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COVID has really made me wary of interacting with others. I’m
already quite cynical, and the pandemic has only made me more so. Moreover, I’ve always been pretty OK with doing things alone. And so, I’ve been just going skiing and climbing by my lonesome — a lot.

A few weeks ago, I was at the climbing gym, you guessed it, alone. I was doing the auto-belays for the umpteenth time, air pods in, forehead creased and eyes narrowed, daring anyone to talk to me. An employee approached me. I assumed he was reproaching me for wearing both air pods while climbing, but he was trying to help me out. “You know, there are a couple of others who are also doing the auto-belays, but they’re like you — strong and sick of the repetition. You could get on top-rope together — I could introduce you?” read more

I was reading an article about the deteriorating mental health of young people during the pandemic. It was depressing. Psychiatrists believe the incidence of depression and anxiety is so severe among youth right now, that a mental health pandemic is occurring parallel to the virus. I can’t say I was surprised by what I read, but still, I’d like to think things are going to turn out alright in the end. But then I considered all the times in the past year that things didn’t seem like they’d turn out at all. read more