No, I don’t have a job in an office away from home where I should be. And while I do have the shipping setup in the basement for my online stationery shop, I don’t mean that either.

The current stay-at-home mandate is not stopping me from going to work, because my work is to get up each day and go through my health-supporting routines, then go through the day pursuing creative efforts and mental stimulation. That’s my job in these dark times and it’s a seven-day-a-week gig.

Routine is the right-hand enemy of fear and anxiety, while the left-hand works on staying active through creative or mentally stimulation. Without this right-left defense, that foe (or obstacle) could easily render me incapable of doing much else beyond fretting and stewing.

My perspective on these odd times has slowly shifted to an appreciation of the opportunities during this new, highly restrictive phase of life. That may seem like either a crazy idea, or at least insensitive to other’s plights. I can only control how I react to my own plight, but I do empathize and understand others struggle daily.

How many of us have various projects, whether around the house, starting a journal, sketching, painting, or fill-in-the-blank we’ve wanted to get to for a long time? Now you have the time.

How many of us feel we haven’t engaged enough with family in a meaningful way because we’re too busy with other things? Now you have time for that also.

One way (some would say it’s the best way) to deal with an obstacle in life is to go through it, meaning adapt to it and creatively deal with it. Skirting around it does nothing but give it a chance to do its finest obstacleness later. Trying to run headfirst into it without a plan or thinking it’s fake news or hoax, is unfortunately the modus operandi of a certain ill-prepared political party. And we are witnessing that epic fail. By finding ways to defeat it through personal actions you control, by choosing to take advantage of what is available (in this argument that being ample time for x, y, or z), is how you can shift your thinking away from “it’s in my way and I give up,” or “It’s big and scary and I can’t do anything about it” and to seeing opportunities.

One quote found on that infrequent source of gems, Facebook, amplifies this change of thinking approach to what you can control:

“Do not change your behavior to avoid being infected. Instead, assume you are infected and change your behavior to avoid transmission.”

To spin it differently:

“Don’t focus on the unknown timeline of when we’ll be able to resume normality, but instead look within to make the best use of daily opportunities sheltered time provides.”

In our new, weird-times world, we’ve thrown our old standards and habits out the window much like dirty, used-once-too-many-times dishwater. These new, daily behaviors will likely be with us for most of this year, if not into next year and beyond. But that’s not all bad: washing hands frequently isn’t a new idea. This should be something we learned as wee tots and part of our autonomic life skills. And limiting trips, excursions, and such has, at least in the last decade or two, been a wiser way to live to lessen our impact on the planet. Think of Covid-19 as a drill in preparation for the far worst crisis on the horizon, one where we’re steadily approaching the tipping point: global warming. No amount of hand washing will help us then.

But back to today and my story of venturing out, like some small forest burrow animal ever-concerned whether a predator lurks outside my refuge. Going solo on this food run, with my combined list in place and common sense whispering this will help limit exposure to only one of us in the household at a time, I head off to Trader Joe’s, my favorite grocery store.

Rewind back 10 days when a trip to the local Meijer was as close to an anxiety riddled outing as I’d ever want to have: a polar opposite to my Trader Joe’s experience today. The Meijer trip was an eye opener on many levels and happened the day after their public announcement (translation: vacuous marketing speak) of reducing hours and putting steps in place to protect workers and customers alike. Not only was there zero effort at limiting or distancing the herd inside, but employees were gloveless, an especially uncomfortably visual in the produce section. Combine those with Meijer customers who acted as though the crisis was behind us, with most making little effort on separation, and for a few, no effort at all to cover their hacking, coughing as they wandered the aisles. I felt like I was running a zombie gauntlet without a hand sanitizer amulet. When I finally got out to the car, I wanted to strip naked and cover myself with the hand sanitizer I keep there. But even in liberal Ann Arbor, there’s probably a law against that.

Clearly Trader Joe’s is a company committed more to safety and taking responsibility than protecting profits, evidenced by their well-thought out approach to crowd control.

I arrive before the announced 9-10 a.m. window where a separate line exists for us senior citizens, and the surprise bonus of employees throttling crowd control letting in three seniors for every one non-senior during that hour. Not only that, they had an employee (with gloves, as ALL Trader Joe’s employees had, whether stocking or cashiering) spray and wipe cart handles, seats, and basket top rims before incoming shoppers went in. Inside, all shoppers were patient and following social distancing guidelines.

I love to shop in a good grocery store I like to take my time and explore the not-so-obvious culinary delights available. It’s a rare trip to Trader Joe’s where the crowds allow such meandering, as there was today. In my throttled wave, there were probably 10 shoppers in the whole store. But I felt the need to hurry, not out of fear of Mr. CV-19, but out of courtesy to the 60+ people queued up outside waiting for us old farts to check out.

Good to know this process exists, since Trader Joe’s will be my store of choice in the months ahead for food runs since there I feel my risk probability is as low as possible these days in a public store. And yes, they even had toilet paper on the shelf, a rare sight these days.