Surviving social distancing!

We’ve all had crazy weeks. Everyone across the globe, from Australia to Hungary, Ireland to Mongolia, Norway to Zambia, and a million other places in between, has been trying to deal with the Coronavirus the best they can.

Here’s how I’ve survived in my little neck of the woods:

–I tried to write a new blog post, but I kept sneaking peaks to news sites to check on the latest number of Coronavirus cases in the U.S. The number jumped to 7,568. I shook my head in disbelief, wasn’t it just a couple hundred infections a few days ago.

–I tried to read my Kindle. I should stop right here and make a pitch for a very good book I’ve been reading called The Kirkwood Scott Chronicles: Skelly’s Square by Stephen Black, a blogger from Northern Ireland who I follow and would highly recommend. The book is fascinating, but still I found the news junkie in me picking up my phone every few minutes to swipe through my friend’s latest Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram updates. Most if not all the posts seemed to be on the virus.

–I tried to convince myself to get up and go for a run—nothing too far, maybe a 5k—but I felt “the blahs,” caused by a week of working remotely, peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and the bad practice of getting very little sleep and no real significant exercise. (By the way, why is that, why does boredom and inertia breed more boredom and inertia. Don’t be alarmed, this is just the crazy questions of a mad man who has spent too many hours alone in his home office, instead of getting out into the fresh air.)

–I tried to text my two grown kids, but I stopped when I discovered that I didn’t have anything new to say to them from the last time I texted ten minutes earlier.

–I tried to watch TV, but the more I flipped channels the more depressed I got watching the newscasters blather on and on on the current state of affairs. Yes, I got the severity of our situation and no I didn’t plan to go anywhere, but I didn’t need “to be scared out of my wits.”

We’re in this weird period. Oh, I know social distancing is a good thing. I know it’s the right thing to do, but, even I, an introvert to the nth degree, recognizes the value of occasionally getting out and about and living my life.

I was tempted to just go to bed early, but my wife came up with a great idea. She suggested that we play a card game with our son. We didn’t play long, but the game did wonders for my brain. It got the synapses working on something other than work and pulled me out of my man-cave office shell.

I know that no one knows for sure how long we’re going to be in this weird zombie-like state of existence, but I know one thing, I need to keep looking for the antidote to help me keep my stamina through these troubling times. For me on this day, it was a simple game of Gin Rummy. Tomorrow? Who knows what it will be.

However, I think my wife is onto something. Let’s hope so or I’ll be running stir crazy through street. What’s working for you?