So tonight a tour around the web to find some resources to help you improve your mood. Hey, no matter where we are on the road to happiness, improving your mood is always a good thing and will always lead to a happier day my friends ~ Rev Kane
Improve your mood in 5 minutes
From Tiny Buddha, 30 Ways to Improve Your Mood
When setbacks arise – and they will from time to time – regroup, recharge, refocus and refine ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru
So tonight I wanted to address something that we are all going through, sheltering in place. It’s been two weeks for me now and as I’ve written about before, life hasn’t changed all that terribly much for me. But I know that’s not the case for most of you. There are pros and cons to every situation and for those of us who live alone, we don’t have someone around to interact with, but we also get to have alone time, space to ourselves. Particularly for those of you who are at home with little kids, time alone has become a precious and rare thing.
So tonight some suggestions about staying sane at home, I hope they help you have happy days my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Relax – I know, part of the issue some of us are facing is the shelter in place order is that we’re relaxing a bit too much. And I would do my best to avoid Netflix and chill becoming your entire way of life. But mental relaxation is going to be essential because we have all been traumatized by what’s happening to some extent. We have to realize this and recognize that the stress this is causing us is real. So we have to address that stress or it will eat us up inside and we’ll take it out on who is available and those are the people we’re sheltering in place with. So this means you have to employ all of the things you know reduce stress and make you feel better.
Establish routines, mostly for the purpose of making sure you consistently do the right things. You need to eat, and eat well, don’t let this become a junk food fest. As the order came down I heard someone say, people are either going to come out of this looking fantastic, or like a dumpster fire. Chips, Cheetos, cookies and the couch lead to the dumpster fire. But eating as healthy as possible, taking time away from the news and the screens in your life, having a schedule and getting enough sleep take you to a much better place and will help you reduce your stress levels.
Self-Care – I know, it’s the cool in term right now but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. You have to take care of yourself, even while you’re responsible for having to take care of everyone else. So that means find those spaces in the day or the evening. Perhaps that’s late at night, or early morning, perhaps it’s during nap time. If you have a partner to help, then each of you have to let the other get some time off the hook and alone. It may just be time for a cup of coffee or tea, a little time to read a book or meditate, maybe it’s 15 minutes to do a few yoga posses or take a quick walk or run, whatever your into. But you need these things for your own well-being.
Breathe – And yes, this means exactly what it sounds like, remember to breathe. The techniques in the link are all very simple. And you don’t need to find a special place or have a meditation pillow or even, if you are in a house with little kids, necessarily even find a quiet place. But a few times a day it’s really good for you just to stop, and do a little deep breathing. It’s such a small thing but it really can relieve a good deal of stress and make you feel better.
Distraction – At some level we will all need to be distracted from the reality of our situation. It’s bad folks, we all know that, that’s where the trauma comes from. If the worst estimates come true for the epidemic, we will all in some way, likely be touched by illness and death from Covid19. Even if the better estimates play out, we have all been impacted by the shelter in place rules, we will all see effects from the impact to the economy as a result of the pandemic.
So yeah, distract yourself, stream some TV and movies, read a good book, play music, draw, paint, play video games and do whatever you need to in order to forget yourself for awhile. Hell, that includes taking naps, sitting in the sun or just doing nothing at all for a time. A few days ago I did a post where I listed a huge list of online ways to distract yourself. Have some fun folks.
Find something new – This is a great time to find something new to learn. That could mean doing like I am and working on a new language. Duolingo is a free online language learning site that’s somewhat gamified to make it fun. Pull that guitar out of the closet that you haven’t played in five years. Order a penny whistle off of Amazon and take up playing it. I’ve also been doing some crossword puzzles online as a form of entertainment and of course I’ve been writing. So try something new, heck create a fun research project to do online or even take an online course.
Stay connected to others – The fact is, that although it’s called social distancing, it’s really about physical distancing. It doesn’t mean you have to isolate yourself from the people you care about in your life. So reach out to friends and family, especially those folks you’ve lost touch with. Just don’t hang out with them in person do it with technology. Heck if possible, even give someone a call, yes an actual phone call. This weekend I taught my 78 year-old mother how to video chat on Facebook. We’re also planning to put together a family Zoom call next weekend. So reach out and say hi to those people you care about.
