Tank Day

I was very motivated when I got up this morning. My pile of stuff to do had been building up for the last couple of weeks now, most of it administrative stuff. Contracts, policies and procedures, invoice approvals. Vendors are bugging me because it's the last weekend of the month and naturally, they are all trying to hit their quotas. Anyway, maybe it was the good day I had with Johnnie yesterday and me finally not feeling any more soreness in my legs (now there is a pain my lower jaw though and something going on with my right ear but nothing as uncomfortable as the leg soreness). The pain started the day after golf last Monday and I hope that goes away too. I was feeling so motivated today I even showered first thing and then I watched myself lollygag until almost 9:30 before I got myself some breakfast. Kind of like when I was still working at the FRB actually. I'd never get my day started before 9:30 AM. I did talk to my team a bit around 10 AM but after that, my motivation left me like air leaving a balloon. I started to watch TV a little, started to watch YouTube clips, did my walk mid-afternoon. By then I hadn't done one list, one contract, one invoice. I actually  did manage to get a little work done, but mainly just emails I exchanged with folks. Whatever urgency I had felt at the beginning of the day was no longer there by lunchtime.  Maybe it was because I didn' t exactly get through to myself why all those things were urgent anyway. Did I not want to ramp down activity levels? And if not the activity levels, maybe the anxiety levels? Wasn't that why I was having physical issues last week? Again not lost on me was that today was the last work day in May. And it simply fizzled out quickly.

Today though, it wasn't like nothing was going on in the outside world. There was another killing of a black man this week, George Floyd and there was a picture that I'm sure we'll all remember forever about this white cop that had his knee pinning down the guy on the neck apparently for a good 9 minutes. He was begging the officer that he couldn't breathe. And after those 9 minutes, he passed out and eventually died. I'm not going to lie, the picture of the officer disturbed me a great deal and made me angry. Cops are supposed to protect us? What on earth did this guy do to deserve being pinned down on the neck for an entire 9 minutes. He did not resist arrest it seemed. He was apparently suspected of passing a ountrfeit bill. Even if he were guilty, did he deserve to die? Did he die simply because he was a black man? Sure seemed like it. And THAT is why people are angry. And today protests have started all over the country and especially in Minneapolis where this thing happened. Boy this thing is sure sounding like Rodney King all over again. And we now how that turned out in LA in 1992. And so it seemed like just for today, coronavirus took a back seat to angry potests. And by the way, in those protests clearly there was no longer any social distancing, there were people not wearing any masks anymore. I mean We'll see what happens this weekend. We'll see about coronavirus too.   Anyway I did manage to do the 3 PM Friday afternoon huddle, and then I just sort of hung out and chilled until 5 PM when I finally ventured out to Trader Joe's to start my grocery run. I'm pretty sure Lisa and son are running out of French brioche and I got out and got some. And then to bring on the weekend I figured I'd just do Netflix night. And I finally got to watch Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems. Unlike his previous roles, this was NOT a comedy. In fact he played a pretty messed up character. A jewelry store owner in NY who had a pretty nasty gambling problem and he seemed to owe everyone in the world. His marriage was failing, he was having an affair and he seemed to be always trying to hit the proverbial homerun. Which he manages to do at the end of the movie, with a betting parlay. But he gets shot by one of those people he owed money to. Anyway not your usual Adam Sandler movie. But a pretty good movie just the same despite the darkness of his character. I am ready for the weekend now.