So What, I Gained a Little Weight During the Pandemic

Maybe you don’t agree or feel this way, but I don’t know how anyone could go through the shitstorm that has been most of the last year without feeling a little off-kilter.

I typically have two or three times per year when I visit my kids in Korea or fly back to the States for a visit with my first daughter and other family members. Rosalyn and I go somewhere, sometimes with her family.

These trips leave me with something to look forward to, an adventure. Just having that to look forward to was often enough to keep me on task.

Was I Just Bored or Was It Depression?

A few days back, I read an article by Eva Grape, Did You Know A Lack of Hobbies Can Indicate Depression?. She opened (or opined you like) with,

“If you ever struggled to respond to a simple question such as “what’s your hobby,” then there’s a high chance that you’ve been neither lazy nor boring. Instead, you might have been suffering from depression, not even being aware of it.”

When I read that, I thought, "Nah, I have a hobby. I read, and I write." But even that was a little white lie to myself because most of what I read is to further my writing career. That’s right; it’s a career, not a hobby.

What’s more, most of what I have written lately pays the rent but does nothing to further my creative side.

I was looking at Joel Brown’s call for fiction on Fiction Friday for the Facebook Group Medium Writer’s Lounge and thought, “OK, let me pull up my last fiction and share it with everyone.” Oops, the last fiction I wrote was 25 November, Terror on the Stairs.

For me to go nearly three months without writing a fiction story is unheard-of, near-pathetic. I used to write three of four micro-fictions a week.

Another of her stories/essays led into this one because she made me think, We Need to Stop Using the Pandemic as an Excuse for Bad habits, Now. Reading these two was kind of like that Roberta Flack song, written by Charles Fox, Killing Me Softly with His Song, she “…was telling my whole life with her (his) words.”

The lyrics were uploaded to YouTube by Chris' Lyrics if you enjoy the song and lyrics, "like" or subscribe.

As I read, I kept nodding my head and saying yes, that’s so true. Damn, why didn’t I think of that? Why didn’t I realize that I was sleeping ten or twelve hours a day (when I used to sleep four to six) and only waking up to accomplish a task and meet a deadline because I was depressed and had no hobbies?

I would go to bed early, telling myself I’d just read a little and take a short nap. Meanwhile, my weight was ballooning. I stopped checking my sugar levels because I just didn’t want to know.

Knowing would mean I would have to do something about it. But damn, we’re in the middle of a pandemic; I can’t go anywhere anyway. I’ll worry about my A1C when this is over. I’ll start eating healthy again when I can go grocery shopping without worrying about catching the coronavirus.

Get a Hobby, Bring Some Excitement into Your Life Again, & Stop Waiting for This to Be Over

I remembered when my son was young; we used to do a lot of hobbies together. We built a castle with a working drawbridge out of cardboard. We’d put together die-cast metal models, and one time I carved a car for his entry in the Pinewood Derby when he was a Boy Scout. He did the rest of the assembly.

He wasn’t too crazy about it because it wasn’t cool, nor did it resemble a real car, but he was happy when he got the original design trophy.

Maybe we need a hobby to combat boredom. I just finished putting together a die-cast Bugatti. What’s your distraction? Do you have a hobby? If not, try one of these:

• Cooking or preparing food.
• Watercolors, acrylics, sketching, or diamond painting.
• Reading — other than research for your articles.
• Knitting, crocheting, macrame, tapestry, or sewing.
• Learn a language.
• Dancing, yoga, or meditation.
• Photography or framing.
• Astrology, Tarot card reading, or palm reading.
• Gardening or growing herbs, you can do this right in your kitchen.
• Renovate a room. Maybe start by turning that guestroom into your home office.
• Ceramics, sculpting, or pottery.
• Jigsaw or crossword puzzles.
• Welding, whittling, or woodcrafts.
• Cryptocurrency mining.

There are probably thousands more. What’s more, you can even Google how to get started or check out a YouTube video if you’re not sure. There are “How-to” videos on just about every subject imaginable.

Takeaways

The only thing that should matter is how you feel about the skin you are in and how that affects your health, but you mustn’t lie to yourself. Telling yourself you don't give a f--k how you look is probably the biggest lie going!

Sure, these are trying times, but lying to ourselves about depression won’t make it go away. We need to be honest with ourselves.

Stephen Dalton is a retired US Army First Sergeant with a degree in journalism from the University of Maryland and a Certified US English Chicago Manual of Style Editor. Medium Top Writer in Fiction, Transportation, VR, NFL, Design, Creativity, and Short Story.

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