Develop routines – I think it’s important to keep some routines while working at home and sheltering in place. Try and go to sleep and get up at the same time everyday. Establish some daily exercise routines, eat at the same times, basically keep yourself scheduled. But also don’t be afraid to schedule some time to do fun things or even a time to do absolutely nothing.
Get outside – I don’t care if it’s to walk, or run or just sit in the sun, but get outside. The sun helps your body produce vitamin D that’s been indicated to help you fight off disease. The fresh air, the sun, the chirping birds, blue sky and the blooming flowers will all make you feel just a little bit better about everything, trust me.
Keep it all in perspective – Yes, it’s bad. Yes, there are tough times ahead for all of us. I think it’s important that we’re not delusional. This situation is going to last for a time, I think June 1st is the optimistic date, September 1st for the pessimists among us. But regardless of which timeline it is, I can tell you this, our shelter in place reality will end. A time will come in the next months where we will start to get out of our houses more. When we will be going physically back to work, when children will be returning to school. Life likely won’t start feeling normal again until the fall, but it will happen. None of us will ever be the same again, but we will get past this and find a new normal.
So there’s certainly things to look forward to, and start developing those plans in your heads, a little positive daydreaming might go a long way right now. Be safe and well my friends. ~ Rev Kane
The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking. ~ Albert Einstein
Although we are on a shelter in place order, and under orders to do social distancing, which really should be called physical distancing, I need to walk or run every day. I need to for a number of reasons. First off, for health reasons, I have to do cardio to keep my blood pressure and heart condition under control, it also helps with my blood sugar regulation. It also helps my sanity, although I might be an introvert, I’m also and outdoors person, so I need to leave the apartment at least once a day and stretch my legs. I often do this downtown where I live, I have a little two mile route worked out that I run or walk most days. At least once a week I drive over to the coast (3 miles) to take a walk by the ocean.
But as we all know, our world is changing and changing quickly. Walking by lots of stores and restaurants there are all manner of new signs on the windows and doors. Some them are handwritten, some nicely typed, all talk about the new normal.
It’s hard walking the streets of any city right now and not to see the changes that are occurring. At your feet the litter is even different, more and more now on the street and in the parking lots the litter includes surgical gloves, masks and Clorox wipes. People are obviously afraid to have these in their car after they have been out and about and decide instead just to throw them on the ground, a really sad statement on our species.
You can see social distancing at work, and not so at work, not just in the signs on stores. But also as you see people spaced several feet apart as they are waiting for takeout food or to go into a small shop. Hell at Trader Joes they actually have tape marks several feet apart to make sure the distancing stays in effect in the line. At the farmers market this weekend, you could actively see some people keeping distance while others would just pushed right up next to you to get the “right” pepper. Some of the vendors are very careful about the way they handle items, others handle everything three times. I have noticed that amazingly, everything now is rounded to the nearest dollar so that handling change has been reduced to a minimum.
On Friday, after a very long and stressful week, I decided to take an extra long walk. My two-mile loop doubled by walking up and around the local mall and post office before coming back to my normal route. Getting to the mall was a real eye opener, there were few things open, a restaurant and a Target. But after passing around the parking garage I came up the stairs to a scene from a dystopian film.
Everything was closed up, a lonely trailer was sitting in the loading bay of JC Penneys. The parking lot had a single van sitting in it and although it couldn’t have been long, it felt like it had been there for years. As I walked around the corner of the mall where a Sears had been closed down and boarded up, there was nothing in the parking lots, but oddly, a forklift just sitting in a lot like the driver had just stopped, got off, and walked away. It was eerie has hell, sound echoed off of the parking garages and empty buildings. Crows soared on the thermals between the buildings. It was like the whole world had ended and I was the only person left.
Of course the world hasn’t ended, it still moves along. There is traffic on the road, a lot of restaurants and of course the supermarkets are open. We take our precautions, we take care and so far, we keep moving forward. ~ Rev Kane
You will never be the same again, Life in Covid Times
My Covid Times Diary March 24th
My Covid Times Diary – Anxiety
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will ~ Epictetus
I seem to know an awful lot of people who worry a great deal. I’m constantly being told things like be safe, call me when you get there, and grilled from top to bottom about my next trip. Now, maybe it’s just because they care about me and I happen to go on adventures that most people deem, well, a little nutty.
