Playing Chicken with a curfew

Of all the senses we as human’s have, I find ‘smelling’ to be the most illusive. Scents impact our own emotions as strongly as they can disappear in presence and in memory. Most often therefore, the absence of a particular scent is more striking to our mental health than the physical presence. In this perspective, corona has many similarities with smelling. Not only has corona been known to take away people’s capability to smell (and taste), but I find (in our case anyways) that Corona can also disappear as quickly as the bad odor of rotten-eggs on a sunny day in spring

It has been a merely 3 days since I was been given ‘the' permission to exit the quarantine. While at that time, I had been symptom-free for 24 hours, I still suffered an itchy-nose (which fortunately is not (!) contagious), a lower energy-level as well as (a slight feeling of having) a lower lung- capacity.

However already today, these sufferings (and my worries) seem to have gone the way most bad-odors do as well.
- Possibly this is because both of our boys could go back to school, …
- possibly this is because I myself again started working, but …
- Possibly also because of our nice Sunday-hike through a nature reserve showing of a plethora of parading, fighting and mating ducks, geese and other birds,…
- but definitely because of I managed to perform my weekly 7km run along the Oegstgeester-canal without doubling over on myself with exhaustion.

As many of you know, purely running is not my greatest pleasure in life. Sure, physical exercise strengthens the mind and the hart. However, in that case, I prefer to play a game of hockey or tennis. Running for me, has never been a goal upon itself, but always a means to perform better in the other sports I practice. Not that at present there is a lot of this going on. In fact, for already almost a year, these hobbies of mine have been forcibly stripped from my life. And so, to keep the running interesting, and take create some excitement in the daily dreariness, I have taken up the challenge of playing chicken with the night-curfew.

After the kids have been put to sleep, Ingrid and I have watched the 19.30 news, … I put on my running shoes and go running… running… and some more running,… until my alarm clock strikes 20:30 highlighting to me that I have less than half the time to get back from the point I currently am, … back to the place I call home, … with less than half the energy than I started with in the first place… but always with a purpose to defeat tonight’s deadline at 21:00 ….