How I Am Dealing With "The New Normal"
COVID-19 effects us all in different ways, and here's how I am dealing with it.
Our lives have been altered by COVID-19/the Coronavirus, and in a rare non-wrestling article I wanted to share my own story about day-to-day life.
Let me start in the most important way: I hope you and yours are happy and healthy. Wash your hands. Make good choices. Love one another. We're going through some crazy times, and for many that's just piling on with whatever they already had going on. Be smart, and be good.
Before we get to the rare non-wrestling article, here are some great wrestling ones that are still relevant and also a bunch of fun!
Keep reading, digesting, reacting, and sharing! It means the world to me, and right now we can all use a good distraction, no?
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Okay, time to share!
Coronavirus and My Day-To-Day Life
COVID-19 is an unavoidable force on our lives, and the impact of Coronavirus hits everyone differently. No two mental processes are the same, so literally no two stories are going to be the same. Thus, I decided to share mine. It’s designed to show you that anything you’re thinking is normal… at least as normal as we can be right now. We’re all in this together!
Work Status
I do work a “shoot job,” and when filling a survey of any kind what I do usually falls under “educational management.” I manage a team of 12, with “dotted line” responsibilities for another three. Before COVID-19, my team was already mostly remote. We hired two people literally the week before all this hit, so of my 10 employees a month ago, 7 of the team was already working from home. The math on that is easy lol: 70%.
Well now it’s 100%! As a leadership team we were all in the office, so I myself have shifted to working from home. I have a wife (Holly) also working from home (she’s a high school assistant principal in the school district recently praised by Arizona state government as doing the best job transitioning students to online learning—they did it in two days), along with two kids (Geovanni, 14, and Penelope, 11) who are also adjusting to what is basically homeschooling. It helps that their mom is an educator, honestly.
That poses a big logistical challenge. We’re lucky to have a two-story house. I am upstairs in the bedroom, with a laptop and two additional monitors that I brought home from work. My son has a desk in his room, and my daughter’s desk is a corner of the living room (our family room stretches the entire width of the house upstairs). I am able to do my job fully, and the company I work for hasn’t had to make any adjustments.
In fact, it’s the opposite. This week they sent everyone a $50 gift card to help with educational expenses (it can be used for anything), and we still got an annual increase, that kicked in last week. I don’t say that to brag—this is about sharing my story, and that’s part of my story.
Another plus is my commute. I was spending approximately 2.5 hours commuting to and from work daily. Now I work 6 feet from my bed (social distancing, yo). Not a bad change.
In terms of work/work from home, I am truly lucky.
Healthy Lifestyle Status
Late Summer 2019, I embarked on a fitness journey with Miranda Morales, one of my two best friends and fitness “accountabilibuddy.” This includes monitoring my steps (and calories burned) daily, a daily DDP Yoga session, and a workout (either at the gym or what I like to call roadwork—a combination of running and walking for a good number of miles).
I really kicked things into high gear in late October, and since then I have lost nearly 50 pounds. I don’t weight myself daily… more like monthly. But I weighed myself this morning and I lost another two pounds over last Friday (I guess I am weighing myself weekly now lol), putting the grand total lost to 47 pounds. I am not where I want to be just yet, but I will get there.
And that phrase, “I will get there,” is of the utmost importance. My first day working from home was Monday, March 16. That night I went to the gym for a good 60 minutes on the exercise bike and some intervals on the rowing machine (my favorite). It was a great workout, but when I left the gym I was greeted by an email on my phone.
Effective noon the next day, my gym was closing temporarily due to the spread of COVID-19. That was a blow, but I knew it couldn’t stop me.
The next day I shared with my accountabilibuddy that I had set a new goal: 20k steps per day. For me, that’s roughly 9 miles. I was already getting between 10k and 20k steps on most days, probably averaging about 15k. But I needed something to sink my teeth into, and this was it. I’d already hit 20k that Monday, so I was on track.
Speaking of “track,” I am also tracking my steps and miles. I’d say I’ve done a damn good job, check it out:
Like I said, this isn’t stopping me. For the month of March, I hit 610,668 total steps, 100k more than any other month since I started tracking steps in October. I have since made 20k a bare minimum, not a goal. The new goal si 23k per day, with a stretch goal of 25k daily. If I average 23,333 steps per day, I will hot 700k steps for April, 100k more than March. So that’s the new goal.
I am also doing DDP Yoga daily from Monday to Friday. Last week I added bodyweight exercises to the routine:
Squats
Push-Ups
Abs
Dips
Incline Push-Ups
Today (Friday April 3) was Day 10 of the bodyweight exercises. They’ve been a great addition to my morning routine, before I sit down to get to work.
