Terrorizing Myself

Terrorizing Myself

These days, my morning protocol is to start by understanding what obligations for video calls or meetings I have in the early morning. That is a normal situation I imagine for many people who live on the West Coast since we are three hours displaced from New York and eight or nine hours offset from Europe. While I have done plenty of business with Asia over the years, my connections do not tend in that direction now, so generally I am asked to engage early in my morning in order to be midday or late day for my counterparts. In some ways, being a morning person, this early morning alignment suits me. I do battle the shower or not to shower issue since the dry climate out here makes me very aware of dry skin and the ill-advised nature of showering too much. The eight or none months of warmer weather are not an issue, one must bath daily no matter what, but the winter months, as short-lived as they are, make for somewhat more optionality. I also have to factor in my hot tubbing schedule and whether that is accompanied with an outdoor shower afterwards. The scaling effects of water chemicals like chlorine cannot be ignored even if you are otherwise clean. As you can tell, these days of fewer work obligations has left a big opportunity for me to overthink my situation on the most mundane issues and thereby bore myself with the details of personal decision-making that normally get handled reflexively. I fear that I may have started terrorizing myself over unnecessary issues.

After my morning ablutions, whatever they may be, are finished, I must dress. There are three fundamental decisions involved with this with only modest impact from the immediate local weather. When I lived in New York, checking the weather was a big part of my daily sartorial decision-making, but out here it really is unusual for weather to factor in. It is early January and I know it will start cool and get to 70 and be pleasant all day without added clothing. I do notice that I am wearing long pants in winter months and short pants the rest and majority of the year. That is the first level of decision for sure. Besides temperature reasons, there is the added sense of whether I plan to take a motorcycle ride or do some heavy-duty yard work, both of which require long pants. I am tempted to comment about my regression to a more immature mindset and the whole short-pants symbolism, but this is not yet a true state for me. The second dress decision is whether I plan to be working around the house or mostly going out and about. If it is the former, I try to wear long and short sleeved t-shirts in some combination that give me a two-layer covering, but minimal laundering cost, where the range of cool to hot gets somewhat addressed, but not enough that it can’t be fixed with a polar-tech vest if needed. I find it important to wear a tailored shirt every few days just to remind myself that I am a civilized man that needs to maintain a small bit of decorum on video calls or in being out and about. The last, but not inconsequential, issue is socks or sockless. Since I am a devoted Crocs wearer, sockless is my preference, but I am finding that winter is somewhat synonymous to the warmth, comfort and flexibility that socks afford. I also think my poor feet need a respite from the beating they take in an outdoor sockless environment. Working through my wardrobe is a form or taxing my mind in the early morning and contributes to feeling some terror of the situation.

After ablutions, morning conference calls or testimony and the concomitant dressing process, I am free at last to head South to the Kitchen side of the house. This allows me to engage with the world around me. It may just be to say hello to Kim and Betty, or, as is the case today, to greet our houseguests and workmen. We have formed a COVID-free pod with Gary & Oswaldo, so there is no masking decision to be had there. That is the only way to go with houseguests since it is a huge difference in the ease and preference for interaction. That is not the case with workmen, whether the routine deck crew or some other workers here for the lighting, Shadesail, garden, roof or God knows what. We are adamant that we mask seriously with those parties, so I am never without two masks in my back pocket. Indeed, part of dressing is that I always add a handkerchief to the back right pocket and two masks (one high-quality cloth and one disposable synthetic fabric…I have abandoned gator masks for reasons of general disdain about their effectiveness) to the back left pocket. I keep masks in the kitchen and in both cars as well. I am not terribly bothered by masking, but I do feel a certain terrorism or at least tyranny associated with needing to mask-up before interacting with people beyond my inner circle. I have noticed an interesting decision point on the motorcycle or in the car. The motorcycle depends on whether I am using a full-coverage helmet or an open-faced helmet. If the latter, I prefer to wear a mask since even though it is outdoors, it feel exposed to be maskless out on the street (especially in stoplight traffic). The car boils down to who is in it (usually only ourselves or our pod) and whether I am going through a drive-through. The pharmacy is easy since they have a bullet-proof glass barrier that looks like it would even stop a Capital riot mob. But the fast food operations with a payment and then delivery window are different. If my arm is three feet and their arm is three feet I just barely keep my required social distance. That is simply not good enough, so I always don my mask for those interactions. Then I wonder about the surface infection issue. The fast-food crowd is exposing themselves for $12/hour, so they use pay trays and sealed food bags to make themselves and me feel better. Kim always immediately forces hand sanitizer on me right after and yet right before we open the bags and I shove my change into my pocket. I just hope COVID surface survival is as unlikely as I hope it is. Any way you look at it, this type of thought process (which happens almost every day to some degree) is a form of self-terrorism.

I could probably find more events in the day to over-think and thereby terrorize myself, but I am already weary of the topic. These days we all face terror every day in one form or another. I’m not sure if that has always been the case from some source or the other, but I sense that it is markedly greater these days thanks mostly to COVID, but also due to the political environment and, to an added certain extent, the economic environment. When I traveled the Emerging Markets of the world in the 80’s and 90’s, we used to define risk as political, criminal and biological, in building order of severity and cause for concern. I guess it hasn’t changed, but what has changed is that this used to be a voluntary risk spectrum we embraced and not one that found us in our home and in the bosom of our family and friends. Now it has found its way into our daily lives no matter where we live. I somehow think that I am supposed to terrorize myself in order to make myself safer and, in the long run, more and more immune to its effect. It is like a Congressman who is a veteran being less frazzled by rioters in the Capitol than the ex-school-teacher who has never faced that sort of risk. I have eaten lots of Emerging Markets dirt and faced lots of violence even though I am not a veteran. Actually, I guess I am a veteran of terrorizing myself.