I said I was going to talk about COVID and then I emote about my workshop? Am I mental?
No, I’m a man.
I work and recreate with all sorts of dangerous, loud, sharp, pointy things. I’m happy doing so. Yet, my shop is pretty much the worst nightmare for a lot of people. A condominium dwelling white collar urbanite might look at my shop and think it a death-trap… for them that’s exactly what it is. Not for me. For them.
Now think about COVID restrictions. The same rules theoretically apply to me and a skittish urbane weak vegan poet. I ride motorcycles. They’re as dangerous as fuck. Hell, I got tired of riding on “safe” pavement and bought a dirt bike which I promptly drove into a lake. I did that for fun. How can regulation appropriate to me work for someone who can’t operate a clutch? How can regulation appropriate to someone who can barely drive, work for me… who will drive anything (with or without wheels) just for the joy of it?
That’s a root cause of COVID stress. If I spend Saturday afternoon cutting firewood it means I spent hours alone in the snow; holding a roaring 2 stroke engine bolted to a 20″ rotating toothy chain of disembowelment and knocking over 90′ tall six ton aggregations of dead half rotten trees. After that, I cannot bring myself to be worried about COVID. There’s 0.005% +/- whatever the CDC is saying this week risk that I might get sick and die. Or, the saw could rip me to shreds in a heartbeat.
I already picked up the saw, voluntarily, for fun, as part of my lifestyle. There could be a virus that freaks me out. This aint’ it. The numbers just don’t work to me. But they’re flat out terrifying to someone else. Which is OK.
The only time we get into conflict is when we’re forced to accept each other’s risk profile. I can’t abide closing the McDonalds dining room during a rare McRib season over this particular risk. Others can’t abide taking risks like a motorcycle riding, chainsaw wielding, gun toting, maniac who likes to vaporize metal as a hobby.
We both have valid points of view. Left to our own resources we’d rarely meet. Our natural habitats are not the same. And that’s good! We’re so much happier when we have no impact on each other’s lives. But increasingly (and turning the dial to eleven in 2020) society forces us both to toe the same arbitrary middle line.
I fuckin’ hate it. So too does my equal and opposite member of society.
That’s the problem. We’re at each other’s throats… politically… because we were forced to live each other’s world.
I don’t know how to find peace in the current political Thunderdome of “All Must Obey”. Yet I try to see the other side’s point of view. Nobody who pines for an autodriver feature on their Prius should have to ride my motorcycle. Motorcycles are powerful, uncomfortable, and stupidly dangerous. They don’t want to live like me. I get it. I’d like the same respect afforded me.
It’s a hard gap to bridge, it’s how COVID became the Grand Canyon.
Stay tuned, there’s more…
