I guess it has been close to three weeks since the “Stay at Home” directive was issued by my state government here in Virginia. Oftentimes I lose track of the current date and time of day unless I bother to pick up my iPhone. The last two and a half weeks has been a roller coaster of emotions: anxieties, fears, depression, hope and indifference. I’ve swung from extremes of just wanting to bury my head underneath my pillow waiting for someone to tell me its over – this is just a nightmare, or in reference to my previous post, hope that this crisis will bring about transformative change in our society and our world.
Going through what the vast majority of the world is going through right now, it is easy to worry about things you can’t control. I can’t control what government officials are doing to combat this virus. I don’t have the medical expertise or background to deploy myself to the front lines in emergency rooms. I don’t even have control over my current occupation other than the fact that I am still blessed to receive paychecks; my employer and customer still view me as essential. Tens of millions of people unfortunately do not have that security – they have been furloughed or lost their means of income completely – they are struggling on how to pay rent/mortgage and feed their families during this storm. Only till recently have I started to think about what I can control and reflect on certain aspects of my life and how I can improve myself and most importantly my relationship with my spouse and children.
Touching on the positive, this global pandemic has provided me with an opportunity to reconnect with my family, more specifically my wife of nearly 19 years. Prior to the coronavirus I felt like we were two passing ships in the night with distinctly different careers and day-to-day experiences. My typical weekday would begin like this: 6:00 AM – crawl out of bed, put on my gym wear, feed our now deceased pet (will touch on this in a later post), hit the gym, 7:25 AM – come home to shower and dress, drop one if not both of our sons off at school, 8:45 – 9:15 AM commute to work, work in front of a computer terminal 8 – 10 hours, return home, have dinner, shuffle someone off to or pick up someone from practice, come home and upon insistence from my wife, collect iPhones and other electronic devices from the boys and head to bed. Sometimes I would fall asleep on the couch watching MSNBC or CNN trying to catch up on the latest drama from this current Administration. This schedule became so routine and monotonous that I was becoming extremely bored with my life. It felt as if there was a void in a life that outwardly would appear to be a dream for most people – a beautiful, proficient and professional wife, two healthy and rapidly growing boys, a large home situated off of a well-manicured golf course and no drama.
What also increased the sense of isolation for me personally was the business that my wife started about three years ago – a floral business that is gaining a profound reputation here in Loudoun County, VA. I would help her out with deliveries of her exquisite floral designs to reception halls, country clubs and hotel ballrooms – renting a U-haul van and relishing my alter-ego as the “Redneck Trucker”. I have a lot of fun driving for her business and volunteering to help her – but what I was suppressing was a level of envy and jealously for how she was able to identify and monetize a dream. I also selfishly was developing envy from seeing how happy she was living her dream. I was still affected by being forced out of a job with a company I had envisioned reaching career heights with almost three years ago to this date. My five month process in 2017 to find a new job to maintain the lifestyle I had created was out of desperation a search for income. Thus what I currently do for a living is about supporting myself and my family, but I do not derive any passion or joy from it.
Up until 2017 I worked in a sales support role. That role provided variety… variety of customers, variety of day-to-day taskings, variety of job sites and travel to different parts of the U.S. including attending sales conferences in places like Orlando or Las Vegas. Although I was not happy all of the time necessarily – at the end of the day it was still work – the variety gave me a sense of purpose, balance and control. I was on planes flying to a fro, I would present my wife with a 3 to $4000.00 check quarterly. I felt control and masculine in my role as a “provider”. “Daddy” would fly into Dulles from San Francisco on a Friday morning red eye with that paper, kiss the wife, hug the kids.
Now in my current role I am fairly well-compensated, but the mundane aspects of my job leads to boredom. In the context of all of this it lead to complacency in my career, my marriage and in some ways my relationship with my two sons. Sometimes as an outlet I would do silly things like joining chat rooms online to strike up conversations with people and with other women. I never impulsively attempted to physically meet people or to engage further with virtual strangers, I just needed a “safe” or “harmless” distraction or a break from my reality. I had no desire to hang out with people beyond the circle of friends I have at the gym, nor meet people at bars or nightclubs. Mostly I was exhausted from my daily routine and I’ve always known inside how truly blessed I am to have the family I have; I never would place that at risk.
The virus has brought this hamster wheel I was on to a screeching halt. The first week I was filled with anxiety and worry – worried if I was going to lose the very job I’m bored with, worried about my wife contracting the virus from a patient, angry at the Federal Government and its lackadaisical response. Glued to CNN, MSNBC, the Internet – especially the Johns Hopkins website that keeps a tally of number of infections and deaths nationally and worldwide. Worried above all else when we are going to return to a sense of normalcy.
But now as I sit here this morning with my fingers on my keyboard I view this disruption as necessary for me. Its given me a time to pause and reflect on my life – where I’ve been and God willing where I’m headed. It has also put into perspective what is most valuable to me. I needed this break to slow down, conduct some inner soul searching and take into account the blessings God has bestowed on me. Most importantly I realized how important my marriage and my relationship with my children is.
During a period where disease and death is ravaging our world community you realize how precious life is and the people you care about. In the midst of this pause, I can reconnect with the woman I’ve shared a life with, including the period that we dated for over 20 years. I can reflect on what made me attracted to her, why I love her. The exemplary mother that she is. The supportive and encouraging wife that she is – she’s is constantly on me about writing/blogging. Most importantly it gives me an opportunity to rediscover her – people change over the course of years and relationships have to evolve to meet that change. I feel very passionately on rediscovering her mind, increasing our level of intimacy and focus on being a better partner to her. How I can be a better father to my two sons as they slowly transition through adolescence to young adulthood in a short amount of years. I want to help her continue to build her business, to market her brand – its OUR business, not just hers as I unshackle the chains of envy. Most importantly I want to continue to pour my hear and soul into writing as it gives me a sense of purpose, a sense of balance not dependent on a job or career. Coronavirus might very well be the impetus of change I needed in my life.
Chronicles in the Black 
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