profkf's Blog

With apologies to Mr. Zevon, the current state of what I grew up thinking was a nation continually evolving toward good, seems to have taken a very blind and hard turn away from that. There are, in my mind, two major forces that have driven the overwhelming majority of societal unrest and evil. Organized Religion and unfettered greed. That led me to the following thoughts

Throughout history, two forces have profoundly shaped human civilization: organized religion and the pursuit of wealth. At first glance, they appear distinct—one claiming spiritual purity, the other material ambition. Yet their histories often intertwine, both driven by a shared human impulse: the desire for control, security, and significance. The darker chapters of both reveal how ideals can be corrupted by excess, and how power, cloaked in either faith or fortune, can become an instrument of harm.

Organized religion, in its essence, is meant to connect humanity with the divine, to give moral guidance and meaning to life’s chaos. But in institutional form, religion has often been wielded as a tool of dominance. From the Crusades and inquisitions to the persecution of dissenters and colonization justified in God’s name, faith has repeatedly been used to consolidate authority. The wealth of medieval churches, the sale of indulgences, and the exploitation of believers’ fears all expose how easily spirituality can be transformed into an economy of guilt and control.

In many eras, religious institutions were not just spiritual leaders but political and economic powers—owning land, collecting tithes, influencing monarchs. The language of salvation masked systems that often kept the poor obedient and the powerful sanctified. Faith, when organized, could become less about the divine and more about divine right.

Fast-forward to the modern age (exacerbated by the behaviors of the past 10 years) , and the altar has changed, but the worship continues. Today, the god of choice for many is money—its promises of safety, status, and immortality through legacy. The pursuit of excessive wealth has birthed empires, yes, but also exploitation: sweatshops, financial crises, and environmental devastation. The excesses of capitalism mirror the indulgences of old religion; both promise transcendence, both demand devotion, and both often deliver inequality.

We’ve traded cathedrals for skyscrapers, relics for luxury brands, indulgences for investment portfolios. The modern elite, much like the clergy of old, preach a gospel that justifies their abundance—whether through “meritocracy” or “divine favor.” And just as religion once claimed poverty was virtuous for the masses, today’s economic system romanticizes hustle while punishing those who can’t keep up.

What links the historical evils of organized religion and the obsession with wealth is not the institutions themselves, but the human nature that animates them. Both reflect our yearning for meaning and mastery—for something to believe in and something to hold onto. When these instincts go unchecked, ideals become idols.

Religion isn’t inherently corrupt, nor is wealth inherently evil. But when either becomes an end rather than a means—a god rather than a guide—they begin to rot from within. The abuse of faith and fortune both reveal a simple truth: humanity struggles to handle power without turning it into a hierarchy.

Perhaps the challenge of our time is to reclaim what was good in both. To rediscover the compassion and community at the heart of true spirituality, and the creativity and progress that money can enable when decoupled from greed. Neither faith nor fortune must dominate; both can serve. The problem is that in order for that to happen, those guiding the ship need to have a currently missing balance of empathy and realizing that a patriarchy and white washing history are exactly the opposite of what is necessary.

If history teaches anything, it’s that the real evil lies not in the church or the marketplace, but in the unchecked worship of either. When we stop asking how much and start asking why, we might finally begin to live by something higher than both gold and gospel.

Guess it’s time to let Warren play us out on this….

Don’t let us get sick, don’t let us get old
Don’t let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave and make us play nice
And let us be together tonight

It’s been a while since I’ve stopped by here. Things have been pretty static, not too much to say beyond the incredible stress caused by the petulant boy dictator and his minions so I have taken to spending a lot of time listening to music, reading, living in virtual reality. Many days are taken up doing various boxing routines on Supernatural to loosen up the old bones and muscles and they followed up with multiple rounds of virtual golf on many of the great courses of the world. No longer having to punch the clock, holidays come and go without any need for additional celebration or excitement since there is nothing to “break” from. President’s Day, Memorial Day, July 4th are just “other days” where there is no mail and additional crowds. Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter are a bit more celebratory but being so far from family both blood and chosen dulls the extra special nature of those as well.

