Dunkirk NY – Today is the first day that has really exhausted me mentally. It’s cold and wet outside, and it seems that following the news today was a harbinger of a coming week that will be worse than last week.
I have established something of a routine at this point, which is helpful but not completely satisfying. The morning is always coffee and the news. I do not watch television news, preferring to read available sources on the web. Occasionally I will listen to public radio, but I’ve found that I absorb news better when I can read selectively rather than being bombarded by media voices. Breakfast and showering and dressing follow. This can take me anywhere from 10:30 to 11:30 AM depending on how much I read.
The afternoon is spend doing whatever odd tasks or business needs to be handled. Mostly this includes answering emails, following up on a bill or two, but nothing too demanding. Not having work from a job has certainly reduced this part of my life substantially. If I choose to write, I can do it now or after my walk, which I take anywhere between 1-3 PM. There are days when I might substitute all this time with a recorded sporting event, either cricket or baseball. Yesterday, for example, I watched the Yankees lose the 2001 World Series to the Diamondbacks all over again.
Anywhere between 5-7 PM is dinner time. If my wife needs help with preparing the meal I pitch in, otherwise I let her alone in the kitchen because cooking is how she fills her time. I do all the cleaning up after dinner.
Evenings are the hardest. I am not by nature someone who enjoys consuming media. I don’t like TV or movies, which of course is the main source of entertainment for most people. I’m not a board game or computer game fan. I like cards, but mostly poker. My wife, on the other hand, is much the opposite. So I spend time most evenings now watching some sort of show. We’ve almost caught up on all of Star Trek: Discovery, and are following Star Trek:Picard as well. I go back to some older shows like Cheers and Peter Gunn (last year in Washington I watched in sequence all the Monty Python shows). I’m trying to like media more, but I am just unaccustomed to sitting passively in front of a TV set. It feels wrong all the time.
As the situation gets worse, planning will become more complicated, and I can’t help but wonder when it will become impossible. There are times when I stare out the window, expectantly waiting for the marauding hordes to descend. What I see in the news and what I see outside my window are two very separate realities, and I wonder when they will eventually meet. While I have taken steps so far to get through the next few weeks, I wonder what steps I should be taking to get through the next few months. And with a completely dysfunctional federal government, the difficulty becomes far worse and much more unstable.
I think I scan the news so much because I keep thinking that I will find at some point a story that will tell me we’ve turned a corner. But I know that won’t be coming soon. People keep saying things will open up in April, but I am not so sure. The scars this whole situation will leave will be jarring, like scars from having acid thrown on your face. It is one thing to surgically repair injuries after an accident, but it’s another to really gain all the previous strength back. I am not thinking in terms of months, but years. -twl