All Social Commentary | kenisms

Still so much to be thankful for

Posted on November 24, 2020 by kwundrow

There will be no Thanksgiving family gathering this year. No real Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. No little feet running around our house emptying the toy box all over the great room. No toasts at the dining room table. And yes, no dropping of the apple crisp on the driveway. That would be a little inside family story for another time. The dinner will be replaced with a zoom family gathering, air hugs and a hope that things will change soon. Soon being a relative word.

In this year of the pandemic things have had to change. Traditions had to be put off for now and our routines have been anything but routine. In that setting, how can there be anything to be thankful for? That’s the challenge. In a year where nothing has been normal, where masks became a necessity and not just part of a Halloween costume, where travel plans have become “should we staycation in the kitchen or the living room?”, where a sneeze comes close to clearing the room, how can we find something for which to express our thankfulness?

I’ve been thinking about this for quite sometime; ever since my wife and I returned from an island trip in March. We returned to the states on March 13th, just as the pandemic, that thing in China, became our pandemic. I remember thinking this would be a short inconvenience and that all our summer plans would be just fine. That was then. Now we wonder if next summer’s plans will be altered. I for one don’t believe they will. Call it optimism, but that’s one of the things I am thankful for, but I will save that thought for now.

I do have things to be thankful for, our family is still intact. There were a few scares this year and my daughter and her fiancée did have to cancel their wedding, for now, but we have made the best of our family quarantine bubble and still managed some visits, limited, but still we got some time together. I am thankful that I have two beautiful, successful daughters who have chosen great men to be their partners. Two incredible grandchildren who never cease to amaze and amuse me. A wonderful wife who has been by my side for forty plus years and who has been my quarantine release and Amazon Prime binge watching date these past eight months. I am thankful for finally having the time to finish projects that have sat, sometimes for years, waiting to be tackled. They smile back at us every time we use or relax upon them.

I am thankful that we have rediscovered close to home destinations as airplane flights gave way to road trips, as exotic trips gave way to local parks, and, as hotel stays gave way to cottage days. I am thankful for so many things that I had started to take for granted. In our isolation, our world got smaller and we realized that there were so many amazing sites and scenes literally in our back yards. And I am thankful for my neighbors. With all the walks necessity made us take, I rediscovered my own neighborhood and the friendly people who lived inside those houses, the reason we chose this neighborhood in the first place.

I am thankful that the election is finally over. The painful political fighting, the divisiveness that any election creates, and all those irritating political ads we were subjected to, done, over and gone. Hopefully we can move on and find common ground and better causes to expend our efforts and resources on. And then there’s the vaccine, in fact the vaccines plural. This is not just a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s an honest hope for an exit from this isolation, soon. But most of all, I am thankful for the optimism. Though we sometime feel we can’t go on much longer, we always find some hope (the vaccine), some new way to do something (virtual learning, meetings and gatherings), some collective ways to pull together for a solution (healthcare workers and teachers). We are an innovative bunch. Setbacks are just forks in the road. We assess our problems, make our choice, and move on. We don’t live in the past but instead learn from the mistakes and vow to correct those that we can and set a new course to avoid the ones we can’t. I am thankful for that kind of optimism and the opportunities that it creates.

Thanksgiving won’t be the same this year, but it’s not gone and certainly not dead. We will find new ways to celebrate, to gather safely, to protect each other. We will find the things to be thankful for as long as we are willing to look for them, to recognize them, and to use them to give us the ultimate thing to be thankful for; HOPE.

Air hug your family, visit, if even just virtually, count your blessings and make a list of the things you are thankful for. You just might surprise yourself with the length of the list.

Happy Thanksgiving in the Year of the Pandemic. Look at it this way, we have at least made history.

