Week Four

      I really didn’t mind being at home.  There were no unnecessary trips.  I was back at my Mom’s house.  I was there to make sure she was ok and her world was doing fine.  She was all of those things and more.  The rest of the world was not doing fine.

     It was hard to believe the reports of death and sickness touted on the news.  It always felt like a huge scare tactic to keep you watching.  Many of the news stations are really good at this tactic.

     The best ones make you believe everyone else is deceiving you and only they will tell you the truth.  They make you feel special with a little dopamine hit then cut to their sponsors who knocked you down a bit.  The sponsors let you know that you can get that special feeling back if you buy their product.  It’s a vicious cycle.

     After a few days the news and the podcasts were turned off.  I dug deep into audiobooks from the library.  My library card allows me access to digital audio and ebooks.  The selection can be a bit limited but I always find something to get me through.

     It was a whole lot less expensive than trying to maintain paid subscriptions to the Ama/Dis/Hu/Net/Para money grab. Sadly, I hadn’t ended all the subscriptions, yet.  I was still trying to get through my favorites lists on each platform.  These things should have been the first to go.

     This was not a good thing because there were no new clients coming in the door.  There was no door for clients to open.  The walls of fear and confusion were going up faster than the doors to discovery could be built.  Finances were even tighter.

     There were still certain clients we were trying to get into the Darwin Funds.  Not in this cycle, the next one, when the markets came back.  Generally, the markets always come back and we can move things, but at that moment we told most people to hunker down and wait for the world to work its way back to normal.  The job had become a weekly reassuring phone call and email letting people know we were monitoring the situation.

     The general thought was to hold.  You only really lose in a lull if you sell at the bottom.  We would get them into the Darwin Funds when the market came back up.  It did no good to jump ship now.

     There was literally no place to go.  Most large gathering spots (hotels, restaurants, clubs, bars) were closed.  Grocery stores had limited hours and a limited amount of people that could be let in at a time.  People were waiting to see what would happen over the next month or two.  No one needed me to help them save money they weren’t really spending.

     I didn’t miss the drive to Hartford.  I didn’t miss the clients who wouldn’t show for appointments they pushed to Saturdays.  I didn’t miss paying for parking.  I didn’t miss having to put gas in the car every 4 days.  I didn’t miss being in traffic or seeing the aftermath of car accidents.  I didn’t miss two hour detours due to said accidents.

     There were things I did miss.  I missed dinners with Marrianne.  I missed movie nights with Karen but I had to give her some breathing room to see how her thing from work worked.

     Tony and Amber were still making a go of things.  Tessa was distracted by a new age appropriate guy who was gunning for her attention.  Strangely her fling caused a little chest ping but that was a good thing.

     I still hadn’t heard from a few folks but I wasn’t going to give up on them.  You only really lose if you walk away when things are at rock bottom.  Now was time to hunker down and wait for the world to work its way back to normal.