Days Like No Other

On Sundays I usually spend a great deal of time working on Self Help Radio.  I usually have hours of music to listen to (but I've hopefully done that before Sunday) which means I have many songs to sift through.  I have my silly interviews & "comedy" to edit.  I have the entire thing to put together & then to write stuff about.  Because of the fake interviews, I don't write as much as I used to - that work is being done for the Dickenbock Report now - but there's still information to look for & organize.

Maybe I've not mentioned this, but when we moved to Oregon - gosh, it's almost been a year - we worried a bit about our dogs.  In Texas they had a magnificent backyard, but the rental we got had a treeless, almost grassless square in the back that would have perhaps made a great "beginner's yard," but was nothing to write home about.  So, to engage the pups - already traumatized by the four-day journey across half the country - we started walking them twice a day.  The walks - in the morning & evening, when possible - take about an hour each time, often more.  That means some time between an eighth & a sixth of my waking hours is spent walking dogs.

Not that I don't enjoy it, & not that I'm unaware of the health benefits to me.  But it can be quite a hole blown into one's daily routine when one has a lot of work to do.  & Sundays - since September - have been quite busy days for me.

Until last week.  That's when I decided, upon hearing that Freeform was closing its doors to help deal with the pandemic, that I'd not do Self Help Radio for a while, with the excuse that I preferred to do it live.  & that Sunday was just fucking weird.

This Sunday has been worse.  I have this sense - I'm sure I'll feel it tomorrow morning too - that I'm not doing what I should be doing.  I am unable to enjoy this as if it were a vacation.  Although to be fair enjoying anything at all in these times seems awkward & even impolite.

Though, please, enjoy life.  We'll need something like joy to help us through this.  It's obvious very few who are "in charge" - I speak of those at the national level - have any real sense of the urgency of this & will many blame others when the dust settles & we see what's left.

Which is ultimately why it's weird to talk about my life or my dumb radio show.  Dylan once sang,

I wish I'd been a doctor
Maybe I'd have saved some lives that'd been lost
Maybe I could've done some good in the world
Instead of burning every bridge I crossed

It's astonishing to hear Bob Dylan be so self-piteous - his music has helped me beyond calculation - but I sympathize with the sentiment.  The best I've done this past week is cooked for the wife & made prerecorded radio shows for Freeform.  Yes, I've avoided hoarding toilet paper & willfully defying social distancing requirements, but even I can't imagine being such an asshole.

How weird to yearn for the Sundays I was scrambling to put a radio show together!  They seem so far away - two weeks ago! - & in a world that simply no longer exists.