There was a light at the end of the tunnel

Posted on October 11, 2020 by kwundrow

This past week we traveled to the Mauston area to ride the Sparta Elroy Bike Trail. For novices who have never experienced the trail, it runs some 30 miles between Sparta at the northern end and Elroy at the southern end. On the way you bike along the old railbed of the Chicago Northwestern Railroad, passing through its three tunnels along the way. Considered the oldest rail to trail in the U.S., it offers welcoming tree lined canopies and historic bridge crossings as it travels through the five villages along the route. On our first day, our ride took us from Sparta, through two of the three tunnels, eventually reaching Wilton. On the way in and nine miles from our starting point, we reached Tunnel 3, the longest tunnel on the trail. At 3/4 of a mile in length, our first view of the tunnel left us wondering what this walk through it would entail. The one thing that encouraged us was that their actually was a light at the end of the tunnel. It was very dim and very small, but it was there telling us that we would eventually reach the end.

But this isn’t meant to be a travelogue. Rather it is meant to be an allegory. The light at the end of the tunnel reminded me of life in these Covid-19 times. In late February or early March, depending on your point of reference, we entered a tunnel the pandemic had created. We had and still don’t have an idea of just how long this tunnel will be. But we had no choice other than to enter it. Now, going on eight months in our tunnel, we are anxiously looking for the light at the end of it. Pessimists will tell us there is no end in sight, no light that they can see. Optimists will ask us to believe that we are just about there. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, where in fact, we might actually be. Here’s the rub. We can actually control how long we will spend in the tunnel. The key is responsible behavior. No one denies that the pandemic exists. We can argue about who it impacts more, about how bad it really is, or what will eventually cause it to end, but what we need to do is clear. We need to be cautious. We need to protect ourselves while protecting others. In short we need to take responsibility in the battle to end this pandemic, to finally be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The light is there, it’s just that it won’t be clearly visible until we get ourselves closer to the end.

As we walked our bikes through the darkness and falling water of the tunnel, that light at the end of the tunnel just kept growing larger, urging us on. Each step took us closer to the end of the tunnel and with each one of those steps, the light grew closer and brighter. Eventually we reached the last hundred feet of the tunnel and sunlight now flooded the tunnel floor. We were never worried that we wouldn’t make it but we were still relieved to be out of the tunnel, back in the sunlight, and back on our ride.

This Covid-19 tunnel that we find ourselves in will eventually come to an end. How soon it does in fact depends on us. On our collective behavior. On our willingness to sacrifice some of our freedoms to bring this to a quicker end. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. We just need to keep moving toward it.

Can we walk back the clock?

Posted on September 13, 2020 by kwundrow

There is a person in our neighborhood who walks past our house at least once a day. I should qualify that sentence. She walks backward by our house everyday. I have in fact, never seen her walk forward. It is always backward. Granted, she is headed forward, but backward. I have pondered her reason for this behavior and the best I could come up with is that she is either more concerned with where she has been than where she is headed or maybe, just maybe, she is taking the years back off her life. Walking back the clock. My fantasy is that she will walk by each day looking another day younger than the day before and that convinced of her success, I will join her in her routine and take back at least some of the years that have crept up on me. For sure I would take back a major portion of this last year.

I have always been overly obsessed with my age. In fact I have written about it multiple times and from multiple perspectives. But this year is different. Though I haven’t suffered directly from the pandemic, it has certainly cramped my style. I had big plans for the traveling I would do once I retired. Those plans had a lot to do with when I would retire. At some point in your life, it stops being about all the years that lie ahead and instead becomes about the number of years left. Life is like this project with a very long timeline for completion. At first, there is a tendency to procrastinate. Plenty of time to get all the steps completed, so no worries. I’ll get married one day and start that family. I’ll buy my first house and maybe even start a retirement account. At some point you realize you are half way through the timeline and worry begins to creep in, but you aren’t desperate because there still is time. Plenty of people further along their timeline. Let them do the worrying. And then suddenly it happens, the deadline is approaching and the clock is speeding up. Worry becomes fear that you might not complete the project. Time to retire, to get traveling, just keep moving.

This year has accentuated that fear. My travel plans were put on hold and a year of my opportunities, denied. So maybe, if I could walk backward for awhile, I could get that time back. Before you bombard me with advice and shower me with all those adages about age like, it’s not how many years old you are but how many years young you act, I know. Believe me, I know. It’s just that it’s such a pleasant fantasy to think you could have at least a few years back.

