Monday, March 16, the Bay Area counties issued their shelter-in-place order to start the next day. Unsure of the restrictions, we ran all the errands we could think of that we might not be able to run the next day. Or for the duration of the order.

Client emails arrived, revising project priorities and timing. Most essentially said, “Stand down.” I submitted an article to Saint Thomas Academy, a revised poetry curriculum to Citizen Schools on the off chance that middle-school students would return to McKinley Institute of Technology this school year, and a draft email for Fit Kids to send as an update to its community whenever the time was right.

Our local Safeway looked Soviet. Lengthy lines wound around mostly bare shelves. I took one look and left, because by then it was clear that the shelter-in-place order set for Tuesday would exempt grocery shopping. On Tuesday, the store was empty enough to quickly shop for the few necessities in stock, but it wasn’t until Thursday morning that I found a package of toilet paper, the last one left.

Fortunately, the shelter order also exempted outdoor exercise. I did my normal HIIT run on the hill at Seal Point Park every day, followed by the stretches prescribed by my clients at Ferox Yoga. This routine seemed more critical than ever to keep depression from creeping up and over me during the Coronavirus crisis.

Fighting depression won’t be easy, knowing how many people the Coronavirus afflicts and bracing for the day that number includes people I love. It will be a challenge to balance watching enough media to stay informed but not enough to be overwhelmed.  It will help when that media consumption offers posts like this from one of my Wolf Pack Ninja clients, Travis Brewer.

Next post in this series: Coronavirus Diary: New Live Sports

Series starts at Coronavirus Diary: Introduction