Pandemic Mental Health - How YOU doin'?

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Perhaps a low res downloadable how to video can be a launch point while things are shut down. Maybe start a blog and/or facebook page.

My wife is a dog trainer and for a few months people were clamoring for assistance while classes were shut down. She had a facebook page and started a blog. She didn't make any money at it but did help a few customers. So when restrictions were lifted she was imediately swamped due to word of mouth. Class size is still limited so the schedule is full for months in advance.

With all of the news broadcasting chaos galore there is probably a huge market out there.

We went out to a big box store recently and saw 99.99% of the crowd wore face covers, yet everybody seemed to be in a great mood. Folks held doors for each other, perfect strangers chit chatting, as if other than the face cover and 6 foot distance thing life was pretty normal. To me that has been the case ever since I stopped being afraid of door knobs and counter tops.
 
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KITROBASKIN said:
Children are in desperate need of activities that get them out and exercising and building respect and confidence. Is there a way to mask and distance your art until the time when contact is allowed?
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Sparring, takedowns, and breakaways require contact. A building is required for training children. Adults I could train with some things outdoors in a park. When you have to corral kids who need to learn discipline, it's hard to keep them in one place without the option of taking them by the hand to bring them back to the group. It's also hard to be responsible for the hygiene of children at the risk of your business if they break the rules. Then you have to be able to get liability insurance without a set location. Can't make contracts with students with everything changing from day to day so you have to charge by the lesson. That's a lot of wasted time and paperwork and would require more help. Weapons training is impossible without a school in a commercial building. In California, that's the only place certain weapons are legal. Getting uniforms and belts is impossible as those businesses are probably all permanently closed by now. Wearing a mask when doing hard physical activity causes oxygen deprivation. With any mask requirement, martial arts training is dangerous. Cleaning punching bags and air shields every time a student does a punch or kick would cost me more for Lysol than I could charge in tuition and would take up most of the class time. A lot of people in this country have become radicalized and anti American and I couldn't afford the risk of training someone like that and finding that what I taught was used to hurt people. The best I could do right now is make workout videos and post them online, which is what we were doing right before the school closed down. Go to YouTube.com and look up RMA Family Karate and you'll see the videos we made in our school's last weeks.
 
Just found this thread.
I/we were doing fine once we finally found bread and TP. My wife works from home because of this and is sharing my office space but we do fine, I get my stuff done by 11am and stay out until 5pm. :duck:

I wear the mask because it is mandatory. I will say in a friendly voice to the many I see out with them hanging around their necks, those work better if you wear them properly as I walk by. And I don't feel guilty at all, if I must you better. 😛
I found it funny once the fires started and we can't see the sun through the smoke that the media said the medical masks will not stop the particulates from getting in and that only the n95 masks will do it, but not much better....... virus.....particulates.....:thinking:

At any rate we were fine until this smoke and heat took over 3 weeks ago, I can't be outside for more than a few minutes.:scowl:

Greta, to your first post about the smile of your unicorn person, I have come to enjoy the eyes of people. True light/smiles are visible through the eyes. 🙂
 
Beamhead said:
Greta, to your first post about the smile of your unicorn person, I have come to enjoy the eyes of people. True light/smiles are visible through the eyes. 🙂
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A song just came to mind (not a poke at Greta) by the Eagles: You can't hide your lying eyes. 😀
 
ive been having awful nightmares there so real it takes me a while to understand it was just a dream
 
The day when I make myself trek to the office is getting closer, such is the cabin fever. I must do something to shake the doldrums.
 
Just found this thread after I made an account on this wonderful site and commented on a few things. I am quite lonely here in college, and trust me COVID loneliness is even worse than being so nerdy that you don't fit in with most of the nerds in your nerd college. Nearly all my classes are online, and it honestly sucks that I can't take my electrical classes in person because my professor has a family with compromised immune systems and won't get near campus. I had to take summer courses instead of doing an internship or visiting my parents who live across the pond over in Serbia. I am basically glued to my computer and cell phone 24/7, discussing tech stuff and my personal life on every corner of the internet whenever I am not doing something for school. Video games are out of question because my laptop needs dust cleaning and I cooked the thermal paste after a year of use and it thermal throttles like crazy when I game, and fixing it myself is not possible due to special tools being needed, so I have to wait for Christmas break to get that fixed. I feel terribly depressed and hopeless, I emotionally hurt like never before, and I simply want to cry but cannot easily do so due to some not so nice stuff that happened in my past that damaged my ability to cry. The only thing keeping me sane are some nice people on the internet (who doesn't love discussing batteries and MOSFET based reverse polarity protection with Mooch on his Patreon, among other things) and the absolute massive collection of electronics I have stashed here in my dorm room. I self-medicate by losing myself in daydreams about romance and dream flashlights (I am not joking).
 
Celest said:
I am basically glued to my computer and cell phone 24/7, discussing tech stuff and my personal life on every corner of the internet whenever I am not doing something for school.
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Having basically lived my social life primarily online a ~decade ago I can sort of relate. IRC, forums, instant messaging are better than nothing but are inherently a far lower fidelity experience than interacting with other humans. Voice and video add some richness, but they're still not quite satisfactory.

I wish I had some solid advice on a path out, but I don't. About all I can say is that staying as connected and engaged as possible to those you care about is essential. In isolation, the low-fidelity and high effective latency relative to in-person interactions makes for a detached experience where you might get wrapped up in possible interpretations of what was communicated - oftentimes negative; do the best that you can to see the positive in what's communicated and to avoid drama.