I’m not going to get into the argument of what would you change if you could. I have looked at my life, and though there have been missteps and even some bad choices, it has all led to where I am. Would I change anything? Would I be willing to risk not having the love of my incredible daughters, my unbelievable grandchildren, my beautiful wife? Would I give up the lessons I have learned along the way? The answer of course is no. But still, would I buy some more time if there was a way to do it? Then not what would I change, but what would I devote more passion to? How would I be careful to not waste the extra time?

I know she walks backward for some reason other than the one I have made up, but I want to stop her one day and have the conversation. Has the thought ever crossed her mind? Now if you happen to see me walking backward, promise me you won’t question my motives. Know that I am not afraid of the future, just motivated by the nearness of it.

Just Wear It

Posted on August 6, 2020 by kwundrow

If we were asked to describe America with a single word it would more than likely be “freedom”. In America we have the freedom to state our opinion, no matter how controversial. We have the freedom to practice what ever religion we choose, or for that matter, no religion at all. We have the freedom to come and go as we please, to vote for and elect the people who would govern us, and yes, we have the freedom to own a gun if we so choose. The only true limit to our freedom is that we must respect the rights of others and do no harm by the exercise of our own freedom.

It has always been obvious that we owe these freedoms to the men and women who would sacrifice to protect those freedoms for us all, in some cases, to sacrifice their all. We honor our veterans and our current military personnel. Since the pandemic, we have for the most part honored our health care workers who have placed themselves in harms way as they fight to save the lives of those infected by the virus.

With that as my backdrop, I am perplexed by a behavior too many of us have adopted. We want the freedom of returning to our jobs, to our schools and churches, to the way of life we called normal. We honor all the people I mentioned above for the sacrifice they were and are willing to make for OUR good. So why, when we are asked to make a few simple sacrifices to stop this pandemic, some of us can’t seem to see fit to make them. We shout that masks are denying our freedom. We complain that schools must open whether they can promise to do it safely or not. We demand that we have the luxury to go back to socializing the way we did before the pandemic. If we want these freedoms, we must also be willing to sacrifice; social distancing in public, accepting limitations on service and yes, wearing a mask in public. Are any of these so hard to do? Are they really demands or just common sense? Isn’t it just a means to an end of something we all want ended?

Nike promoted the mantra, “Just Do It.” I am promoting this. We all want our freedoms intact, especially the pursuit of health and happiness. Help me protect you and in turn help to protect me. If we can be willing to sacrifice a little to end this plague, we will all have the hope of a healthy life and happier one in the long run.

Don’t tell me you have a mask, “Just Wear It.”

Feeling Disconnected

Posted on June 28, 2020 by kwundrow

In the midst of this pandemic isolation, have you found yourself feeling a bit over connected? I know how strange that must sound. After all, we have been staying quarantined, social distancing, and in general, disconnecting from each other socially. So how could I possibly feel over connected?

Through this ordeal, the one area we didn’t disconnect, was the internet. The internet, with email and social media, and then Zoom or whatever virtual meeting program you were using, has if anything, kept me electronically connected while I physically and emotionally disconnected. While I was still working, not that I ever really stopped, I often resented the fact that I was bombarded with emails and texts from clients and coworkers who could find me anywhere and everywhere. There was no escaping them. I had developed a habit, no, a calling, that made it impossible for me to not check those connections constantly. Hours, often minutes, wouldn’t go by without me checking my email and texts for that next question, request, or demand of my attention. When I finally entered my pseudo retirement phase, I concentrated on slowing that down. Hell, I had actually got to the point where I could go several hours without looking, and sometimes even pass my 24 hour rule, without replying.