It does seem though that their worry extends beyond my occasional nuttiness. It also may have something to do with the fact that in my life I’m surrounded by women. According to a really interesting article of Gallup Poll results women are significantly more likely to worry than men. So great, people are going to worry and given we live in a world with disease, war, poverty and lawyers it makes a bit of sense. Heck biologically worry is actually a good thing, it forces us to prepare for potential dangers it’s when worry is overboard that we have an issue.
So what are the issues and what can we do:
Be realistic, don’t worry about an asteroid hitting earth, first the odds are incredibly low and you can’t do anything about it. Also, don’t be overly concerned with crime, the violent crime rate in America has been declining for the last twenty years and is about that same as it was in the old days, the mid-70’s, this trend exists for almost every type of crime we just hear about them more because of the 24 hour cable news cycle. The message, it’s ok to worry but worry about something worth worrying about.
Is the problem solvable, really, why are you worrying, is it something that you have no control over? If so, than great, stop worrying just to worry and start thinking about how you can solve the problem. If not, then really try to stop worrying because you can’t do anything about it.
Make the choice for happiness, and I know that’s not easy, no one snaps their fingers and stops worrying but work on worrying less, work on being happier. Of course you’re reading this and it’s a good start, take the advice we put forth here to heart, it can help you be happier and that emotion is more powerful than worry.
Remember worry is contagious, this is significant in a couple of ways, first stay away from other worriers or people who feed your fears. Secondly, be aware of the fact that your worrying can impact your children and others around you. Don’t spread your worrying.
Finally, as with everything, relax, breathe, take time to let things go and focus on the good, hug your kids, spend time with your lover, surround yourself with positive helpful people and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor. ~ Rev Kane
So my original intention was to write this diary once a week, I’d fill it in, in bits and tie it up in a nice bow on Tuesday nights and send it out. That’s still the plan, but after yesterday I realized that at least for this week, I needed to write one a bit earlier.
I’m not an anxious person, not a worrier, I have a tendency to attack issues that are bothering me and if they can’t be addressed, I’m pretty good at letting them go. I have a lot of worriers in my life, you know who you are. I’ve been making a point as the whole Covid19 issue has been growing, to reach out and try and talk them down a bit. As I mentioned in my last post, overall, my biggest worries with all of this are for members of my family and I’m doing what I can to help with those situations.
You can see the anxiety all around us as the pandemic first entered, and now has firmly taken hold in America. You can see worried posts online, you can see it as people write about their new situations, their struggles juggling work, home schooling and sheltering in place. You can even see it in the way people are even attacking each other, you can see that their anger is really just their anxiety manifesting itself onto someone else.
I’m generally fairly immune to most of this, but I guess no one is completely immune at the moment as I learned yesterday. Work has fully transitioned to a remote clone of it’s in person self. Yesterday was one of those typical days where every conversation seemed to turn into a knife fight. Innocent emails were interpreted as nefarious acts spawning conspiracy theories, outbursts and anger. Now I get it, I know a lot of it is just people currently existing in uncertain situations filled with change and anxiety. So they aren’t on their best game, yet it never feels good to be dealing with angry and anxious people acting out especially when they direct it at you.
One of the things you realize when you’re stressed, and have no doubt anxiety is just another form of stress, is that what falls away from you first is your emotional reserves. That emotional cushion that allows you to take some hits to your psyche, not react and bounce back. I realized last night that I was in that state, that the day had gotten to me a little more than it should have. There is a feeling that I hate more than anything in the world, it’s the feeling I would have, that knot in my stomach I would get as a kid when my father was drunk and on a rampage, screaming at my mother. I found myself with a minor bit of that feeling last night, that was the big tip off for me of where I was.
