Muting The Sun

 These past six months have been like groundhog's day around here, and I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that. The work from home order has been lifted to an extent - I am working from home 3 days a week, and in the office 2 days. I am a person of numerous fixed habits and with the ability to go anywhere freely, the habits are all one has, really. So I am evidently stuck at perfecting them because, well, there's nothing else to do around here.

Fortunately the pandemic came on the lead-end of summer when people could get outdoors and do socially distant outdoor activities. It has saved me. My bike, my walks and my kayak have kept me out of the mentally unstable ward at the local hospital. You throw a highly charged political race, unprecedented runaway wildfires, a hundred protests and riots and, well the outdoors is all a person has some days. 

The problem with all of it is...winter is coming. Sure you can go outside, but it's not the same. I'm going into it with the attitude that I'm going to be more active about my skiing and walking, but I know it's all lies. If it's dark after work, getting the energy up to do anything more than drink dark beer is a struggle.

But if you're like me, you gotta keep positive. We all do. No one needs to foster more despair and lamentation. There's plenty of that already - just check your Facebook feed. The thing is, even people who don't like negativity, myself included, have taken to griping because it's more accepted during these tough times. Heck, it's probably even therapeutic. I'll tell you, it helps me some days.

For example, today I took a bike ride, much like I do every night after work. When I saw the muted, orange sun in the sky, my first thought was apocalyptic loathing about all the California fires that caused the sun to look like I'm looking through our van windows when the kids were small. I tried to turn it into a "Wow, isn't that cool?" moment, but I know in my heart that is a smoke-screen, literally, to the bigger global problem of climate change. 

But still, I took lemons and tried to make lemonade. And that's what the state of my world is like for the moment. And I'm going to continue to try and turn the bad to good. I'll look for joy in the small things, hope and pray that things change, and do what I can to help any of it.

Blogging off...

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