And then COVID-19 dropped on us and we went into physical separation and a renewed internet connection. Our disconnect physically meant that the internet via, in my case, Zoom became the replacement. Where I had finally accomplished the art of slowing down and only agreeing to meetings in my volunteer career that fit into my schedule, I was now at the mercy of the internet meeting. During my first trip up North, don’t worry, we were quarantining in our cottage, my schedule was peppered with Zoom meetings with co-volunteers, committee meetings and client sessions. In a normal time, I would have just said no. I know some of you who know me well, are snickering, but I had actually begun to to use the word. But, and it’s a big but, these were and still are, not normal times. COVID-19 was not only isolating us individually, it was shutting down businesses and my retirement career has been helping small businesses find their way.

My requests for assistance ramped up exponentially, and with it, my inability to stay away from that electronic connection. I was back in my old rut. If you needed me, I was accessible 24 -7. Schedules didn’t matter. I would get the Zoom meeting request, time and link and I had to try to pretend I hadn’t seen it. Something had to give. Enter my family for an electronic intervention. I was asked, point blank, if I was enjoying my volunteering? I reminded them that it gave me a sense of purpose and that I enjoyed being able to help clients navigate the business start-up environment. So they asked, why was I so stressed and at times so apparently angry? I had no answer. I subconsciously wasn’t hearing myself complain. It seems while I thought I was learning to use the word no, I was not saying no to the right requests. I had somehow gone from mentoring my clients, to agreeing to two committee chair positions and membership in a third. This, not my client requests, was the cause of all those emails and Zoom meeting demands. I was over connected and all to the wrong purpose fulfilling activities.

I am on my second trip North to our cottage, but it will be different this time. We are still hiding in isolation and social distancing if we have to venture out, but I stepped away from those committee obligations, well at least one, and have a week without work. I left an ominous away message on my email account and refused all requests for Zoom meetings. If I have a Zoom session this week, it will be because I chose it and it will be to socialize with friends I am missing physically. I am finally feeling disconnected.

I will continue to miss the physical interaction and if and when this pandemic lifts, I will be the first one out socializing with friends and even strangers. But going forward, I am definitely focusing more energy on disconnecting from the demand side of this electronic hook. I will use the internet to enjoy the connections I choose and avoid the temptation to be on call 24-7. I will enjoy the moments I feel disconnected and savor the moments to reconnect to life and the things that truly matter.

I Should Know Better……

Posted on June 13, 2020 by kwundrow

This has been a historic time for all of us. First we are subjected to a pandemic. Isolation, quarantine and new normal are all we can talk about. Every night we are bombarded on the evening news with the daily statistics and every story leads right back to the pandemic. We try to escape it through social media with creative ideas and clever stories of how we are spending our quarantine time. These social media efforts are at least humorous and help us to relieve the stress but the reality lies thinly hidden behind those clever posts and tweets.

And then the next shoe drops. Through the unfathomable decision by one individual, the ugly reality of racism is thrown in the mix. The reaction is predictable but the scope still takes us all by surprise. But it shouldn’t have. We have spent lifetimes trying first to justify it, then denying it and eventually pretending to not accept racism. While there are those who openly demonstrate their bigotry, the majority of people falsely believe, that though it exists, it certainly doesn’t exist in them. We desperately want to believe that we not only have no biases, but that we are supportive and have worked to reduce the effects of racism in our culture. And yet???? Why do we still unconsciously stereotype black people?

I am one of those and feel the need to confess. Anyone who knows me, knows that I believe in equality among all humans, no matter race, gender or religion. And yet, I was reminded just the other day that I am not so innocent. We were watching a show focused on Black Lives Matter. One of the segments was an interview of a black pro athlete who was speaking of a program designed to answer the ‘uncomfortable questions’. As the interview proceeded, I turned to my wife and said “He certainly is articulate.” I was immediately called out by my daughter. “Why would I have felt he wouldn’t be”, she asked? Because he was a football player? Or was it because he was black? Or worse yet, because he was a black athlete? My first response was to quantify what I had said. But as I began to formulate my excuse, the reality of the situation hit me. That and the fact that I was not the politically correct, unbiased supportive person I wanted to believe I was. I started hearing myself saying “I have several black friends.” Why did I need to attach the adjective?

