Tag: #ParkCulture

  • First Day Without the Mask, Sort Of

    As of today, it has been two weeks since I got my second Covid vaccine, which means that the medicine is now completely in my system, and I am at FULL VAX!

    This also means that I can now go out in the open without a mask.

    Which I tried this morning while walking the dog.

    And it was weird.

    Weird not having a mask on. For lack of a better word, I feel very exposed without it.

    When I walked out of my building this morning, I had my mask in my pocket, and I thought if I encountered people that were close to me, I would put the mask on. So, ah, that didn’t work out too well, as this is New York, and there is a person every five feet.

    What I ended up doing was the mask under my chin look, and when a person got close, I would pull it over my nose and mouth. It sort of worked, but I did feel a little silly pulling it up and down. I fully admit that I am now dealing with the social pressure of a mask, and not thinking logically about the need of a mask. But, in my defense, this is my first day, so having some hesitancy seems to be appropriate. Later today, the kid and I will go to the playground at the local park, and that will be the next test. I intend to sit on my bench mask-less. We’ll see if I hold to that.

  • Journaling at the Park

    Yesterday, it rained in the morning, which meant that we didn’t get to have our early park time. No running around for the kid, and making new friends. And no sitting on a bench and writing in my journal. Over the course of this pandemic, park time has become a very essential, and needed outlet for the kid and me. She gets to burn off energy and have social interactions with other kids, and I get to start my day with organizing my thoughts.

    It was a slight monkey wrench to our day, but the sun did come out later, so we were able to make a late day park visit. The later time allowed us to discovered a whole different group of kids that my daughter loved playing with, and I got to have the introspection from the end of a day, rather than the beginning.

    I have been writing in a journal since I was 18, and I have over 30 notebooks filled. I like to think of myself like Thoreau when it comes to writing in a journal, but do sometimes wonder if I’m not the crazy recluse guy in the neighborhood, jotting down meaningless things in his notebooks. (It’s a fine line.) I have been journaling so long, that it is an engrained habit. But they aren’t reference books. Only rarely do I pick one up and go through it to see what I was thinking way back when. And I don’t use them to work out “story ideas” or anything like a creative workbook/sketchbook. It’s just a catching place of ideas, thoughts, sketches, and feelings… maybe a little documentation of events, but not very often. Journaling for me is a cathartic exercise. It is immediate, spontaneous, and in the moment, which again and again, I seem to discover is a theme for me when it comes to the art I enjoy. With everything going on in the world right now, I need to have an outlet for all of these pent-up emotions, and hopefully, I can find a constructive use for them.