RECORD STORE TALES #1177: Snowpocalypse Now!

I haven’t been writing much lately, which is a choice I made in order to avoid the burnouts of the past, and to focus on giving 100% to 50 Years of Iron Maiden.  Doing this series has been a healthy and rewarding experience.

In the last week, my town has been hit with roughly 70 centimetres of snow.  I had not seen snow like this since the 1990s.  It’s quite remarkable!  On Saturday morning, Jen and I went out on a junk food run to stock up for the holiday weekend.  (The junk food lasted about 36 hours.)  We noticed that a lot of the snowbanks were taller than the humans on the sidewalks.  That was before we got hit with another 40 cm.

But here I am, sitting indoors and just marvelling at the winter wonderland.  That is where we break this story down into a mental health detour.

I had to find a new counsellor again, which sucks.  I really like my counsellor now, but she has another maternity leave coming, and it is hard finding a good match.  I did however find a new counsellor earlier this month that I think is going to work out.  I am optimistic.

Perhaps because of that optimism, I had a revelation the other day.  It goes back five years, to when Covid began.

We were all forced to adapt.  We were all stuck indoors.  Some of us had to work from home.  Everyone bought webcams.  Anyone that could work from home during that time, probably did at least once.  Now, working from home policies are pretty standard.

And thus it occurred to me:  storms like this don’t have as big an impact on me anymore, because I can just stay home and work.  That is a game changer as far as my winter disorder goes.  I don’t have to go fight the roads just to get to work alive.  I can stay home, and eat pretty much anything I want to.  That’s thanks to Covid.  So there you go.  Perspective.  Five years ago I said I’d have loads of perspective.  There’s one angle.

Of course, for me, working from home recently meant a drop in creativity.  One of the cardinal rules of working from home is:  “Thou shalt not use your creative space as your work space.”  It’s just not good for mental health to mix the two, but I have no choice.  So, as a result, when I’m done sitting in this chair for eight or nine hours of work, I don’t choose to sit in it again for an hour or two more.  It’s not healthy.

I will say one thing, which is that I bought a disappointing Rod Stewart CD this past weekend that I should have spent more time reading the sticker.  You’re In My Heart:  Rod Stewart with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.  Cool, Rod with a symphony.  All my favourite songs like “Reason to Believe” and “You’re In My Heart”.  New versions, I assumed.  Unfortunately, I discovered it’s just another Drastic Symphony.  Except for two new recordings, it’s just old Rod classics with strings dubbed in, just like Def Leppard.  Disappointing!

So, writing hasn’t been a priority when I have this stuff going on, but not everybody watches YouTube so it’s nice to touch base like this once in a while.  Hope you’re doing well.