Labor Day weekend, though always elicits a bit of a different feeling for me. When I was much younger and my kids were just coming into their own as people, we would be invited out to spend the holiday weekend in Shirley, Long Island (all the way to exit 68 on the LIE …quite the trip from CT) at seasonal home of some friends my then wife, Doreen, had grown up with and who embraced me as family when we married. It was truly the example of “mi casa es tu casa”. There were no locks on the doors, you slept wherever you could (as the only folks at that time with two young kids we got the royal treatment and had a bedroom to ourselves), there were smiles, a lot of loud volume conversations, swimming, clamming, cooking, jokes, drinks, poker games and other card games that went through most of the night, and always more ringing laughter. There were always one of two things playing on the TV…The now defunct Jerry Lewis Telethon and the US Open Tennis tournament. The saddest time was packing up and leaving to go back to the Sturm and Drang of life (and, of course, trying to time it so that a two hour trip did not morph into a 4 hour event though that was always pot luck).

Every year, for a very long time and especially now living 1000 miles from the aforementioned family and friends, Labor Day weekend is still highlighted by watching the Us Open over multiple days. Every time I watch it, I am, at least in my mind, transported back to Shirley, Long Island, and the time spent with Frank, Eleanor, Laurie, Linda, and Susie Lunardi at their home. I still well up with joy, that is mixed in with sadness…Frank and Eleanor left us for a journey to another astral plane years ago but that doesn’t dull the memories of all that went on. Doreen and I went our separate ways more than 25 years ago, Sue and I now live in South Carolina (at least for the moment), and I’ve only seen Laurie and Linda and their partners two or three times since.

Susie became a fabulous dentist and even though she was based in the Bronx, I spent many years under her wonderful care so I did see her at least once a year (though she would have preferred at least two per year). I grew up with a dental phobia, and it took all of her patience (and some nitrous oxide…aka “laughing gas”) just to bring me back into the dental care fold…Beyond her profession, she spent untold hours rescuing cats and dogs…kindness and empathetic in a way that seems to have been lost by many today.

Earlier this afternoon, while watching the Open, my phone rang, and I actually answered it (something I rarely do unless I’m expecting a call). It was my son Drew, who was calling to tell me that Susie had lost her battle with a very aggressive form of you know what….and was now rejoining her mom and dad on their collective journey. While it was not a total shock, that news is never less than heartbreaking. Growing older, while having many unpleasant side effects, is a privilege, and increasingly it is a reminder that while enjoying said privilege along with it comes waves of sadness when anyone who has brought joy to your life no longer has their flame lit. This is one of those jarring cases…While it has been many years since I have seen Susie, I can still “see” her in my mind, and hear her. I will miss her and I hope that this house agnostic is 100% wrong and that she is hugging Frank and Eleanor and playing some cards while watching the tennis from above.

Best way to end this with the closing verse from Jackson Browne’s song that became the title of this piece it, too, goes back over 50 years. (been listening to it as I’m writing)

“But the angels are older
They can see that the sun’s setting fast
They look over my shoulder
At the vision of paradise contained in the light of the past
And they lay down behind me
To sleep beside the road till the morning has come
Where they know they will find me
With my maps and my faith in the distance
Moving farther on“

At the very least, these are perplexing times. We are witnessing a dismantling of civility, of sensibility, of empathy. Simultaneously, there are a significant number of folks in this nation cheering on all of those changes. I find myself looking to shelter myself from the daily screaming sessions, thank you Roger Ailes, it does seem like “the loudest voice” has currently captured the hearts of the mindless.

I was a big comic book reader, DC comics at the start until I found Marvel and Spiderman, Daredevil, Avengers, X-Men, Captain America, The Hulk, Thor et al. Each and every one of those with significant flaws but also so inclusive that in today’s market they would likely be banned due to the very nature of the main characters. Superman was my favorite at the outset in my DC days and it seems as if we have actually entered the Bizarro universe that was first presented almost 70 years ago (1958 first occurrence). The copy of Superboy, quickly labeled “Bizarro”, is a flawed imitation as it possesses chalky white skin and childlike erratic behavior. When he makes his next appearance courtesy of Lex Luthor, in the adult Superman, among the things he says are: Me don’t know difference between right and wrong – good and evil!” Just think on these things…Lex Luthor, whose very character personifies unchecked ambition and the supremacy, being responsible for Bizzaro, the exact opposite of “Truth, Justice and the American Way” that Superman stands for. Who, exactly might the living versions be today I wonder? Notice I didn’t use the phrase “human versions” as, in neither case, the comic, or the current, could any of these characters be considered even remotely human.

It is a daily struggle to find balance these days. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t. Some nights I find myself awake at 2 or 3 AM just floundering trying to get back to sleep with many of these thoughts racing around. Couple all of that with the passing of Abbey THE dog who, even though I’ve had pets most of my life, managed to attach herself to my heart unlike any of the others.