We all see and recognize the racism when it is blatant. We all wonder how anyone can feel that way? Some of us even take up the charge and march alongside other supporters as they protest the total inequity of the treatment. But change won’t take place if we simply succeed in silencing the racists, a task that is anything but simple. Change needs to be systemic. We need to look at ourselves and ask how can I drop the stereotyping and change the narrative. In many ways, it is the day to day narrative, the unintentional stereotyping and the acceptance of the black person’s plight that cuts the deepest and creates the environment we so desperately need to repair. Why go out of our way to identify someone as my black friend, or a black athlete or a black titan of industry. Why can’t we simply drop the adjective and acknowledge the individual for who they are and not what they are. Until we do that, we continue to give room for the racist to breathe their message of hate and for society to fail at honoring our Declaration of Independence, “All men (people) are created equal.” But not until we treat them as such.

I’m Not on Call

Posted on April 5, 2020 by kwundrow

This isolation and physical distancing has created an explosion of online techniques to deal with business ‘not as usual’. Where we were generally meeting each other face to face, we now zoom and google meet, duo and face time to accomplish our social gatherings and, to the point of this blog, our business.

Where this live streaming has been successful and even efficient, society, namely clients and customers, need to understand that even though I seem to be, I am not on call. We are now beginning to take advantage of the ability to do everything online. Ever since many businesses sent their employees home and then set them up to work from their home offices, places like the kitchen table, the dining room table or as I’ve heard, the walk-in closet, too many customers are now viewing them as on call 24-7. After all, the customer figures they are in the same boat. They are working from home and thus their vendor or agent or whomever, must be as well. It really doesn’t matter that it’s Saturday afternoon or evening or even Sunday.

When this is all over, and I hope that is sooner than we seem to be now bracing for, we are going to be in a new normal. Why go to the grocery store once I got used to delivery? Why bother heading downtown to shop when a purchase and delivery were just a click or two away? Why head into my investment broker’s office when zooming with them worked just fine? For that matter, why should I even have to leave the house to do any business? This just might be the backside of this experiment in isolation. We might end up becoming a non-social culture. And as such, we might start forgetting that the person on the other end of that internet connection might actually have a life. Or at least, used to have one.

I for one am not ready for that new normal. Don’t get me wrong, I was reasonably tech savvy. I could conduct a long distance business relationship with the best of them, but I will also admit that the inability to disconnect was at times overwhelming. Between voice mails, emails and texts, there were days when I felt like I was on a string and that all you had to do was tug it and I would answer your every need. Weekends became a struggle to not check my emails and voice mails. Vacations became exercises in trying to relax. My fear is that once we have led our customers to the water, they will expect to drink whenever they feel thirsty.

We owe it to our families, our social circles and above all else, to ourselves, to draw a line in the sand. It is not too late to begin educating our clients and customers to our own needs. That process needs to manifest itself as hours and days of operation. In the good old days, we walked up to the store or office door, and when it didn’t open, we saw the closed sign and the hours of operations. We might have been slightly inconvenienced, maybe even a little irritated, but then we realized life’s priorities and we respected them.

This new normal needs to be a two way street. When we go back to business as usual, I hope that we haven’t lost sight of the value of personal touch. That we will remember why the calendar has weekends. And that no matter how big our problems seem in the immediate, there is a better time and place to work the solution. Wouldn’t it be great if the new normal was all people realizing that if we respected each other enough to stay six feet away during the crisis, we will now respect them enough to give them time to enjoy their free time.

I may not be on call for business after hours, but I am always on call for friendship, courtesy and a little social time together. So call me sometime, just not after hours if this can wait.

Do it for all of Us

Posted on March 25, 2020 by kwundrow

I have been waiting to weigh in on this but praying in the meantime. I pray that we can all survive the isolation. Isn’t it ironic that before this all started, there were times we would crave the chance to just shut out all the noise, to find a quiet spot and yes, isolate ourselves. Now we are asked to do exactly that and we realize how disconcerting that can be. Deb and I are honoring the request and have isolated ourselves from family and friends, from our church family and from the everyday strangers that might have become our friends. It has its pluses and minuses. The quiet has given us the chance to reflect and reconnect, to realize how dependent we are on each other, to realize what it was we found in each other as we fell in love so long ago. But the isolation has reminded us how much we depend on others as well. It has put us in a position to worry about so many things that we can’t control. It has left us craving company and the socialization that comes with the company.