So I did what I do, I did a little writing, listened to a little music and laid down and meditated awhile watching my psychedelic lights. I nodded off watching a television show I like. I slept restlessly last night but woke up feeling a bit better. Today helped a lot, we got some great news for a couple of our programs. I watched my Cosmetology faculty and staff in a less than two hours completely revamp their program to deal with our new reality. It was an amazing demonstration of collaborative work, out of the box thinking and truly caring about students and what’s best for them. I was massively impressed and in awe of them all. Then a bit later a faculty member shared a really uplifting note she got from one of her students. Those reminders of why we do what we do really helped today.
For all of us, that anxiety we’re feeling is likely to really ramp up over the next few weeks. A couple of things are about to happen, testing is expanding across the country so we are going to see a lot more positive cases. Second, the infection is going to continue spreading, today the US registered a higher number of cases than any other country on earth. So those numbers are going to get really scary, the news headlines will get ugly. The amount of stress and anxiety people have will expand. You also may see tighter restrictions on people, more shelter in place orders, schools are out until May and likely for the year. As all of this starts to settle in, people are going to get very anxious.
So get ready, people will get snippy, shorter with you, blow ups will be far more frequent on you social media platforms. But I have some great advice for you, unplug. You know what you need to know at this point. You know you have to social distance, you know going out to anyplace with people is a bad idea. The only thing you’re learning from the news and your social media is the equivalent of the details of a car crash. You don’t need that, it’s not good for you. So, listen to more music, watch more videos, read more books, in a socially responsible way get out of the house and walk, run, but most of all enjoy having the sun on your face. Be kinder than normal, be patient.
I know it sounds biblical as hell, but this too shall pass. We will come out the other side, but it’s going to be a hell of a ride the next two weeks, make sure you protect your psyche and take care of yourself. As always, you can reach out to me if you need to Happinesskane@aol.com helping someone else always make me, and likely you, feel a little bit better. ~ Michael “Rev” Kane
My Best Photo Posts
Which one of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow. ~ Imogen Cunningham
So at least for those of you in the United States, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. So tonight you are likely wired out with last minute shopping, prepping a huge meal or on the road to grandma’s house. So I figured tonight instead of something wordy you might all appreciate links to a lot of pretty pictures from a lot of pretty places, both my photos and the photos of others. Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Scotland
Glascow Scotland
The Phoenix Art Installation at Burning Man
You have within you,right now,everything you need to deal with whatever the world can throw at you. ~ Brian Tracy
So in my post on Sunday night, You will never be the same again, I recommended that one of the things you should do is to write about what’s happening to you during Covid Times. We are living during an exceptional time in history, and in the future people are going to want to know what it was like. And what it was really like, not just what it was supposedly like in their parents’ or grandparent’s exaggerated stories of walking barefoot through the snow uphill both ways to school to avoid the virus.
So, I decided to take my own advice and have decided that once a week I’ll write a little diary about my life in Covid Times. This will be a little different from what I normally write for the Ministry of Happiness blog. My end goal here won’t be to help you find ways to live a happier life, but just to relay an honest account of what I’m thinking and feeling as we go through a global pandemic.
Ok, so this really isn’t week one right? I mean China has been on fire with this virus for a couple of months and we knew it was coming, eventually. As someone who is what I would consider a light prepper, I was somewhat ready for this. By that I mean two things, first prepper light means I always have a disaster kit that includes several weeks of food and water, medical supplies. I have ways to defend myself and I’ve put a whole lot of thought into multiple what if scenarios. Secondly, I pay attention to the sorts of things that could lead to survival situations, political unrest, natural disasters and of course disease outbreaks that might become pandemics.
So as the news from China got worse, as the number cases started to grow worldwide, I moved into action. I bought a new backpack to replace my old go bag backpack. I ordered some additional dehydrated food supplies to add to my stock. I picked up some things that I needed to add to my supplies, rubbing alcohol, antibiotic ointment, there always seem to be a couple of things you’ve forgotten or are out of date in your kit. I did a Walmart run while in Sacramento for canned foods, they are far cheaper at Walmart and especially cheaper outside of the Bay Area.
