeling frustration with the quality of my work as it doesn’t seem to measure up to the standard I want to set.

You can call that quality and honesty.

You can say I am almost ready to write about a few things in more direct terms and that not doing so irks me, but not as much as feeling like a hack.

****

It is part of why I shaved my head earlier this evening. I felt like I need to shed my skin and try to launch myself in a new direction with purpose and intent.

Except I can’t do it with the force and effort I wish to implement because the quarantine life has some restrictions.

There are in person experiences I can’t conduct virtually and even if I can, I am impatient and prefer to do it face-to-face.

My son looked at me post shave and shook his head.

“Dad, you don’t have much hair to begin with, but this is really noticeable.”

“It will grow back.”

“Not all of it.”

“No, those days are gone but given our circumstances I figured now was a good time to test things out because if I decide I hate it no one will see it.”

“Can’t argue with that, you’re right.”

I laughed and told him I was going to mark the moment down because it is not often your teen says you are right.

“Better get it in, I won’t be one much longer.”

I nodded my head and wondered whether things will be resolved by his 20th birthday or if we’ll have instructions about preparing for another set of social distancing via quarantine.

Can’t worry about that now, got far too much time and thus we live through the early days of the quarantine life.