We are taking this thing one day at a time. We are being as patient as any human can be and we remind each other that in time this will pass. We use all this isolation time to pray. We pray for all the people I have already mentioned, but also for the businesses struggling to hang on, to save their customers and their employees, to still exist when this is all over. We pray for the care givers, the doctors and nurses and all the related medical personnel, and all the others who put their lives on the line and take the risks we are told to avoid. We pray for our church and all the churches out there whose members crave the message and the community of their faith families disrupted by this pandemic. And, yes, we pray for leaders. We pray that they be leaders who listen to both the science and the needs of the people they have chosen to lead. That they exercise both empathy and wisdom in equal amounts.

This will prove to be a critical time in our existence. When this pandemic passes, we will emerge as a stronger civilization, more empathetic than when we entered, more aware of our surroundings, more involved in our society. All of those statements will be true, as long as we learn from what we experienced, if we are willing to change many of our habits and beliefs based on the lessons of the crisis we survived. Life will return to normal, albeit a new normal, but it will return. Let’s promise to be part of the improvement.

For now, keep socially distancing but not distant, stay safe and keep others safe by your actions and above all else, stay connected. Use the ability to stay connected that our technology affords us and use those connections to stay patient. We will survive, with wisdom we may even thrive.

The Sky is Falling and I Can’t Find my Umbrella

Posted on March 18, 2020 by kwundrow

A week ago the world was so different. I should say OUR world. The greater world, in many countries were way ahead of us. For them the pandemic was already there. We have just begun to deal with the realities. Now it seems like our sky is falling.

We are now social distancing and in many cases, working from home or even quarantined to our homes. Our social spots, restaurants and bars, gyms, movie theaters and churches are all closed. What we were doing face to face is now being done by face time apps. Our children, who would be in school or maybe day care, are home. Family time is great and maybe an increased awareness of family time may be a positive outcome of all of this, but for now it is an added issue to juggle. If they are on-line learning, who’s keeping them focused and on task? To say that this isn’t stressful would be naive. My daughter is a high school teacher with a three year old and a six year old now at home. She is formulating on-line lessons, delivering them via Zoom to her students she can only hope are still engaged all the while making sure her own six year old is on-line doing his work, watching her three year old and allowing space for her husband to also be working from home. This may not be the dream version of family time. Note to my readers, along with prayers for all of our medical workers who are out there on the line facing an increased risk, consider those teachers who have families of their own trying to continue their teaching duties to your children or maybe your grandchildren.

I am an optimist, or at least have always tried to be optimistic. These are difficult times for us all. Along with all the things I have already alluded to, I am sure it has been hard to not watch the market. I am a retired financial planner and at this point may need to remind you that now is not a time to sell out of panic. No one could have predicted this and now that we are in the middle of it, we are forced to steel our nerves and ride this out. Markets have always and will always return to normal after the crisis has passed and the market has had a chance to stabilize. America has always and will always be a land of optimism. The storm will pass but we must be patient. It will get darker before it gets better, but IT WILL GET BETTER.

Given our current condition and the restrictions it has required, I may not be able to sit down face to face with you. For awhile I won’t be able go out and have coffee with you, but I can still stay in touch. I can still communicate with you. We have all this technology now that makes me feel as though you are right here in the room with me. If you haven’t already been using them, download Zoom or Duo or Skype and then reach out to me. The conversation may be about our stress or even our fear but it will eventually give way to a shared optimism that a good dose of social interactions can bring. With any luck at all, we may even find a way to laugh or share something to laugh about. We can’t hold each other’s hand but we can hold each other’s emotions. Let’s listen and share our stories and look for even the tiniest piece of normalcy for us to cling to. Together …. well, as together as social distancing allows, we can all survive.