I am just now beginning to find the balance of that part of life, the part without her. I am making a concerted effort to return to being active, something that this winter has really blocked. The town pool was (and as of this writing still is) closed so my main solace, swimming laps, won’t start up again for a few weeks when our community pool reopens. Age, being the thief that it is, has pretty much put the kibosh on being able to run but Abbey was the motivation for getting out and walking, even in her last few weeks she still wanted to go, so we would take short strolls as she would tire quickly. When she crossed the bridge, I let my sadness take over and could not motivate myself to get out, then it hit me that she will always be with me, so I have taken up the walking mantle again, and have committed to finishing a 5K the second week of April. I take something of hers with me each day sometimes her collar, sometimes an old tag we had for her collar in case she got loose, sometimes just the lock of her hair that the vet clipped for us on “the day”. There are days I can actually hear her barking with another dog walks by.

My music playlists vary a lot with my mood, it can go from Bruce to Bocelli. Just a couple of days ago, when I did my longest session at 3.3 miles just to make sure I am able to finish said 5K, I was listening to a fabulous album from Mark Knopfler: Tracker. It turned out to be the perfect length as it covered the entire walk and was just ending when I got back home. A few songs prior to the end is a duet he does with Ruth Moody on the song Wherever I Go. It stopped me in my tracks and my eyes started to drip, ultimately turning into a full scale flood. I imagined it was an exchange Abbey and I had on her last few moments…Here’s what I mean:

It opens with Mark singing: (and me imagining it was what I was saying)

“Maybe I’m bound to wander
From one place to the next
Heaven knows why

But in the wild blue yonder
Your star is fixed in my sky

Then Ruth (in my mind, Abbey’s voice) chimes in

Just another bar at a crossroads
So far from home
But that’s alright

Whenever I’m going down a dark road
I don’t feel alone in the night

Now they sing together

There’s a place in my heart
Though we’re far apart
May you always know
No matter how long since I saw you
I’ll keep a flame there for you

Wherever I go“

then there is a brief interlude with his fabulous guitar bridging to his next part (I am a mess at this point)

Mark (me)

They’re looking to close up in here
They’re pulling down the blinds
But they’ll let you stay awhile
They’re not going to mind

Ruth Moody (Abbey)

Now I’ve got to leave you, brother
So this round’s mine
Here’s looking at you, anyhow
You can go on and have another
They won’t call time
I’m going to say my goodbyes now

Finally, they sing the chorus together after which Mark plays it out for another 2 minutes as only he can:

There’s a place in my heart
Though we’re far apart
May you always know
No matter how long since I saw you
I’ll keep a flame there for you
Wherever I go

The picture with the bow she was still with us, saying her goodbyes “now”, the one without, she had crossed and the song was fading out

While I still tear up, even now as I type, I can smile a lot more about the time we had with her, so I guess the state of the union is such that it remains inconsistently unbalanced.

No matter how long since I saw you, I’ll keep a flame there for you, wherever we go..

It’s been a dark few weeks, the loss of Abbey THE dog still lingers, though it’s easier to think of her and to look at the pictures and the memories. I still take something of hers with me when I go for a walk. The state of the nation is an ongoing daily series of gut punches. I am walking a very fine line between wanting to avoid it at all costs, but also knowing that is exactly the wrong tactic. Awareness, coupled with being as vocal about the dire circumstances and doing all I can to raise awareness of the incredible self centered, “mine, mine, mine” mentality without an ounce of regard to humanity currently pretending to govern a nation that exists because of the opposition to being ruled by Kings demanding only fealty. The attacks and threats on a free press, on the arts (really…a fool who thinks capital letter tweets represents “art”, installing himself as the head of the Kennedy Center for the arts simply because of his fear that they might greenlight something critical of him). It is already as if the NYTimes whose masthead once proclaimed “All The News That’s Fit To Print” has become NYPravda. The Washington Post, yes the Wapo that broke Watergate is now censoring cartoonists to the point of having them resign on principal, something that neither publication seems to have any longer.

