The Burn

I know, I know, if I'm not going on and on unprompted about Switzerland, I'm almost certainly going on and on about having COVID, but look, it's a long, slow summer of being way too hot for probably the last time at the normal amount of too-hotness before global climate finishes going entirely freaky-deaky and we're all under our beds from April to November because regular house walls won't be enough to keep out the UV rays. Ironically the sunblock sector of the economy will collapse because the only safely effective level of SPF recommended will be "under 90 feet of solid rock."*

This isn't specifically about COVID, except for the parts where it explicitly is, but you'll be able to pick them out easily by the whinging tone of martyrdom.

What I'm thinking of today instead is the knock-on effects of a pandemic, not COVID specifically but anything on this scale that ignites a genuine public health crisis. Well, for those of us who were weak-willed enough to believe it was an actual health crisis and not a plot by the globalist-occupied Center for Disease Control to keep us all locked up so we couldn't exercise our god-given rights to haircuts and Chipotle. Those among us who clung to resistance using only their LIBERTY ANTIBODIES will be too occupied doing the math on how the government got one million crisis actors to pretend to have been killed by the pandemic to read this.

I was only isolated for five days, entirely isolated I mean, like myself behind a closed door in a single room (well, two if you count the bathroom en suite), and that was enough of a psychological toll. But I've always found myself to be sufficient company, even preferred company as needed. There are those who cannot sit with themselves, but I find those people impossible to understand. Not only have I never sought out a crowd (only ever braced to endure one), but there are times (sometimes several in the course of a day) when just the sound of another person breathing near me is a clamoring din. Especially after opting in to parenting, its those stolen moments of utter stillness in your place of enveloping safety--alone! at home!--where you can really finally let your face muscles relax and not wonder at all, if only for a little while, about your undiagnosed clinical-level social anxiety disorder.

What I'm finding to be more of a strain, therefore, is the end of those degrees of isolation. Since my son who lives here got COVID after me, I wasn't allowed to go in to work even after I was better due to hygiene rules in place discouraging accidental second-hand spread of some kind. That was OK! The day before going back was a grumpy, skin-itchy nightmare of mood, like a month's worth of normal Sunday evenings all packed into one.

I did it though, and survived. I didn't even snap at anyone unnecessarily or run and mentally hide behind terrible, rote office humor about coffee or Mondays, because I have integrity and was working on about 4 hours sleep, so I'm not sure I caught much of what anyone was saying. But mostly: integrity.

Yesterday though I did the thing there is no thinking yourself around: I went back to the gym for the first time. I had good excuses: COVID coughing had caused me to pull or irritate something in my ribcage on my right side, so moving at speed or with effort was not a great idea until that was tolerable. Also, the coughing? That hung in there. You don't want to be the guy in the cardiofitness class hacking all over in the midst of a pandemic. Granted gym people are more likely to assume they're immune because they had their bee pollen or whatever in their chicken-breast smoothies that morning, but I'm not responsible for their behavior, I'm responsible for mine.

I went and managed not to vomit out my lungs, but I can tell you, my lungs did consider escape more than once. The class I used to use for stress release and to push myself had, in the course of an idle two months, turned into an Everest climb, one set of jump squats at a time. Luckily, as a man, I had my stupid pride to keep myself pushing beyond what as reasonable on the first day back in front of other people. I wasn't committed to making myself pass out, but if that was the outcome, that was going to be the goddamned outcome.

I didn't pass out. Instead I'm here the next day, alive, dangerously under-hydrated and feeling the two-day crippling post-workout constriction and burn begin to set in. I know I did some damage. Right now the stairs are the north face of a sheer wall I'd rather not consider scaling, but I've done this to myself.

By "this" I mean go to Switzerland and get COVID. Those meathead "no days off" gym people, I get it now. It's not machismo, it's terror of Not Doing It. Like junkies fending off withdrawal. But with better defined deltoids.

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*Oooh, this reminds me, don't let me forget to tell you about the cave I went to in Switzerland. I went recently, you know.