I’ve been taking walks lately, trying to make sure I get enough exercise to keep my hypertension at bay. I hate walking for its own sake, but I’ve found I can stimulate the “getting things done” part of my brain if I can turn the walk into an errand. There’s a store about a fifteen minute walk from here, so every day I look around the house, find some random household item we’re low on, and then hike to the store and buy it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Technically the errand is pointless. If we’re low on obscure and rarely-used item, then I don’t really need to hike to the store to buy more. I could simply add it to the shopping list and we’d get it with the weekly groceries. Walking to the store for a single item is a silly ritual, but it really does help motivate me. My overall goal is “keep my heart in shape so I don’t die”. That’s a very long-term goal where progress is measured over the course of months or even years. It’s a bit demoralizing to get home from a walk all tired and out of breath, flop down in my chair, and realize I just made 0.001% progress towards my goal. Being able to come home and say, “Hey, we were out of cumin but I took care of it,” is far more rewarding. I wonder what the cashier thinks of the odd man that comes in every morning to do his grocery shopping one item at a time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This trip to the store has also been providing me with a daily reminder that COVID is still a thing. I walk in the door, see all the people running around with a mask drooping across the front of their face, hanging far below the nose and just barely obscuring their mouth. This reminds me that there’s a pandemic going on, which prompts me to put on my own mask.In case you’re wondering: I’ve got a quality mask and I know how to wear it properly<\/b>. The nose-out style drives me bonkers. Aside from negating most of the benefits of wearing a mask, it looks ridiculous<\/b>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n Before I started taking these walks, I’d often forget about the pandemic for weeks at a time because it just doesn’t assert itself in my life the way it does everyone else’s. I’m a massive introvert, I work from home, and I’m apparently immune to cabin fever.\u00a0<\/p>\n The latest Errant Signal was a sharp reminder that this is not the case for everyone. Chris Franklin is apparently getting worn down by the routine:<\/p>\n