When Corona Ends - Hugs, Exercise, Tinder and Travel!

_{Image by Larisa Koshkina from PixabayModified by Me Using PhotoShop}

Covid-Scmovid (You Will Not Take Me Down!)

I'm deep in the belly of the beast right now to be honest. It started with fever, shivers and coughing for most of the day on Sunday. More recently the fever has abated a little, but I find myself exhausted, nauseous and most recently a mild wheezing has started to manifest.

I'm sounding a little like something from the walking dead.

https://soundcloud.com/rowan-joyce/zombie-light-moaning-sound-effect

Thank fck I've not lost taste or smell as I couldn't do without coffee to spur me on to stay awake more than 6 hours per day. But all in all, covid-19 has a grip of my system and has been playing its evil xylophone of symptoms one by one like a five year old trying to drive its parents batshit crazy.

Be mindful people! If some of us do turn into shuffling, groaning, asexual, brain munching morons... there is still hope! This German gentleman has made a YouTube career out of showing that you can indeed kill a zombie with a catapult (sling shot for all you yanks).

It's OK!

Please if you see me shuffling toward you in the not too distant future wheezing coffffeeeeee, crumpettttsssss... toilet paper... the chaffing, I cannnnnn't taaakke the chaaafffing.

Please, please don't hesitate to pull out that 'black widow catapult' and pop a hole in my covid riddled zombie ass head. You would be doing me a favor... after all... anal chaffing is no laughing matter!

Fair enough... but you know what they say - you've got to laugh or you'd cry. This is how I deal with adversity and suffering, through humor.

Moving on to the more serious questions of what I will be doing after lock down. Once this shit has run its course through my body and I can leap free once again like the mighty Gazelle, pausing only to nibble upon juniper and other random berries in the sunny prairies of my metaphorical Serengeti.

_{Click Image to Visit Dan's Post 👆}

@theycallmedan asked the questions:

What will you do when COVID 19 ends?

This initiative is to share what you're looking forward to doing again.

What are the first three activities you'll do when the coronavirus is over, and why?
Start with the 1st thing you will do, the second and then the third.
Please write a whole post sharing your story.

In order of priority.

_{Image by Sasin Tipchai from PixabayModified by Me Using PhotoShop}

1 Family & Friends

Straight up, the words in that picture say it all! Even someone like myself with so little family left creates an extended family among friends. Seeing what little relatives I have left (basically my mother), having more zoom/skype chats with my aunt, uncle and cousin in the states, but mostly giving my mother a hug; these are all things that I look forward to post lock down.

As I mentioned in my last post, my mother was diagnosed with cancer late last year and through a miraculous turn of events she was among 1% of cancer sufferers with a genetic mutation called ROS-1. This basically means no chemotherapy, and the medicine that she has to take for the rest of her life has mild to no side effects. But she is still in the high risk category for covid-19. The drugs she takes daily compromise her immune system therefor I have to stay away.

I am looking forward to just seeing people wandering about the place again. Something I never thought would bother me being an introvert and freelance writer. I have gone weeks before now without leaving the apartment and it never bothered me before. Meeting with friends in the pub, having a game of pool and just generally wandering about the city center in this glorious sunshine we're having right now. These are the dreams that are keeping me going and the hope that this shit storm blows over before the summer and my birthday in July.

_{All Images are my own taken during the Liverpool 2011 Triathlon}

2) Exercise

Exercise is something I'm really craving. Before this pandemic hit I have been suffering a six year chronic illness called SIBO, of which I've written many times before and had been following a strict ketogenic diet for 3 months prior to the world going insane.

To cut a long story short I lost 2.5 stone/35 lbs/15.9KG in a three month period and was all set to continue the ketogenic diet with a set exercise regime of swimming and cycling. Once I'm out of lockdown, cycling with a mask on should be possible as the UK don't prohibit daily exercise and hopefully I will have some level of immunity. But swimming pools aren't going to be open for a long time as evidence is pointing toward airborne/saliva/mucus transmission of this disease.

