I’ve been having pretty much the same night routine in the last 3 months — going out to skate with my longboard while listening to a podcast or an album (Beach House, mostly).
Doing this at the end of the summer was actually pretty fun. The uplifting summer mood and generally the absence of bad things to obsess about were really enjoying.
Going into the winter, I feel a huge difference. The feeling right now, I can describe as calm but uneasy.
For me, it’s a mix of the cold air that hits you at the moment you go out(<3), the thoughts about how much work I have left to do because I slacked in the summer, the feeling of being unsure about how your next month is going to look like, the fear of losing control over your own plans.
I go out skating to enjoy that one hour of clean mind and feeling of freedom that this gives you. Sadly, right now, you can’t have even this.
You are constantly reminded by the passing ambulances that you are in the middle of a health crisis. They are like a window to a parallel world where medics on the front line risk their lives without much in return, and yours, where you are trying to enjoy yourself after a long day of doing things on a computer. I often feel bad for ambulance drivers when I pass them by on a crosswalk.
And this is not fiction or some creative writing. Every night that I’m out, I have a game where I bet against myself if I’m going to see an ambulance passing me by. And I lose it every time. Sometimes by the fifth minute.