Mike's Mets - Normal is Good

 

By Mike Steffanos

We're a mere two weeks away from the start of the 2021 baseball season. This is a marked improvement from a year ago when the COVID-19 epidemic had already shut down baseball. Even then, we were all only beginning to understand how much of our lives would be shut down and how long it would take to return to normal. We're not quite there yet but, if you squint hard, you can actually see normal from where we are now. For a while, it seemed that we would never get to this place.

Of course, when you spend so much time without things being normal, it's actually going to be a bit weird when normal fully returns. I know someday before this year is out, I'm going to walk into a store, and nobody, including me, will be wearing a mask. That was normal before last spring. I'm sure that after a while, it will seem normal again. But for a time, at least, normal is going to feel mighty weird. I'm pretty sure I can live with that, however.

I started seeing an APRN last year as my primary health care provider. I've had a whole cornucopia of issues, from being diagnosed as a Type 2 Diabetic to a back injury to chronic dizziness and balance issue. It occurs to me that I've been in her office a whole boatload of times since last May, but neither one of us has seen the bottom half of each other's face. If I was to run into her in a public place without a face mask on, I probably wouldn't recognize her. Such is the weird world we have all inhabited over the past year.

When this thing was really getting underway last March, it was the impetus for me to start up this blog again after being away from writing about the Mets for a decade. Hard to believe that next Wednesday will be my one-year Anniversary back at blogging.

It took a while for me to get back in the swing of writing. I had only done small amounts of writing for various jobs I held that intervening decade. It really wasn't until the fall of last year that I felt comfortable as a writer again. Of course, not having to take painkillers for my back any longer after disk surgery in early September helped a lot there, too.

So much has changed for me and the world around me since last March. I was out of work for a while, got my job back, and then was laid off again two days before Christmas. I'm still out of work, but nor sure I want to go back to that job even if it is offered to me. I'm not ready to retire, but maybe I can find something that challenges and interests me a little more. If not, though, this blog has been a welcome outlet. I always challenge myself to write better, and I feel a sense of accomplishment when I look at something I wrote a year ago and compare it to now. Even at age 62, trying to be better at something I care about energizes me.

I just came off a rough few days with that dizziness issue that still hasn't been successfully diagnosed. I'm going for an MRI next week. Mostly it's been manageable, but I woke up feeling horrible Tuesday. It felt like all of the bad parts of getting good and drunk in the old days without any of the fun parts. I'm feeling better today, but they're doing an MRI on my head on Monday to see if they can finally figure out what's causing this stupid problem. Even on my best days, it's something I have to overcome.

This dizziness has been a part of my life for about 15 years. It pretty much feels normal to me now. If the doctors can actually diagnose and treat the condition, I'd have to get used to not feeling this way again. Just like life in a post-COVID world, a return to what was once normal would require an adaptation on my part. In both of those cases, however, I would cheerfully deal with the adjustment.

A year ago, the Mets were still owned by Fred and Jeff Wilpon. While COVID-19 has been negatively affecting all of our lives for just about a year, the Wilpon pandemic has been going on for decades. While I won't even presume to equate the mismanagement of that pair to a disease that's claimed over half a million lives in this country alone, the Wilpon era with the Mets has one small thing in common with COVID-19: they made awful feel like normal.

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