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Writer's pictureHarry Dearden

Three Year Update: Don't Call it a Comeback & Quarantine Blues

Updated: Feb 8, 2021


I am happy to say that after three years of back-and-forth with my website provider (who shall remain nameless), I have access to sweatertalk.com again! With that comes my thoughts and ramblings

It's been a while since I last made a post. I gleefully thought I'd be pumping out content once a week for this site, but that was not the case. Better late than never during this quarantine is what I live by now.

What is there to say that hasn't been said. This quarantine straight-up sucks. It's zapped my motivation and drive. It's surprisingly hard to wake up and go to sleep at decent hours. Safe to say I've taken advantage of human connections and personal freedom. Staying at home in quarantine is definitely new for a lot of us. For me, it's been two months of staying home, only leaving for groceries and walking my dog Rico.

Finding ways to fill in that extra 40 hours a week can be a wicked challenge. You see, I came into the quarantine after a vacation without a job lined up. So when coming back, I was expecting to jump on that job application grind. While Val, my better half, has gone back to her gig, working remotely 40 hours a week.

Without anything to do, the mind started to wander. You can only watch so many reruns of Property Brothers and Great Canadian Bakeoff. Usually, I'm a big fan of wandering as it may lead to new experiences and discoveries. However, when you can't explore and act on them, you start to wonder, "What's the point?" Heck, it's taken me a week to write this piece. I can't seem to find the motivation.

What have I come to realize? What do I want?

I feel like Andy Dufresne from Shawshank Redemption. I must keep working towards the goal. The goal of keeping busy and chipping away at the things I love doing. It's what I want on the other side of this. I'm now asking myself what can I give up during this pandemic. What can I go without now that we've entered a new type of ordinary. Ordinary won't be the norm after all this. Given this unusual situation, one needs to think unorthodoxly. I must explore without the tangibles, without the sense of what it's like to be in the same room as someone. It gives me a headache to think about starting a new job and know I'll most likely be interviewing remotely, introducing myself to my new coworkers remotely. Doing. Everything. Remotely. Guess it's time to adapt.

Sure, Andy had some hurdles and obstacles. He was persistent, day in, day out. Andy kept working, chipping away bit by bit until he finally made his opportunity. As the line by Red goes, "Andy Dufresne, the man who crawled through 500 yards of shit and came out clean the other end."

I'm going to take a play from Andy's playbook. I've got to chip away. I've got to be persistent. I've got to crawl to get what I want.

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