There are things in life that must be done, things that should be done and things that could be done. Make sure that the things that must be done include your health, both physically and emotionally, and the health and emotional well being of your family. No matter how important the world tells us the other things are, we can’t accomplish any of them without family and personal health in place first.

When I started this piece, I was fighting an overwhelming sense of dread. I was trying to prioritize everyone else’s needs ahead of my own and I was finding myself trying to control the things I have no control over. I made a decision to do what I just asked all of us to do. I reached out to a friend or two. We shared our frustrations and then we shared a laugh or two. We even made some plans for when this is all over. And then I reached out to all of you by writing this piece. Don’t feel alone just because we have become isolated by this virus and its fallout.

So don’t be a stranger, reach out even if it’s just a text or an email. Know that I am on the other end and appreciative. It turns out YOU are my umbrella.

My My My, Corona

Posted on March 16, 2020 by kwundrow

We are in Atlanta having just cleared Customs. We have brought back memories, photos and souvenirs. With any kind of luck, we did not bring back Coronavirus. We were warned that the lines would be horrific at the airports and my lovely wife had already been steeling herself for at the very least, a missed flight and at the worst, lock up in an airport cage for the foreseeable future. I am happy to say that neither has happened and with any kind of luck we will be home by midnight. Of course, that still leaves us needing to go to the grocery store as we left for our vacation with our basic supplies fairly used up. Next crisis, trying to find a roll of TP in the midst of the supermarket raiders.

It is amazing how much things have changed from just a week ago. When we left, I still had an investment portfolio, meetings and seminars, as well as a reasonably normal social life. At some point, the market decided to dazzle us with its free fall and grocery stores were raided of the simplest items. Meetings were cancelled, businesses closed and schools now entering the live streaming age sans students. When we left, I was looking forward to Opening Day, the Bucks as potential world champions and both the Men’s Badger Basketball team and the Women’s Badger Hockey poised to accomplish the unthinkable, a Big Ten Championship and an NCAA preferred berth. I had even started to pick my March Madness Brackets, okay, that was a stretch, but I was at least looking forward to the exercise.

All of that changed, literally in a heartbeat. We now have a new term, “social distancing”, where we apparently live stream our dates, weddings and get together’s. We now need to observe rules, last enforced when I was at a middle school dance. For you Over the Hill folks, the old three-foot rule is what I am referencing. The problem is the rule is now six feet and there is a 60 second rule as well.

But I am an optimist by nature. This too shall pass, and I will do my best to observe the rules. In the meantime, I am working on distracting people from wanting to talk about nothing but Coronavirus. By midweek of our vacation it was impossible to have any conversation that didn’t include it. What would start out as, “where are you from” and “how long are you here”, reverted to what are we going to do about this pandemic? Now some were clearly panicked while others were skeptic at best. Some were downright resistant. I am by no means picking sides nor am I trying to downplay the seriousness, but I do know that panic and hoarding will not improve our lot. We need to get back to some sense of normalcy and it can start with our conversations and breaking our addiction to 24 – 7 news casts. We cannot put our heads in the sand, but we must avoid digging a trench we may never be able to escape. As I sit here, and with due consideration that this is an international hub, I have seen so many masked individuals that for a second, I thought I was in an Oceans 11 movie.

All of this will pass. It may get darker before it gets better, but it will pass. For now, I am thankful to be on the last leg of my journey home, sad having left paradise this morning and ready to self-quarantine for fourteen days, or so I am told. I will not miss some of the meetings that have been cancelled and I will improve my Zoom skills for the meetings still scheduled. Life will go on. Some things may never return to the way they were, that is a hint to search for stock in companies and processes that will benefit by the change in the way we do business. Successful businesses adapt and we will as well.

So, in closing, My Corona doesn’t need to be about our downfall but just a song when we were asked to do what we do best, laugh in the face of adversity.

	collectordevotedly79… on Grownup Questions
	kwundrow on My Cancer Journey: Finally,…
	kwundrow on My Cancer Journey: Finally,…
	sigler6973 on My Cancer Journey: Finally,…
	Bruce Coulter on My Cancer Journey: Finally,…

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: