Are you a procrastinator? I’m not, and I’ve struggled to understand the phenomenon, each time in my life that I’ve had to deal with people who are. But I’m beginning to understand it a little better these days….

For 13 years, marathons, half’s and lots of other races have been part of my life. I’ve run from many of life’s disasters, and it has helped keep me sane — much like my piano has done all my life. And I trained hard, for months, to scale El Capitan. Definitely no procrastinating.

Right now, while we all stay home to flatten the curve of this Corona virus, there’s lots of available time. We should all be getting out there every day.

And yet…

I’ve gone running only 3 times since last week. Not much, not long. I know exercise is necessary, especially now. I know I always feel much better all day when I’ve gone for a run. And still I can’t talk myself into changing my clothes and getting out the door…

I think a pandemic is just too much for me to process. It will end; we know that. People will continue. Not all of them. But most. I know the history of other epidemics and pandemics — I lived through the tail end of the polio epidemic with a polio victim, my mother. I know the numbers. But that doesn’t seem to make it any easier to absorb.

How are you absorbing it all?

I watch (online) in amazement as a friend builds a climbing gym in his basement. Another trains daily for a foreign marathon. What energizes them every day, that I’m missing? Is he not watching the news? Has she not seen images of the rows and rows of caskets lined up awaiting cremation? How does one turn that off and just get on with life, with enthusiasm?

Tinges of energy do sneak into my daily life, here and there. I go running (not often enough), and enjoy the spring flowers and flocks of turkeys. I go walking…but while I walk, I wish I were walking to my favorite coffee shop to meet friends or to work, instead of just my CoVid home-to-home loop.

Most evenings, I sit at my piano, at least a little, and some beautiful music does happen…but instead of the consolation it usually brings me, now it just makes me sadder. The world I lived in while I learned all that music no longer exists. And may never be back. At least, not like it was before.

As I said in my last blog, I hate good-byes.

But I have to believe that after all the sudden, final good-byes are done, vigor and color will return to my life. To our lives.

In the meantime, storms and tornados are raging across the midwest. Hospital ships sail into New York Harbor. Life goes on.

But not for everyone.