The Road Is Easier To Travel When You Learn How To Drive

Good morning! I hope your day is off to a nice start.

Well, the weekend is over. I’d ask if you got out and did anything fun, but we all know the answer to that question. Hopefully you still enjoyed some down time. You know, cleaning the house, watching TV, breaking up fights between the kids … I have a feeling when this is all over, nobody will have a problem going back to work. “Overtime? Sure! I’ll do it for free!”

Hopefully you’re able to work anyway, but for most of us that means working in a house full of other people. Conference calls are routinely interrupted by small children, barking dogs, and people walking through the room in varying stages of undress. Let’s just say video conferencing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Especially when the camera is pointed in the wrong direction.

So far, I’ve gotten dressed every single day. Not once have I reported to work in my pajamas. That’s not so much dedication as the fact that our basement gets really cold. The air conditioner is on upstairs, and I’ve got a space heater going downstairs. And I wear shoes because … well, that floor! I’m afraid my socks would stick to it. Maybe it’s time for me to do some cleaning.

I got a little help in that department last week. You know all those images on social media of huge wads of paper towels being pulled from municipal sewers? Well, apparently my neighbors never saw that, because the city had to clean the lines out and guess where it backed up? All around my floor drain, it looked like Main Street after the parade. Try not to visualize.

You know what’s worse than cleaning up you-know-what from the basement floor, ten feet from where you work all day? Not knowing whose it is. And my lower back is so messed up I can’t bend over to pet the dog. I guess I could just sit down on … nope! Not happening! And since nobody else will do it for me, I did the best I could. That’s why God made Clorox.

Okay, enough on that. We’re all trying to deal with some inconveniences right now and figure out a new way of getting through the days. I read an article yesterday that predicted when this is over, we’ll all have to get used to a new “normal.” I don’t think there’s any denying that. The question is, what will that be? And what can we do to be better prepared the next time?

Okay, stockpiling toilet paper still seems to top that list. I can’t imagine what people are doing with it, because after all this time, the stores are still sold out. Well, they’re sold out of the good stuff. It’s easy to see where our priorities lie, because yesterday in Sam’s Club, they had six pallets loaded with their own store brand, and not a single roll of anything else.

But we have preferences. Once our tushie gets used to a certain brand and softness, we don’t want to try anything new. Especially in a 72-roll jumbo pack. What if the good stuff comes in next week? What will you do with all that store-brand paper? Well, I have a feeling teens will have no problem with that one. In a single night, it’ll be all over the police chief’s yard.

I guess what I’m saying is preparation never goes completely to waste. It may not be the answer you’d hoped for, but in a pinch you do what you have to do. In the past two weeks, 10 million people have filed for unemployment. Not because they wanted to, but because they work in an industry where working from home simply isn’t an option. That could be any one of us.

And you know, the next crisis may hit an entirely different segment of the population. Instead of a pandemic, it could be a crash of the nation’s power grid or information network, and those of us who feel pretty secure right now would be scrambling for work. If this crisis has taught us anything, it’s that it can happen. And merely surviving isn’t enough. There are still bills to pay.

I was lucky. I had a second source of income – two, in fact – and I have a job that works well with telecommuting. Even still, I know I have to develop those secondary sources of income to the point I could rely on them in a pinch. We all do. And if you don’t have a secondary source of income, what are you waiting for? Another crisis?

Some of us take vitamins every day. We may never know whether they’re making a difference, but we do it anyway. We pay for insurance, hoping we’ll never need it. And, apparently, we stash a lot of toilet paper. But if the money runs out, none of that matters. Extra income is nice to have – until you really need it. Then it’s worth whatever it took to get there.

That’s all for now. Have an awesome day!

© 2020 Dave Glardon – All rights reserved

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