(April 4, 2020)
As I got out of my car and hit the trail for my Saturday
trail run I was excited to be out of my house and into the forest. Since I have been in quarantine, the Saturday
and Sunday runs are important because they mark another week and it is the one
time outside of grocery shopping that I get out of the house and I feel free
from my worries.
About four miles into my ten mile run, my brain was
searching for today’s date, which recently has been something that takes longer
than it used to. Since the quarantine,
remembering the date and the day of the week has become increasingly hard and
when things happened in the past even harder.
I can’t for the life of me understand why I am having such a
hard time with remembering the day of the week, the date, and when I did
something in the recent past. After all
my life is pretty much documented by time and date. As a runner I diligently log every mile I
run, how long it took me, and the time of the day I started my run.
Even though I am working from home, my work is centered
around dates and time, I have meetings scheduled at certain times and podcasts
at other times. In fact, we are all more
punctual then when we had meetings in a conference room and it seemed it took
fifteen or twenty minutes to settle in to business. Now it is a few minutes and
onto the discussion. If there is any
informal chitchat, it happens at the end of the web-based meeting. As if we are all desperately holding on to
that social connection we didn’t realize was so important until we don’t have
it.
I have very quickly settled into a quarantined routine. I wake up about the same time every morning
get on the treadmill for about the same amount of time every day. Though I do vary my workouts from steady runs,
to interval runs, to steady incline hikes not only for fitness purposes but so
the routine is well, not so routine. I
head to my office aka my dining room table, and go to work Monday through
Friday.
The big decision of the day is what will we have for
dinner? This is the one question that
sparks the most interest in an otherwise monotonous day.
It seems like life is such a blur like there is a fog
hanging over me and I am waiting to live again.
Even my conversations with those on the phone are becoming slightly more
difficult because my standard opening line is to ask “What’s new?” Obviously
nothing is.
What concerns me also is that I know that others are
starting to feel the same way. We are
patiently biding our time waiting go back to our lives again.
It is as if time has stood still and we are in an endless
time loop. Things that happened just
before the pandemic do not seem like a month ago but years ago. It is as if the pandemic changed the timeline
of history and everything that happened before it occurred, is ancient history.
As I continue my run with the tumblers of my brain
desperately searching for the date it comes to me April 4th. “Ah yes” I thought to myself. I was supposed to be doing a race today. It was a trail half marathon that I done the
last few years and I was really looking forward to it. I always enjoyed that challenging run. I was
going to use it as tune up for a 50k in Utah in the middle of April. That however was it seems in another life
those races are canceled. I will so look
forward doing a race again. Runners are always anticipating the next race.
That anticipation is not just for runners we all have events
that occur that mark our life and of course time. We look forward and backward on those events,
whether they are family parties, a night out for dinner, a sporting event, the
opening of a new movie, or a vacation.
Without these events, time is just numbers on a
calendar. They hold almost no meaning.
As I continue down the trail, a bit down about the canceled
race. I see time moving forward and
changing. It is slight but it is
unmistakable that time is moving forward.
The path I am running down is greener then it was when I last ran on it. The difference was subtle but enough for me
to document with a photo. Spring is
coming and will not being held back by COVID-19. It is only a small hint now but I know that
soon this same run, will be filled with bright colors. Mother Nature’s calendar is not measured by
numbers artificially created by man, she has her own cycles that she has
followed for eons. She is oblivious to
our quarantine of time.
No season symbolizes hope like spring. It is the season of rebirth. I am now more
positive. We will once again have the
events that we use to mark time. We however
are like the flora and fauna in winter.
They have to bide their time and wait for the days to get longer and
warmer. They cannot rush Mother Nature. We cannot rush this quarantine either it is
not on our schedule. We will get out of
time warp and live our lives again.
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