False start: Day 1

Here’s a little suggestion for the few of you who still come peeking around here now and then: If you’re home from work now or otherwise diminished from the COVID19 business, keep a little isolation diary. It’s a healthy pursuit for different reasons, and a chance it will help you learn from the experience by facilitating reflection. Solitude is critical to real learning.

The virus has stormed into my life like Ganesh and bulldozed nearly everything in sight:

My security shifts
Circle meetings
Dismas gatherings
“Poetry Corner”
Write-Ins
Movie Club
Regular visits with Gramps and the Flaming Liberal
“Tigers” training camp
Scheduling and preparation of video shoots and Trivia Night fund-raisers
Sponsorship endeavors
Family gatherings
A paycheque...

Oddly my cell phone has been simultaneously knocked out of commission which prohibits still other activities!

It has not bulldozed:

Work on the kids easy-reader storybook.
Work on the Crazy Legs race horse novel
Blogs (I have another anonymous blog)
A ton of other writing and research projects
Work on Tigers web site, social media, articles, research etc.
Prep for April A-to-Z, Camp NaNo and Story-A-Day-In-May
Reading
A plethora of video pieces and board game projects
Bedroom restructuring
Sleep improvement project
Diet change
Exercise (no pools though)
Several other self-improvement endeavors…

Somehow it has forgotten to knock out Mindcrack and the youtubes. Day-one I did too much of these things. My only productivity was in correspondence and failed attempts to fix the cell-o-phone.

Perhaps it is up to me to manage the distractions and diversions and to make use of this golden opportunity to put some of my life back on the rails.

And I wonder… I dare to wonder… could solitary confinement be part of the answer that allows me to re-engage spiritually again; to value people again; to retreat from some of this contempt, back toward pity, back toward love. I know the wisdom of it. I have not forgotten.

Absence has made the heart grow fonder before.