The hard fact that my father and his generation spilled blood and with many giving their lives to make sure that Adolf circa 1930’s Germany and Benito in Italy and The Emperor in Japan did not become the global leaders had given way Adolf 2025 and his minions rising up and attempting to do exactly what those heroes from ’41-45 prevented is difficult to read about. Even harder to deal with is the realization that ignorance, lack of interest in truthful information, and a fear of anyone or anything different has become almost normalized. Since 2016, lies, inaccuracies, fear mongering, has become the standard in so many places. The systematic dismantling of decade long policies designed to provide oversight and checks and balances gets worse each day. With consumer prices skyrocketing, and social programs designed to help the most needy among us cut or thrown away completely, we have Adolf 2025 spending his time on his golf courses, taking a crew of sycophants to the Super Bowl, and using his granddaughter as a prop so he can be driven around the Daytona track. Truly Nero fiddling while Rome burns (likely a reference that fewer and fewer will get with the decimation of the Department of Education, after all, an ignorant populous is easier to manipulate…something that continues to be proven daily). The desire for unnecessary expansionism, renaming things to suit his whims continues to put international relationships that go back a few centuries at risk, while looking to align himself (and thus this nation) with tyrants. It has become as if The Tudors was not a TV show, but an actual portent of the future.

Couple all of this tsoris with the realization that my age and with it the accompanying physical limitations, mean there are far more Nevers than even Maybes is becoming harder and harder to deal with. I have come to the realization that as much as I really still want to do it, I will never again get on a surfboard, never again start and finish a half marathon, likely never again even do a 5K other than to walk it (and that’s a stretch “maybe”), never again walk a full 18 holes carrying my own clubs (hell it’s hard enough with my arthritic hands to be able to play 18 holes riding a cart). I will never again be “19 forever” (with a nod to Joe Jackson). There are a lot more nevers I’m dealing with, but enough gloom is enough…

Yes, I’m still active. Yes I’m self sufficient and consistently above ground. Yes I can (and love to ) laugh and enjoy music of all kinds. Yes I have an amazing side kick on this roller coaster ride along the cradle-grave timeline.

However….

“…it’s no, nay, never
No, nay, never, no more
Will I play the wild rover
No, never, no more“

It’s no secret that I am constantly confronted with mortality. From anniversaries of loved one’s passing, to looking at the calendar and simply understanding that 2025 is not something I ever thought of back in 1995, it seemed so very far away that it was crazy. What makes it even harder is watching Abbey THE dog beginning to run her final lap. There are moments where she is excited the way she has always been, but most of the time she just paces, either in the house or out in the yard. She always wants to go out, regardless of. the cold, heat, or even in the rain (she has always hated the rain, making it even more hard to watch) and when she goes out all she does is pace around the yard, back and forth, back and forth. Very occasionally she will lay down in the sun, but while she used to do that a lot, that is now the exception. Her back legs are weak and she has a hard time standing to eat her food, so much so that we have a rubber mat coming to make it easier on her. Where she used to spend all of her time laying down near us, recently she has taken to going into one of the guest rooms and laying between the two twin beds by herself. She will still spend most of the night in her bed in our bedroom but will always roust around 3 AM and need to go out and even then sometimes later in the morning she will leave a present or two after we fall back asleep.

I know the day is coming where we will need to make a decision, fortunately today is not yet that day. I keep hoping very selfishly that one morning I will find her peacefully asleep on the rug by her bowl where she has spent a lot of her time. Even though her legs are weak (and believe me I get the age impacting on all things physical, another punctuation mark on my own struggle), she doesn’t seem to be in any additional major discomfort, it more the seeming to slip away cognitively a little more each day.

Anyway…I just felt the need to say it somehow and this was as good a place as any….I’ll let some of Dan’s lyrics from the song that shares its title with this post take it out, all the while wondering if dogs do have memories and do dream

Sometimes in the night I feel it
Near as my next breath and yet untouchable
Silently the past comes stealing
Like the taste of some forbidden sweet
Along the walls in shadowed rafters
Moving like a thought through haunted atmospheres
Muted cries and echoed laughter
Banished dreams that never sank in sleep
Lost in love and found in reason
Questions that the mind can find no answers for
Ghostly eyes conspire treason
As they gather just outside the door
And every ghost that calls upon us
Brings another measure in the mystery
Death is there to keep us honest
And constantly remind us we are free
Down the ancient corridors
And through the gates of time
Run the ghosts of days that we’ve left behind
Down the ancient corridors
And through the gates of time
Run the ghosts of dreams that we left behind

He would have been 100 today. He has been gone for 31 years (he didn’t even make it to 70, almost but not quite). We had a very interesting 41 years together. We had our ups and downs as most relationships of any kind have over that period of time but the nadirs are, even with the blessings of hindsight, far, far fewer than the zeniths.