Many moons ago I trained for, and completed, an Olympic length triathlon, raising some money to help toward caring for vulnerable children.

Swimming in particular is my favorite exercise, and jogging just isn't on the agenda due to a prolapsed disc which I've tried years of yoga to gently improve (zero effect), chiropractor (zero effect), physiotherapy and many other healing modalities like acupuncture which actually helped the second time the disc slipped but was too little too late as I lost all the clients from the gardening business I built over the course of 2 years.

It is my dream to get back to the levels of physical fitness needed to compete, not in triathlon, but maybe swimming galas or the cross river Mersey race that happens yearly. Possibly a moderated triathlon without the running section. Just to generally move on with my life without this constant fear of a disc issue re-appearing, as it did a few months ago, or digestive symptoms fucking my life up with debilitating symptoms with little logical trigger.

Image by stokpic from Pixabay Modified by Me Using PhotoShop

3) Sexercise!

Now I'm not going to beat about the bush here... or maybe I am, I look forward to finding out how the lady in question likes to get down. But this ain't me being crude. It's been far too fucking long since there's been any 'Lionel Richie-esque' sweet love making with a woman in my life. I hesitate to say how long, so I'm not going to 😂 trust your instincts, especially when writing blogs online. I was serious when I threw something of a fever endued rage storm of a tweet at @theycallmedan on twitter.

I've always been a romantic at heart and a little shy in person though this may not come across in discord, or if you meet me on the rare occasion that I'm drunk. But once this Corona Virus lock down is over I'm going on Tinder and I'm going to go on a swipe-fest. I'm going to have a laugh and not take life so seriously. I'm going to burn off all those excess pounds indulging in the best exercise in the known universe... sexercise.

I'll still write poetry...
but maybe I use my poetic muse
to seduce and enthuse,
capture and enrapture
the hearts of a few
ladies who would like
to really let loose.

Fucking hell, not with poetry of that quality, but yeah... I'm still trying to laugh at life here while I type through my morning cough-fest. Check out the current totally not on tinder selfie... swipe left ladies... quickly!!

Once Corona is all but a memory the first order of the day will be a haircut, and either growing my beard to a reasonable length (see pictures below) or going the 5 oclock shadow route. Right about now if I shared my current selfie to tinder I think it would be 99.9% swipe left... unless there are some cosplay ladies out there who really dig the zombie look 😂

But I'm hoping after kicking this illness, with a bit of a spruce up and the lockdown over I might present a more right swipe-able prospect 👇

Who knows, I will at least give it a go and push myself to do things outside of my comfort zone.

4) Travel & Madness

I used to travel a lot more before I got my chronic illness SIBO (mentioned above). I used to be one of those people who would do slightly crazy things which 9 times out of ten made people smile. I used to do so many things that made my life into something marvelous, an adventure which inspired so much of what I've written about on steem over the last three years.

This part 4 is an added bonus expressing my love of travel and above all deep need to get back beneath the ocean waves scuba diving. Living even for just a brief hour or two among coral fronds and throngs of angel fish. Parrotfish pecking at polyps and the ghost's of reef shark skulking out in the blue. There is literally nothing I would rather do than scuba dive right now.

I'll finish this blog up with a collage of photos of the travels I miss with every beat of my wanderers heart.

To conclude, I look forward to living my life the way I did pre-2015, which was around the time my IBS manifested and developed into a serious condition that lead to me losing my job. If I have to go back on the ketogenic diet again to reach those health goals, so be it.

I look forward to laughing, hugging, travelling and loving.

This post is exclusive to hive blockchain.

Thanks for reading.

All Gifs and Pictures were made/produced by me unless otherwise cited below the image.

Anyone interested in creative writing on Hive blockchain, or any type of poetry or fiction, please do check out the new community I created with @stormlight24 called The Ink Well.