Life In Quarantine

The heat wave continues. I feel like a pig on a hot spit…. revolving slowly.  The central air in this place sucks the ass of a thousand dead donkeys… I might as well have my wife blow on my face for what good it does. Quarantine isn’t a far stretch from what our “normal” life was anyway, if truth be told. At least I thought that way back in March and April. But here in July… while everybody else is being stupid and reckless…  I sit here and eat….and eat… and eat… while screwing with my Plex server or playing some vintage PC games. Sharon is home from the hospital (several weeks now). Things were improving until she spiked a 103 fever 2 nights ago, but it is finally breaking somewhat.  Still experiencing price hikes on some food… and still seeing shortages of meat items, but not nearly as bad as the initial hit earlier in the year.

The fact is… Honey Brook doesn’t have much to “go dark” but the things we do have here are absolutely essential. I feel horrible for the farmers with crops in the field because the supply chain seems to be broken. A lot of it will be sold on the roadside…. and still more of it will end up redistributed through our local food banks… so that’s good for people who are starving but bad for the farmers.

What I miss the most here.. are the parks. We have a very isolated area that we go to all the time; just not this year, I think. So, it’s all about being at home.  Anyone dealing with depression/ptsd/aspergers/anxiety issues can understand how these times can aggravate these conditions and wreak havoc with someone’s mental state. I’ve had to take frequent breaks from social media… I’ve had to stop watching the news at times… and limit my exposure to the toxicity all around us. I also have to keep in mind that Honey Brook is a very Republican and extremely backward FAR-RIGHT area in some corners… in spite of its beauty. It serves me well to just close my mouth often when I really want to scream at some of the idiots packing into their 4X4’s and the assholes that breath down my back without a mask… at Walmart when I actually HAVE to leave the house.

DFW is still broadcasting. But the studio is dark for the time being. Our on-air talent are uploading their shows from their respective homes.  I, on the other hand, haven’t really set foot in a studio since April 8th. I’m running “Best Of” the Morning Show and Simply 80’s shows.  The thing people have to remember about DFW Radio is that it started off as a one-hour show in 1996… when my (then) wife was pregnant with our daughter. A few years later, after Greg left S80, We went very quickly to a live format, and then it escalated and morphed into something that was no longer a fun hobby for me. Now I do 2 shows a day (one is pre-taped) and I ended up being the default program director because nobody else will get it right and I don’t trust ANYBODY but me to do it. Then there’s the money we have to sink into keeping it legal, which we could gain from ad revenue like other stations, but that would also mean I would have to run commercials like everybody else.  I refuse to do that. Then we become a cog in the big “Station Surfing” wheel… and I want my listeners to NOT WANT to go anywhere else when the Kraft Macaroni & Cheese jingle starts playing. Anyway, I’m burnt out on production and programming. I’m taking a break. After 23 years as a glorified hobbyist… I’ve earned it… because it’s not fun anymore. It’s a job without a paycheck. My first wife called it a worthless money pit. But then again, my first wife was an asshole. I wonder what she would say today, if she knew that now I actually have to pay to stay on the air.

And so the quarantine continues. I think I’ll make some bread today. Because… why the hell not?