First off, I am thankful I still have a job. And, at least as of yet, we haven't been asked for any type of salary considerations (for one thing, we are saving money by not having plane trips, hotels, restaurants, bars and fuel) so that mitigates our expenses in some ways.....
But my last on site customer visit was 3/16 right as things were closing down. Clairton USX works. I am not officially getting bored. I can only look at my customer lists so much, I can only ask them "how they are doing" and "if you need anything holler" so many times without becoming a pain in the ass.
I am tired of even surfing the Lair. Twitter. I love sports, I mean there isn't much sports to read. The NFL Draft? When your team has 1 pick in the top 100, it loses some of its luster and I am already sick of it. Politics? It is either Trump is Satan or Trump is Jesus, there is nothing in between and reading and discussing politics really has become an endeavor with the satisfaction of playing tic tac toe. It is just beating your head against the wall or watching partisan tennis, back and forth, back and forth.
I am effing bored. I could say I can give up sports, or deal with less of it, if there was only something else to do. You can only cut your grass so much. Thank god I have a house, I would hate the fact if I lived in an apartment, by myself (which I have had to do for long periods of life) my god, it would be so much worse.
My dogs are my entertainment and salvation, thank god they are healthy, robust types with big personalities that they cause me to laugh at least 100 times a day as just the one did coming in with her stuffed animal and shaking it in the face of the other to agitate it (just happened as I typed). But man....only so much Netflix and You Tube you can binge (and thank god for these two entities, the greatest inventions of the last 20 years).
It is so bad, that at 50ish, I am contemplating getting a PS4 platform, not for kids, but for me. At least I can make my own sports. I am serious about this. I have started jogging and working out more which is good. But today....it is crappy out, I cut the grass yesterday, I can't just sit in front of the computer "strategizing" about the future, or are markets and customers, another guess on who will lose what business so I can give to our finance people for their 12th reforecast to management since this has happened. As I told someone on a conference call, "if I knew what the aerospace market is going to do the rest of 2020, I should be working for a hedge fund, not here" (though I know this....it is not good).
Somehow, I think it is a race right now. I am sure many of you feel like this. A race between some sort of semblance of a return to normalcy vs becoming irrelevant (ie "not needed") for my company. It is definitely a malaise today. We all have good day and bad days. We all hope, but man again I am not a religious person because reality always gets in the way of faith, so I am a natural skeptic.
I need to step away today. But I have nothing to step away too. I am not looking for sympathy at all, because you are all in the same boat, many worse. I am just venting. I am not blaming anyone. It just is. It has been a long time coming, my generation has steered clear of WW's, Depression's, even the Vietnam War. The Steel crash locally in the late 70's and early 80's, knock on wood, my family escaped being affected by that. My life has been relatively easy, benign if not idyllic without being overly wealthy from my childhood to now. So I harbor no bitterness and resentment. Just a dread that maybe this is our time, my generation's time (and others past mine) this our time to learn how to deal with adversity.
I don't know how long this is going to go on. I don't know how long any of us can maintain this current path. That's it. That's all I got. Sorry for bugging you all.