Getting nearly 25k steps in each day doesn’t (usually) happen on accident. I take a walk in the morning after getting my reports out for work, then I get another walk in during my lunch hour. I usually end the work day between 10k and 11k steps. At 4 pm, I try to get changed and out of the house immediately, and I usually cover around 6 miles and get my step total over 23k. Some extra steps throughout the evening have allowed me to finish between 24k and 25k each day this week.
On Monday I heard the term “COVID 15” from Dr. Drew on the Adam Carolla Show. Similar to the Freshman Fifteen in college, this is a real issue that I can see happening. It’s obvious, but basically they expect the average weight gain to be 15 pounds for most people as our country deals with the Coronavirus. That includes people who lose weight, and obviously averages in those who gain more.
It’s a real thing that can easily happen to any of us, and we have to be intentional in making sure it doesn’t. I have a plan, and even if it gets monotonous, I am sticking to it. My goal is to get out of this thing in better shape than I entered it. I have goals, and I am not letting go of them.
Personal Life
My days have obviously changed. Before COVID-19, I left the house around 530 AM each day (after getting up at 4 AM and getting the DDP Yoga in), worked from 630 AM or 7 AM (depending on traffic) through 4 PM, then usually got home between 530 PM and 6 PM. On most days I then left at 6 PM to take my son to soccer, work out, pick him up at 830 PM, and lead home to arrive slightly before 9 PM. Then it’s time for a late dinner, and getting everyone to bed. After that, I have time to work on any of my passion projects, mostly revolving around wrestling.
I leave the house before anyone else gets up, so I don’t see the family until around 545 PM, and that’s only a 15 minute drive-by. I don’t even really see them until 9 PM each night.
Now? They’re ALWAYS here. Always. We have to be, it’s the smart choice. But it’s an adjustment. If I go downstairs to grab a snack, I see my son first, then my daughter, then my wife who is downstairs working. My wife joins me for most of my lunchtime walks. But there’s no more absence. We have to create moments in the evening and the weekends to cherish as a family, and as a couple.
And we ARE creating those moments. I wrote earlier in the week about the wife and I getting all done up with nowhere to go (we went and looked at houses on the market). Last Friday night we did family dinner night by getting takeout and hosting it off the back of an SUV.
As with anything in life, it takes effort! My kids have lost their regular outlets for exercise and stress relied (soccer and dance). We are keeping them going with video workouts and other things they can do. We bought new bikes. We’ve skipped town when possible to get out and be active.
Wrestling
On top of everything, our outside interests are largely gone, even if temporarily. It still sucks. For me that’s largely wrestling.
I have an IZW Wrestling event on May 16. I want it to happen. In many ways, I NEED it to happen. but who knows if it will. If it does happen, we might lose our asses on it. If it doesn’t happen, we are going to refund everyone who has bought tickets and move the date. Six weeks ago we sold out IZW MONSTER, gaining a ton of momentum, and there were zero concerns about IZW Grand Prix in May. As of right now the show is on, and we want to be that escape everyone needs. We want to crown our new champion. We want to be that excitement our local fans need. But if the stay at home order gets extended, that show doesn’t happen. It’s a real possibility, a real source of stress, and a real set of punches we have to roll with.
I am still writing, and if you look at the website for this newsletter, you’ll see that I have increased my content output. It’s therapeutic for me, and I have heard from others that they appreciate it now more than ever.
(I’ll spare you the part about how I am awesome all the time, not just now. 😀)
There’s also the WrestleMania factor, as it takes place this weekend. For a wrestling fan, analyst, personality, promoter… whatever I am… this is the Super Bowl. This is the big one, our entire year hinges around this weekend. My good friend Dom Vitalli used to write a yearly article that basically explained “How WrestleMania goes, so goes the wrestling business.” Many fans hate to think of it this way, but at least in the United States WWE is the NFL, AEW is the XFL, and everyone else is trying to get there.
We are still getting WrestleMania, for two nights, but it’s different. Closed sets, altered card, just a litany of changes. But we are getting it. And I am excited for it.
Don’t Let It Defeat You!
You want to know why WrestleMania is still happening this weekend, despite everything going on and all the reasons not to have it happen? Because WWE (and Vince McMahon) won’t sell it. They won’t sell for the Coronavirus, and they won’t let anyone stop them, let alone COVID-19.
That’s what we all have to do. We can’t let this stop us…not now, not ever. Whatever you’ve been working on, keep doing it. If your job situation has changed, keep grinding. Find ways. Create something.
We’re all in a temporary altered state, let’s make a promise to come out of it better than we entered.
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