Yes, the COVID-19 pandemic has put a lot of people out of work, buried our poor medical community with too many sick patients, and has, of course, sickened and killed many.
Lives are disrupted, health is damaged, lives are lost; there is a lot of genuine misery out there.
For the time being: I am doing ok, because I am a professor and I had to scramble to move my classes online. So far, it appears to be going well, but I am busier with teaching that I’ve ever been. Though I have no baseball games to go to, there hasn’t been time for me to finish a couple of papers that I was hoping to bear down on. Those will have to wait, but that is true for everyone who is teaching college classes right now.
The bottom line: this unusual amount of business has keep me from having the time to be anxious or really even follow the news super closely.
Things are harder for my retired wife, who is an extrovert and misses in person company. But she is, well..elderly and at high risk.
From time to time, emotions have bubbled up, and mostly about inappropriate things..meaning..not that big of a deal, given the life and death situation many are in. But here goes:
1. Sports. Yes, I miss Bradley and Peoria Chiefs baseball games. But I really feel for the athletes who were getting all prepared for the spring and yes, probably the fall…and now have to socially isolate. Imagine the angst of a good swimmer; at least runners can get outside. And many young athletes are making do with stuff in their apartments/parents houses, etc.
I am an old man. But I’ve been accumulating fitness equipment for a long time; curling bar in 1978, straight bar and Olympic bar in 1984, old bench in 1984, and lately bumper plates and hex bar in 2019, with the recent addition of dumbbells, squat racks, more bumper plates (25’s) and now a monster bench with spotting pins as well as a pull-up bar.
And I lack the physical capacity to use all of the weights that I do have, whereas many young athletes would use everything I have, plus more…but don’t have it. Ironic no? I want to buy more plates, but..for what? I need to add 100 lb. to my deadlift before I could begin to think about needing more.
2. Society: yeah, I am thinking about people who irritate me. You had the rebels who proudly post photos of themselves disobeying regulations “keep out”, etc. So I think “ok jerks, go ahead and give yourself COVID19 sickness…but then…many of these sometimes-non-conformists are urging others to practice social distancing and doing it themselves.
On the other hand, religious people tend to be known as conformists…and some of them are still gathering in churches..and spreading the virus.
Point: you can’t tell; you really can’t accurately put people in boxes.
There are smart conformists and dumb ones; smart rebels and dumb ones.
3. Fitness: yeah, I do appreciate the Instagram fitness people..ok…well, if you know me..but what I find amusing is that, because I recently bought so much home gym stuff, I am getting ads..often with models in revealing clothing…trying to sell me scam systems, nutrition, or over priced things. I could be strong if I drank the right kind of beet juice, fast if I used the right supplements, and ripped if I put on items that jiggled my untoned areas. Then there are the women fitness instructors who, most of the time, face away from the camera..I suppose it is “if you want your butt to look this awesome take my class.”
I’ll just do my old man stuff; some of the porch, most in the basement, along with my incompetent walking and running.
Life of an old goat 