He was born the son of a NYC police detective, his mom died after he was born and he and his father had a very fractured relationship, at least as it was related to me over the years. He didn’t talk much about it, and only would answer questions I asked with very short replies. I got that he didn’t want to talk about it and rarely probed more than a few questions. The one story that still both intrigues and haunts me is this one: He enlisted in the Navy when WW2 broke out and was stationed on a Destroyer Escort, he sent the majority of his pay home during the war as he really had no use for it on the ship that was constantly moving. When he was discharged after it was all over, he went to the address he remembered only to find that his father (who had remarried after his mom passed way back) had moved and left no forwarding address, taking with him all the money that was sent back from his time at sea. He was able to track him down with the help of his older sister Alice, but it would be years (well after I was born) before there was any renewed contact.

His options were limited, even back then, as he had dropped out of school to join the Navy. He took a job as a bus driver for NYC and that became his life path. If you’ve ever seen the movie A Bronx Tale, one of the routes he drove was the one ending on City Island, the exact same as Chazz Palminteri’s father drove in the movie (for all I know they knew each other but I never got the chance to ask him as the movie was released about two weeks before he passed and he was already in hospice care at that point). I would occasionally ride with him and I do have vivid memories of going to the same place at the end of City Island that Chazz’s at the end of his route and having ice cream as he cleaned his bus out before returning it to the garage.

He never made a lot of money, he was a bus driver and then a dispatcher (the next level up), but we never seemed to be hurting. Christmas and birthdays were gift showers, far more than was necessary. I was taken to my first Yankee game and allowed to pick out one souvenir, I chose a Yogi Berra pin that I still have. We swam together, he taught me how to throw and catch, I taught him about golf when I was introduced to it at 13 by a friend. We took small, local, vacations and when I was 14 he took us to Far Rockaway to visit a friend of his who summered there, we all fell in love with it and he immediately rented a bungalow from Vic Santini (yes, one of the seven brothers) for the rest of that summer and we then became residents of the working man’s riviera for the next 10 years. All the while he drove into work every day along with my mom, so my sister and I could escape to the ocean.

He always suggested I would love a city “union” job and it would be good for me, but he never once put any pressure on me and when I expressed a desire to go to college and look for something else both he and my mom were fully supportive. They managed to pay for my undergrad degree in full and gave me the freedom to follow my own, at that time very unsure, path. When I was offered an excellent position at the NSA after graduation, the offer was made in Sept of 1970, and I turned it down (the thought of working in Washington in the Nixon era was too much to take), my Navy veteran father was disappointed but never said anything more than “are you sure about that” when I gave him my decision.

When I had children of my own, he was always “there”. He would stalk the latest, hard to get toys for Christmas. for us. When we bought our first home in 1989, he drove up, spent multiple nights sleeping on the floor and painted the entire inside of the house so I wouldn’t have to take time off from teaching or pay someone to do it.

He finally fulfilled his own dream of owning a property when he and my mom purchased a condo in Vermont. After Far Rockaway was no longer viable, they started spending time in Quechee, VT where my mom’s sister and her husband had bought a home in the mid 70’s and ultimately found something they liked. He never got to spend a single night there as he had contracted lung cancer from years of smoking and working in asbestos laden garages and it went long undiagnosed due to sub standard health care. By the time a responsible doctor found it, it was far too late and it was only about 9 months from that diagnosis until he passed.

The last time we had together was a Saturday afternoon in the home in Trumbull, CT that he had lovingly painted for us. It was 4 years later, and my wife, mom and both kids went to the local mall. My dad, who was by that time on portable oxygen, and I took a long walk around the neighborhood and when we got back just talked for what seemed like hours about everything and nothing. The good news is there was nothing left unsaid, the bad news is that about a week later he had a mini stroke and was moved to Calvary Hospice care in the Bronx where he was totally uncommunicative.

I had just visited him at Calvary on an early October afternoon just before the Columbus Day holiday weekend, he was still uncommunicative and as I was leaving I held his hand and said “Dad, it’s ok to go, we’ll miss you but everyone will be ok”. Later that night the phone rang and when I answered I was gobsmacked…it was him, just as lucid as if it was 30 years earlier. We spoke for about 10 minutes and then he said he was getting tired and needed to call my sister. I told him I loved him and we hung up.

About 5 hours later the phone rang again, and it was Calvary calling to tell me that he had passed. I’m not making that up and that’s not a figment of my imagination, that is what actually happened. I called my mom to tell her (I had asked that they call me first), and that I would pick her up and we’d go together to see him and provide the information to Calvary for the arrangements.

