Every morning I leave home at seven to take a ninety-minute walk. I’ve been doing that since March 23 the day after my gym closed because of the coronavirus quarantine. My goal is to walk at least eleven thousand steps a day, and so far I’ve been doing that.
But every day I ask myself isn’t time to quit already? My upper left leg hurts and still I walk on, my right big toe hurts and still I keep going, and I getting bored with it. Frankly, what I’d like to do is get back to the gym – and that’s not possible yet. Gyms will open up again during the last stage of Governor Newsom’s reopening plan and even when it does, I’m not sure if I’d want to go over there and get too close to everyone else working out.
That’s the way I am about venturing out anywhere these days. And the latest George Floyd protests and riots and looting have only made me more scared. The crowds assembling all over the country will be sure to infect each other, and we’ll be left with coronavirus case and death statistics climbing even higher. Though I applaud those calm protesters trying make a change.
They are helping us at a time when we absolutely have to find our way out of the mess we’re in. We need to find the step that will trigger the change. As for me, I always look toward Mr. Trump – who in my mind is the worst man on earth. If we can get rid of him, maybe that would be the step we need to begin to heal our country of the pandemic and the horrible effects or our hundreds of years of racism, starting with our original sins of how we treated our Native Americans and the Africans we brought here.
And even when I walk I don’t get away from these thoughts. I listen to podcasts – usually Morning Joe on MSNBC and the CBS morning news. But sometimes I listen to interviews – today’s was with Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, about her eleven-hundred-mile trek on the Pacific Crest Trail. She talked about how hard that long, lonely walk was while carrying a seventy-pound backpack, but she kept going. It was her calling. It changed her life.
Maybe that’s why I keep walking too. It’s who I am. It’s been my obsession ever since my son’s death. And listening to the news and interviews keeps me informed enough to want to make change as well. There really is no reason to quit.
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