Living in Intermission

 Sooooo what’s it like having Covid?

If this were 2019 I’d say it was an inconvenient head cold and be back to work in 3 or 4 days, but because it is Covid I’ve had to be off work and isolated for 10 days.

The Great Interrupter: I had to cancel plans for a bike trip. At the front end of my quarantine was a 3-day trip I’d planned and negotiated a day off from work. I had train tickets and a hotel booked, all for naught. Then at the end of quarantine I cancelled friends coming from Chicago to visit. I just didn’t want to have to deal with the possibility that they could get sick. All of this has been stressful—more impacting my psyche than physical.

More than ever it has again reminded me of the Lockdown, when in spring 2020 we were told to shelter in place. Where I felt I was living a parallel existence. As I’ve been in isolation is seems as if spring has finally arrived. The weather got hot, then cooled off. There was a storm. The trees flowered and ripened and have begun to lose their petals. There has been abundant sunshine on the days I would have been riding that made me lament the sun and cloudy days where I felt better about my decision to follow the rules.

Now as I near the end of the Covid guidelines for isolating and restricting contact—it’s bittersweet. I haven’t a lot to show for the past 10 days. Except the world has gotten greener and I was able to sit outside and listen to the birds. Maybe this was what I should have been doing all along.

Yet it was hard to be “present” when every minute I wanted to be elsewhere.