The next morning, as I was driving to the funeral home to finalize things, on my car radio came Bruce Sprinsteen’s song “Walk Like A Man” To this day, some 31 years later, I can’t get past the first few notes without tearing up…I think it a great place to end this, along with the fact that I miss you dad…

Here he is with me and the one time I met his dad…

I remember how rough your hand felt on mine
On my wedding day
And the tears cried on my shoulder
I couldn’t turn away
Well so much has happened to me
That I don’t understand
All I can think of is being five years old following behind you at the beach
Tracing your footprints in the sand
Trying to walk like a man

By our Lady Of The Roses
We lived in the shadow of the elms
I remember ma draggin’ me and my sister up the street to the church
Whenever she heard those wedding bells
Well would they ever look so happy again
The handsome groom and his bride
As they stepped into that long black limousine
For their mystery ride
Well tonight you step away from me
And alone at the alter I stand
And as I watch my bride coming down the aisle I pray
For the strength to walk like a man

Well now the years have gone and I’ve grown
From that seed you’ve sown
But I didn’t think there’d be so many steps
I’d have to learn on my own
Well I was young and I didn’t know what to do
When I saw your best steps stolen away from you
Now I’ll do what I can
I’ll walk like a man
And I’ll keep on walkin’

Things have been rough lately. The lead story, of course, is the emotional upheaval caused by the incomprehensible election. I will never understand how messages of hate and fear so totally obscured the facts. The first “round” gave clear history and evidence of what a second round would likely create. Civility and decorum have been cremated, and what has emerged from the ashes are bluster, pomposity, and an ego-maniacal presence that is trailed by sycophants. The total inability of any seeming way to make an impact on that, and to take any preventative steps to somehow forestall the downward spiral is overwhelming.

Take that component and put it in the new shaker with the ongoing frustration and realization of the effects of age and you have a script that Stephen King likely would write even better than I can. The only real difference is that his would largely be fiction and my version is decidedly non fiction.

I have been active and athletic all my life. I swim, I played football, baseball, golf, tennis, racquetball, paddleball. I’ve surfed, body surfed and am a certified Scuba diver (thank you Andy, I am eternally grateful for that). I have enjoyed running for as long as I can remember. Now, let me qualify all of this with the fact that other than some time during my football days, and very early on in baseball, and for a very short time in the late 60’s and early 70’s in golf, while I was always competitive, my “wins” are nothing to write home about. That said, it was always more about the pursuit of improvement and enjoyment than checking off Win-Loss records. I think the fact that I really gravitated toward golf and running and to an extent surfing and swimming is that it was about what I was able to do better than the time before, or at least to try to do it better than the time before. To take seconds off my per-mile pace, to lower my handicap, to swim an extra set of laps, to take that one bigger wave and make it. It was an internal drive, not a drive for trophies, medals, certainly not for money. So the current struggle and disappointments are also internal and that’s where the struggle lies.

I promised myself when the pool closed that I would pick up start walking seriously with the intent to start jogging again after an appropriate warm up period. I was anticipating getting up to walking 2-3 miles and then adding in short periods of jogging, ultimately building up to being able to jog a full mile and ultimately 3-5 miles full jog once a week. To say that plan has met with rousing failure would be totally underselling the debacle that is currently is. In 2016 I trained for and finished a full half marathon, 13.1 miles, and then continued through the pandemic to do at least 3-4 days per week of 3-5 mile runs at, for me, a very respectable 13-14 min per mile pace (I know, nothing that Jim Thorpe would be threatened by, but again it was never about beating someone else, it was, and is, about looking in the mirror and being proud and satisfied). Now, I can’t even do it two days in a row, I have to be “satisfied” with every other day. Today I did 2.26 miles walking at a 23.49 min per mile pace, almost double what it was not too long ago. Add on to it that unlike my running days where it was sweaty but satisfying, today it was torture, it was uncomfortable. Even at the start, just getting suited up is a bloody chore. My body hurts, my feet seem to be swollen more than usual, my muscles hurt, my hands hurt and worse, the personal embarrassment of listening to the music I used to gauge my runs by makes it worse not better.

All the things I did to lift my spirits during the pandemic are so limited now that what used to help lift me up is now just a memory hanging like an albatross around my neck. I feel old, useless, incompetent and wasting away.

Maybe this IS where you go when you get to the end of your dream….