I went to my storage space and brought all of my reserve food supplies to my home. So in addition to a full cupboard, I also have my tub of emergency supplies, pasta, Top Ramen, salt, pepper some other basics. I also brought my long-term emergency stash, I have liter soda bottles that I washed and sterilized and have filled with rice or beans. Basically a months supply of emergency rations and my case of MRE’s. Given all of this I now have probably 2-3 months of food in my house. Given the particular situation, I worried about how I might keep a good supply of fresh vegetables for a time, so I signed up for a CSA box and now every two weeks I get a box of fresh vegetables delivered to my home. I filled up my emergency water supplies so now I have about 14 gallons of water on hand. Not that I expect water to stop flowing, but it gives me a bit of comfort to know I have enough water for a week or so on hand if that should happen for any reason.
So basically I have all of the supplies I need. As this all started I stocked up on some things I also wanted and I got a 3 month supply of my most necessary medications, I also bought a gallon of ice cream.
Then it happened, the virus hit the United States, first just outside of Seattle an outbreak occurred. It didn’t take long before cases started to show up in the Bay Area, mostly around San Jose to the south of where I live. At that point, it was a matter of time before cases showed up where I live. We knew that it was being passed along by community transmission and that likely there were asymptomatic people transferring the virus in our area. Then, there were two people who tested positive at the Senior Center down the street from my place. That’s when it got real for me, that’s when I told people that it was a matter of time before we would have some time off from school/work. Two weeks later and it was obvious from all of the meetings I was suddenly having that we would be moving all instruction online. It really accelerated at that point, we went from classes online, to some staff working from home, to almost all staff, to a few people on campus, to recommending no one come to campus, to now a vice chancellor having to approve anyone going to campus and those approvals becoming rare.
I won’t go into all of the work stuff I’m dealing with, you can imagine, hell you’re going through it. A lot of meetings, a massive amount of change and a significant learning curve about the way we need to operate, the inevitable frustration with how and when decisions are made. That has nothing to do with my particular situation, regardless of how fast or how good the decisions are, when you don’t get to make them, when there is as much uncertainty as there is now, with all of the anxiety and fear, there will be frustration. But as I said, I think about this stuff all of the time, I’m good in an emergency, so for the first week or so as things were changing rapidly, as we were making literally hundreds of decisions a day, I was at my best. I enjoyed these days more than my normal days at my job, as morbid as that may sound. I also canceled my gym membership figuring a crowded germ filled gym would be a bad idea for a time.
The big change that drove a lot of what happened at work was the Bay Area’s six counties getting a shelter in place order. This basically meant, unless you really need to, stay the hell home. Initially it didn’t work that way so much, lots of people were still out and about, so was I a little, picking up the last little bit of supplies, my last lottery tickets for awhile, why not take a shot at getting rich while the world goes to shit for a time.
Sheltering in place is not a big deal for me. I’m a big time introvert, I don’t make friends easily, I live alone and I’ve only been here for about 8 months. So I don’t spend a lot of time with other people. So for me normally, I work, I go to the gym, I hike, walk the coast, I go to the track, the movies or take trips. But I do almost all of that alone.
So now, other than working from home, and lifting at home, I bought some freeweights to avoid going to the apartment complex gym, life is generally the same. I still go out everyday and walk or to run a bit. Sometimes I go to Mori Point in Pacifica, but there are too many people out still. Sometimes I hit a local trail but that is far more crowded than it used to be. So I’ve settled with walking around San Bruno. I’ve scoped out a two mile loop and most days run or walk that route. Once a week I need to go to the ocean and walk the coast for sanity reasons, but am careful with my distancing around the people there.
The first few days of shelter in place and people were nervous but mellow, but things are starting to get real for people. The number of infections are going up, yesterday was the first day that 100 people died in one day in the US. The growth curve for the disease in the US is disturbingly higher than then even the Italy curve, time will soon tell if that is a temporary situation or if we’re in real trouble, but it definitely has made people nervous. I heard conversations near the beach between two people who live in that neighborhood about how anyone not living in that neighborhood should go home and not bring their germs to the beach. Of course, they were standing a foot apart talking, breaking the most basic social distancing rule. I’ve read similar sentiments online from people in Marin County and from people in upstate New York about people from New York City. The most dangerous thing about a situation like this is not the virus, it’s the way society reacts.
