Is it Wednesday again? Hard to believe. I feel like time is speeding up a bit this week for me, and that’s something I’m not a huge fan of. It’s one of the things I’ve never liked about “routine”, it’s easy for me to fall into one and then days turn to weeks and weeks turn to months very quickly. In my normal life, generally speaking, every day is vastly different from the last, whether I’m guiding tours or off on my own adventures. I can plan each day, savor the moments as they pass, and then at the end look back at it and see what I learned and accomplished. It’s one of the reasons I’ve avoided moving into a management role in the tour business or finding a year-round job. In my younger days, I often felt like I would blink and a whole year would go by. Now I feel like last Easter was forever ago because I’ve seen and done so much since then.
When I was driving home from Texas, I was thinking of all the time that this quarantine would give me, and how much I would be able to get done. Despite it being a downer to give up on my short-term goals, I saw it as an opportunity to catch up on a lot of things and even get ahead on a few projects. I always have a million things banging around in my head, and never enough time to accomplish them all. And I still see that, but I’m not ticking off boxes as much as I would like to. I’m getting up early and getting dressed in my regular clothes (no all-day PJs for me!), but the days just seem to be accelerating and I’m looking back and wondering where each one went. I keep thinking I need a schedule, but haven’t gotten around to making one. Maybe that will be my goal for tomorrow.
Another thing I’ve felt creeping in this week is anxiety. No matter how well or how little you know me, you probably wouldn’t guess that I suffer from tremendous anxiety. It’s yet another reason I live the way I do. I force myself into situations where I must be out in the world, facing new and different situations every day because it pushes my comfort zones much further than I ever would when I’m somewhere stable. Over the last couple of weeks, since coming home, I’ve found myself in a very safe, familiar and comfortable environment. I know what’s “in here”, and what’s “out there” is dangerous. Today I went to get some water at the grocery store, and I felt like I have when I was going to some foreign land where I didn’t speak the language or understand the customs. I had my mask on and my guard up and was conscious of every little thing I touched and where my hands were at all times. It was unnerving. After all, I was just going to my familiar hometown grocery store. I don’t like being afraid. I’ve lived my life taking risks every day, but risks with known consequences and outcomes. While I’m not losing sleep over it, this whole thing brings a lot of anxiety with it, not necessarily for me (although I am a diabetic), but for my parents and loved ones who fall into greater risk pools. I guess I much prefer risks with known possible outcomes.
All of that being said, I’m doing pretty well. I have used this week to finish up with the last of my “new” photos from my time in Texas. You can see the empty streets of Corpus Christi and South Padre Island as I kicked around trying to figure out whether to keep going or to head home. I’ve also finished working on my Mississippi and Hawaii albums, and I think they’re pretty cool. You can see how they came out here:
I’ve been working on my podcast as well which is coming along slowly but surely. I’ve not been writing as much as I would have liked these last few months, and I’m finding it hard to find my rhythm again, but it’ll come. I’ve also been enjoying playing my guitar and practicing some yoga and I’ve been getting a reasonable amount of exercise every day, so those are all good things. Last Friday my folks and I had a Beach Party in the basement, listening to some island music, sipping piña coladas, playing some games and me telling them stories about life on the many islands I’ve had the pleasure to visit and live on over the course of my life. It was fun, and it seemed important to take a break from the everyday routine and “go out somewhere”, even if “somewhere” was just a part of the house we don’t spend a lot of time in. This Friday we’re going with a Prohibition Party!
This week I’ve also experienced the whole gamut of life events across my extended friend network. One of my high school friends lost his father this week, and while I haven’t seen either of them in many years I can’t imagine having to go through that in these times. On the other side of that coin, another friend of mine who I knew when I lived on St. Thomas had a baby this week and I feel for her close friends and family who won’t hold that child for who knows how long. Yesterday I got to watch on Facebook Live as my good friend Eric, who taught with me in New Orleans, got married. It seemed a shame that the wedding they had planned had fallen completely apart, but it was amazing to sit in my room and share in their special moment on the internet. I watched towns I have come to know and love torn apart by tornadoes this week across Louisiana and Mississippi and thought about how it must feel like the whole world is against you to get kicked while you’re down like that. But I’ve also seen the Easter Bunny make visits to hospital wards and city neighborhoods and Passover Seders happen over Zoom. I’ve had close friends test positive for the virus this week, and others who have come out the other side and are recovering nicely. I watch all my friends in the medical field keep going to work. I even found a friend on Facebook who I worked with in the early nineties and haven’t seen in over 25 years. It was nice to see he was doing well and looked exactly the same as I remember him. It’s been a strange week of watching the world go by. The ups and downs, challenges and successes, love, loss and laughter which have all played out on my screen this week, and I haven’t even turned on the television.
One thing I’ve started to see which I don’t like is people writing off the rest of 2020. While I have no doubt that we will all celebrate the turning of the year this December by burning our 2020 calendars, I’m not ready to write the year off just yet. It’s only April, and there’s a lot of year left. At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later but also hopefully not before it’s safe to do so, we will get out into the world again. Maybe when we do, this experience will teach us to hold our friends a little tighter, forgive a little easier, put down our phones and enjoy the people sitting with us or the sunset in the distance. Maybe we will actually make time to reconnect with old friends or have the courage to perform at that open mic night or strap on those skis that have been collecting dust for years. Maybe, just maybe, 2020 will be the year we learned to live again and realized what was really important in this life. Maybe.
That’s the hope I’m holding onto this week. And hope is the one thing stronger than fear in this world. Without it, we’re lost.
Until next week, stay safe out there. I don’t know what this week has in store for me, so I guess you’ll just have to come back to find out.
-Mike