Seeing fear

One of the hardest things during this whole virus panic event that we been going through for almost 2 months has been to see the fear in people's eyes. When I have gone to the store, which I never stopped doing, I see people not looking at anybody. Staring at the floor and not meeting anybody's eyes. Wearing their gloves and their surgical mask like it's going to protect them. Acting surprised when I say good morning or hello.

It's hard. It's been especially hard on my wife because she is such a people person. She doesn't like it and she feels the the urge to join the herd and be scared and quiver. But I keep telling her it's okay and just be safe and wash her hands and do what we normally do and everything will be fine.

Early on when I sensed and saw the fear growing I would send my youngest son out on missions. I would ask him to go and buy me something at the grocery store. I asked him to go and buy me some plants that the hardware store. I asked him to take something to another place. And I did that to help him avoid getting caught up in this year. And to see that it's okay.

What I remember from growing up was that my grandparents were always very careful. They didn't just wander around willy-nilly into things and do all sorts of crazy stuff with people that they didn't know. They had a genuine fear that had hardened to resolve because they came through some hard times call the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the oil crisis in the 70s that was manufactured by OPEC, and so many other things. This fear that I see now is different.

I've read about and watched how mass media has focused on the inflammatory and the fear generating in the big splash headlines that they focus on for a week or two at a time. And I've read articles about how their fostering fear in their watchers. They hire psychologists and scientists that specialize in addiction and foster addiction to fear. Just like app developers foster addictive like behaviors with games like candy crush and the systems like Facebook. It's that head of dopamine that unit.

As they drive more and more people to be fearful we as citizens need to be careful that our government doesn't overreach and begin to dictate things to us that they have no business dictating. I'm watching as some governors loosen restrictions and are working to get government out of the way so that people can make choices as to whether or not they want to take the risk of opening their business compared to the risk of not making any money and losing their business. This is a good thing and this is what I would love to see everywhere but I'm satisfied to see it where I live.

Another thing that I'm concerned about is how mass media is driving so many people to think of us as a singular country when we are actually a group of states United to form a country. And it scares me that the federal government that the states put together has grown to the point that now states are looking to the federal government to bail them out under the premise of the virus but in actuality they going to use any bailout money to pay for the money that they've taken out of their retirement system promised to former employees and to cover their actual expenses for the year of you know before ever encountering this virus panic situation.

My family is safe. My family is doing fine. I hope your family is doing fine also.


God bless America!

Lack of quality time

One of the challenging things for me during this coronavirus panic has been the lack of time with people that I care for.

My love language is quality time. But with everybody hunkering down and hiding in their homes or wherever they are and saying that they can't get together or they don't want to come over or they are obeying the government means that I don't get any time with them. Phone calls don't really happen. Because they are busy with work video calls and other things they don't want to set aside time or they have not set aside time to do a video call with me.

So I'm spending a lot of time alone. At home. Doing projects. Working out. Doing my lessons. Eating. Not drinking very much. Spending time with my wife, my college-aged son, and my high school senior son.

But I miss the others in my family. And I miss getting together with people. We did have another couple will come over for dinner a couple weeks ago. I had a water bottle at the door and I sprayed them like I was disinfecting them. They didn't get in till afterwards but than they thought it was sort of funny but also they had that sheer look on their face the I've seen so much lately.

But it was fun getting to spend time with them. Just talk and hang out.

I miss spending time with people.

Be prepared

One of the things that I enjoyed during the coronavirus panics time that I spent at home is getting a garden going on my deck. I've done that for a couple of years now but this year I have tomato plants, some peppers, and a few more flowers. I also bought a couple of blueberry bushes and a couple of grapevines just to see if I could make them grow.

I keep them on the deck which means I have to water them daily. I've collected bottles as we've emptied them out and I now have a collection of five or six big 2 L bottles that I used to water them with.

I keep the bottles filled with water so that when I go out morning or in the early afternoon to water the plants I can just start watering them. It's been so nice because last year and the year before I always had to grab the bottle or some picture, fill it with water, then go out and water plants.

But with the ability to adjust decide it's time to water and then go out and start doing I feel like my productivity is out. It's much more satisfying when I go to water the plants. And it's a lot more fun because I don't have to think about steps to get started, I just go and get started. Yes, I still have to fill the water bottles when I empty them. But it's much more satisfying to have already watered plants than having to stop and figure out which ones to fill out and all that.

So the Scouting motto "be prepared" applies here. I am prepared to water the plants and because I am prepared I can just start doing it.

In so many other areas of our lives it would be better if we were prepared so that when it was time to do it or we decided to do it we could just pick it up and no. Instead of having to go through a checklist of all the things that you gotta gather up and get together and then possibly use and may not need and all that. All the decisions get in the way of actually accomplishing what we set out to accomplish.

So do your best to be prepared. You'll come out ahead because of it!