People so far, have not reacted well. First they did a minor run on supermarkets including the standard things like hand sanitizer, cold medicines, thermometers, cleaning products, etc… then the second wave was the ingredients to make hand sanitizer (rubbing alcohol and aloe) along with Top Ramen, water, rice and beans. Oddly the first thing to sell out and remains sold out still is toilet paper, the minute it’s stocked it’s out. It makes no rational sense that people have freaked out about toilet paper. I’ve also started seeing surgical gloves and clorox wipes on the ground as litter. People are afraid to keep a used glove in their car. I’ve had a few friends express that they are starting to feel nervous. Some have reported friends or family who are ill or caught out of the country. People when they are scared start looking for scapegoats, get paranoid and start thinking us against them. If you want to see how bad this can shake out, find an episode of the original Twilight Zone online called the Monsters are Due on Maple Street.
The monsters on Maple Street
For me, so far no one in my life is sick enough to be hospitalized, although I have family members who may have had a mild case of the virus back in New York. My biggest fear is economic, I have a family member whose job is very much at risk. I have elderly parents, and aunts who are at high risk, I personally have all of the underlying comorbidities that could lead to a severe case were I to get infected. But I’m medicated and in good health and in pretty good physical condition, I’m older, but not yet 60, so my chances of survival would be ok. My mom is a 78 year-old smoker with poor respiratory health, we discussed the reality tonight that if she gets this disease, she’s likely dead. These are the type of scary realities that people are dealing with right now, which is why they are nervous and a bit freaked out. Not to mention that they are dealing with change, which they don’t handle well.
Right now, people are doing what they can so to try and be normal, to keep up appearances. I haven’t been impressed with people so far. I’ve watched people not take this disease seriously, I’ve watched them ignore social distancing rules, I’m watching them set up the framework for us against them. I still believe that overall this will be a far worse economic hit than it will be in terms of loss of life. Every death will be sad, of course, but the economic impact will be massive and if bad enough, will kill albeit indirectly, nearly the same amount of people. The hard times are actually not here yet, but they’re coming. In the next 3-4 weeks the deaths will start to add up quickly, the fear will grow exponentially and hopefully people’s better angels will prevail. It’s not a certainty that they will, and if they don’t, I worry about my family not about myself. Here’s hoping the madness stays at bay. ~ Michael “Rev” Kane
Happiness, Smiling and the Art of Being Positive
Smiling has an amazing range of impacts and I meant to write about that today until I found an absolutely amazing piece about smiling on the web, I think the article is absolutely perfect and here it is:
A natural flow from smiling is to be positive, remember that smiling, being positive and in the end being happy is a choice. You choose to decide whether your boss’ attitude, your team losing, or even the other driver in traffic is going to set you off, or if you decide to let it go and not let it disrupt your happiness. From the piece linked below here are some fantastic tips:
Hints and tips on becoming more positive
The link to this piece is below, have a great day and remember, happiness is a choice, choose to have a great day.
Happiness is Art: Storytelling
Staying Positive When You’re Taking Criticism
Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
You will never be the same again my friends. The world, and by default you, have forever changed. When your children are old they will tell their grandchildren about what it was like in Covid Times. How they survived the great pandemic, the things they saw, the things they did. You are living in this moment through utterly historic times. There has not been a truly impactful global pandemic in over a hundred years. No one knows exactly how this will play out, if they tell you they do, they are lying to you.
But our lives have already completely changed. I was thinking about this today as I was walking along the beach in Pacifica. With social distancing being the order of the day, I found myself carefully working to maximize distance as I went by people. I looked with extreme judgement at the people obviously flouting the rules of social distancing. Even stopping to take some photos, I put my arms on a railing and immediately thought about the need to avoid surfaces, to wash my hands as soon as possible. I wanted a Friday treat, thought about getting a pizza, or maybe just a Coke. But I opted instead to come home and raid my disaster supplies for a box of pasta and treated myself to pasta for dinner. I made that call because I decide the treat wasn’t worth the risk of interacting with people.
I sound paranoid don’t I, well I’m a diabetic, with high blood pressure and a heart condition, I’m 55 years old. As such, with those co-morbidities the virus is a higher risk for me. But as this pandemic continues to spread we will all begin to think this way, it’s just plain common sense survival.