Lately I try to take some comfort in my surroundings; I perform small explorations and visual treasure hunts of otherwise familiar places, observing and learning new things about them.
 
---Masks & Madness---

I have been very lucky. In my area nobody seems to fuss or care when people cannot or will not wear a mask. In all these months I have only been asked to wear a mask twice. In either case I have found the magic words "medical condition" will silent all in a hurry. According to HIPAA, the Americans with Disabilities Act and a lawyer in my family - people like me have every right to fully access businesses and to be in public without masks, harassment or discrimination.

My personal choice has been to wear masks as I enjoy the annonymity. Plus I wanted to get used to them just in case they became unavoidable. I also wanted to make and test plenty of them myself which I did. I only push back and throw my rights around when I feel a person is mask shaming just to complain or just to feel a small measure of power in their otherwise miserable life. I have only encountered such a person once in all these months. She lost the exchange in short order.

The reason I am not bothered by the personal choices of others is because the rate of things like autism has exploded in recent decades. For all I know the unmasked people I see regularly in public have cognitive disabilities. To my thinking I have no right to interrupt their day in order to medically asses them nor are they required to explain or justify anything to me and so we pass one another easily enough.

In conclusion masks turned into yet another thing to mess with like knives, watches, guns and flashlights. Not much change on my part.
 
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@ Celest,
I once lived in a place where I knew nobody. A really crowded place where everybody just whizzed around in their own little world oblivious to others around them. I felt like I could walk down a main road naked and nobody would notice or care.
I wrote letters. Out of about 100 one would actually be mailed. It was before smart phones. But it was a time I joined a forum. That was about 20 years ago and to be honest I have made way more friends that way than through personal contact. You mention "Mooch" for example. What a thrill it must be to converse with that guy. (I'm supposing you mean the electronic whizz guy who does a bunch of rechargeable battery know how among other things?)

No, it is not the same as in person contacts. Yet over time I realized it was way better to chat with forum friends than that salesman calling to ask you to buy alluminum siding on your rented apartment. Right now many of us here at CPF find comfort in this time chatting with each other about several topics including this thread. Sometimes we even talk about flashlights.

Best regards in your MOSFET discussions.
 
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I have medical conditions that allow me the medical excuse to not wear a mask. However, I only go maskless in a store once it becomes a problem. I have Hashimotos so my body can't regulate temperature properly so wearing a mask for any length of time in summer causes me to overheat. I could suffer from hyperthermia or heat stroke. I also have celiac disease which has recently caused a vitamin B2 deficiency. Among other things, it reduces the amount of oxygen that gets into the bloodstream. Wearing a mask causes oxygen deprivation. I can't breathe long with one on. With these problems, I have to balance them with the increased risk of corona virus from having autoimmune diseases. I also have to deal with the panicked public who treat non mask wearers like serial killers that need to be peppersprayed. Then there are some stores that require masks even if you're exempt even though they risk large fines for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. They have started arresting those customers for trespassing. The state has put the policing responsibility for masks on the stores so they get fined if customers don't wear one. I could have sworn I lived in America last year. I don't recognise the country I'm living in now.
 
bykfixer said:
@ Celest,
I once lived in a place where I knew nobody. A really crowded place where everybody just whizzed around in their own little world oblivious to others around them. I felt like I could walk down a main road naked and nobody would notice or care.
I wrote letters. Out of about 100 one would actually be mailed. It was before smart phones. But it was a time I joined a forum. That was about 20 years ago and to be honest I have made way more friends that way than through personal contact. You mention "Mooch" for example. What a thrill it must be to converse with that guy. (I'm supposing you mean the electronic whizz guy who does a bunch of rechargeable battery know how among other things?)

No, it is not the same as in person contacts. Yet over time I realized it was way better to chat with forum friends than that salesman calling to ask you to buy alluminum siding on your rented apartment. Right now many of us here at CPF find comfort in this time chatting with each other about several topics including this thread. Sometimes we even talk about flashlights.

Best regards in your MOSFET discussions.
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Yes, that Mooch, the one who recently exposed the LIES behind the yellow 15/40A cells and exposed how they are rewrapped LG MJ1 10A cells. learned so much from him. He along with the li-ion info on CPF and BatteryUniversity are the reason I haven't had any accidents and/or burned down my residence hall (yet) with my 18650s and 20650s... He even proudly bragged about me being his Patreon after HORRENDOUSLY mispronouncing my real name like every non-Serbian person will here in America (I laughed so hard). He is like one of the few people I cans seriously discuss electronics and especially batteries with online. Absolute NERD just like me.
 
I learned a lot about 18650's by reading Mooch how to articles. I also learned my so-called 35 amp burst, 20amp cells were actually 20 amp burst rewrap type. I have an incan light called Roar or the Pelican that is a free flowing Maglite with a potentially very bright bulb from a long since discontinued Pelican rescue light. When I learned what I learned the generic (supposedly Panasonic) batteries were replaced with Samsung ones.

I gained a lot of alkaline battery know how at battery university. I'm one of a minority here that still use them and carbon zinc cells in vintage flashlights.

This forum has been good for a lot of members mental health before and during the pandemic.
 
If I have something I can't find a datasheet to or Mooch didn't test, I just stay safe by following the old CPF wisdom of 1C charge max (I never have crassed 0.6C except once), and max continuous 2C rate. Never had any fire or remotely dangerous heating so far.

Like every time I chat with nerds online, here or elsewhere, or anyone interested in the same personal stuff I am, I get a hug excitement hit that feels like I took some strong stimulant or something but 10x stronger. Guess I am so deprived of dopamine and endorphins due to isolation that it has now become a "forbidden pleasure".
 
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