Work has changed for many of us, at my community college there are no face to face classes while this proceeds. Teachers who never thought about, hell who utterly disliked the idea of, teaching online now are doing it. I have an 80+ year-old part-time faculty member who is learning many, many new things. We’re learning how to do everything virtually, I’m spending hours every day on Zoom meetings, some with video, some just on the phone. Email, phone, Zoom, text all happening nearly simultaneously is how I spend my days.
This is all just getting to be real for people, today I found more and more of my faculty and staff needed not specific questions answered, but just someone to talk with, to make a connection. I know my extroverted friends are struggling a bit, the worriers in my life are starting to max out. I’m fortunate in some ways, first I’m a bit of a prepper, I’ve been thinking about and planning for something like this for a long time. I have all the things I need stored in my house and as things started I quickly added to my supplies. I’m also a really large introvert, I spend a lot of time alone. At my job, the thing that wears me out everyday are all of the face to face personal interactions I have to engage in. Without those, I’m actually less stressed at the end of these days even with the level of stress we’re facing making lots of really fast and important decisions.
This disease will impact us all, friends and families will get ill, some may die. If the worst of the projections come close to being correct, because we don’t shelter in place appropriately, you will know a lot of people hurt by this disease. Kids growing up now will be permanently marked by having grown up during this pandemic.
Covid-19 has always been a greater threat to the global economy than global health. Like the SARS epidemic before it, this coronavirus will make many, many people sick, it will kill a lot of people, but likely not to the levels that the flu does, especially not the Spanish flu of 1918. But it’s a novel virus, it’s new, we have no immunity, we have no vaccine, any vaccine is optimistically a year away. According to disease experts, what truly brings us through this is a significant number of people becoming ill, recovering and gaining immunity, combined with a vaccine. The same combination that protects us from the flu every flu season. So until we reach an effective level of herd immunity we will likely be sheltering in place, maybe three months, maybe 5, maybe 8, no one knows for sure. Sheltering in place also slows the disease down, helps hospitals be not so overwhelmed, which in turn means more people with better care and more people surviving the disease. It seems somewhat surreal to even be writing this.
The economy is going to take a massive hit, businesses will fail, unemployment rates will be much higher than they were just weeks ago. We’ve seen the stock market, until a couple of weeks ago on the longest winning streak in history, suddenly take daily record hits in a negative direction. The Dow Jones has seen some of it’s biggest one day losses in history. The market’s gains of the last three years are gone. This will impact a lot of people’s retirements and retirement decisions. I’m already making different financial decisions based upon the way this disease is impacting the world and the people I care about. A lot of people will take financial hits, some will be broken financially. I imagine after the great pandemic has passed, we will do business differently, we will view trade and education differently. It will change the way we address health care, debt, and just about everything else will change. Some new businesses will also be born, innovation will spike, people with the means who invest correctly will become rich because of this situation.
We are already thinking different, working differently, shopping, connecting, exercising and even spending and saving differently. Hell some people are apparently going to the bathroom differently, how else do you explain the massive runs on toilet paper. We are living through historic times. So what do we do?
First of all don’t despair, worry is the enemy of happiness, despair doesn’t do anyone any good. This will end, this is not our new forever, just our new reality for a time. So it’s time to think like marines and follow one of their mottos; improvise, adapt and overcome.
We’ll have to improvise, at work, in teaching our children, we’ll need things we don’t have or can’t get, we’ll have to improvise new ways to do things we’ve always done in different ways. I hope you all have plenty of duct tape, seriously, that stuff is amazing.
We will have to adapt to our new reality. This is as much mental as physical. I hear an interesting interview with a man in Wuhan who has now been quarantined for months. He talked about having more difficulty going to the store, where he might have to deal with people, than he did being home alone after so much time isolated.
Overcome, we will overcome, should I have made that we shall overcome so we could burst into song? We will face this challenge, find new ways to live and do the things we want and need to do. The overwhelming majority of us will survive this challenge, some by avoiding and some by going through and surviving Covid-19. Eventually, given all the money, energy, support and effort being put into finding one, there will be a vaccine. Humans when appropriately motivated and pressed can be absolutely amazing. Scientists rock and like they have many times they will help save the day. Life will slowly get back to normal, well to a new normal anyway.
Friends, I suggest you document what’s going on. Keep a journal, take pictures, make videos, your young children, your future grandchildren, hell historians will appreciate it. Write about it, write about how it feels to go through this, it will help you and it will be fascinating for people to read in the future. It will be painful and beautiful for you to read and remember what it was like. It is overwhelmingly likely that no one alive today, will every go through a full blown global pandemic again in their lifetime. There will be a definite, life before, and life after the great pandemic, much like there was for the Great Depression, WWII, the assassinations of both Kennedys, Martin Luther King and 9/11.
While we’re in this it’s important to practice self-care. You not only have to take care of those around you, but also yourself. You’re of less help to those people if you’re wired and burned out. So find those moments for yourself. Maybe that’s early in the morning, or late at night, but find a spot and do something for yourself. Take a bath, read a book, meditate, eat a little chocolate, find a way to laugh. Take spots during the day, each day, to just stop and breathe. Even if it’s only the time to stop and take three deep breaths and let the tension drift. There are lots of meditation and nature videos on the web that you can just listen and relax to for a bit.
Helping others will always make you feel better. This is a really easy time to be able to help others. Even if it is just by checking in on someone, the elderly person down the street, a relative or even a friend. I’m making it a point each day to reach out to someone different, to connect in a real way. Not just a hello on Facebook or by text, but really connect, a full chat or even go old school and make a phone call. Let’s use this time to reconnect to people we’ve lost a little bit in our lives and remind ourselves and them of our connections.
A slower pace of life can make you happy
Don’t forget to celebrate! Celebrate everything! Any reason you can think of, make some stupid party hats, create a fancy snack, do shots of kool-aid. Do a Facetime, Zoom or Skype happy hour with friends, do a Netflix Watch Party. Have a it’s Wednesday party, stop everyday at 11:11 and pretend it’s New Years Eve.
Get better! Read, exercise, develop better eating habits, research out of where some pirate might have buried their treasure and then go search for it when all of this is over. Design the ultimate vacation to take when things get back to our new normal. Learn a new language with a free app like Duolingo, play that guitar in the closet. Invent a new story, maybe you’ll become the next JK Rowling.
As with everything, our attitude is everything. Keep yourself positive and if you find yourself slipping reach out to someone who can help. If there is no one else, reach out to me, Happinesskane@aol.com. I’ll be thrilled to chat with you and help you raise a smile, it will make me feel good as well.
And while you’re home here’s a post with literally hundreds of thousands of things to do. Gallery tours, concerts, images, videos, activities for kids, free digitized books, free audiobooks and couple of pretty pictures thrown in for good measure.
I absolutely know you can, so have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified? ~
So for the last week I’ve been collecting virtual activities off of social media, here’s a collection to help make your time stuck in the house a little happier. ~ Rev Kane
I’m going to start with this one, the NY Philharmonic Digital Archive, this one is personal as my brother works there, so give it lots of hits so they keep him working. 🙂
The Bucket Shot, a 20 minute video on the photo of a lifetime
A link to 450 Ivy League courses you can take online.
A great blog post, by my friend Shari
63 experiments for kids to do at home with household stuff
100’s of free children’s audiobooks to listen to on Audible
If that’s not enough 6000 Digitized Children’s Books
A blog post containing one of the best stories of ever heard, Remember the Sweet Things
Take a virtual tour of Hawaii
Watch a video stream of the Northern Lights
A little something to mess with your mind
300,000 downloadable books from the New York Public Library
A list of upcoming live concerts you can watch at home
Activities to keep college students active, but a lot of these could be adapted for younger students
33 Virtual National Park tours that you can take from home
Library resources you can access from home. This is a truly amazing list put together by the Portland Library.
100,000 images from French Art Museums
Scholastic has put a bunch of learning modules for kids online
Apollo 13, a multimedia presentation where you can follow this flight to the moon. The site offers the same for Apollo 11 and Apollo 17.
Five astronomy and space related activities, this includes the Apollo sites above.
The Berlin Philharmonic Concert archive, lots of concerts online as well as streaming concerts.
12 museums with virtual tours online
The Ministry of Happiness 
