Dear Diary: A man, his dog, and filling time during the COVID-19 pandemic

CBCCalgarywants to knowhow you are living these days. What are you doing differently? What makes you laugh? Cry? Scream? Have you started a new hobby? Let us know.

In this instalment of our series, Dear Diary: In a Time of COVID-19, Calgary's Marc Richea tells us how he's filling his days.This submission has been edited for clarity and length.

Hi there,

I am Marc, aka "Chewie," and this is my COVID-19 diary.

I started isolating myself from others in early March as I had a cold (sneezing andcoughing) so I thought it best to stay away from other people. This was about a week before we were asked to self-isolate by our companies and governments.

I am very fortunate in that I work in the IT world, thus working remotely is not that difficult; in fact, being a consultant, I was perfectly situated for this.

The only "problem"I had was making room on the desk in my den for all of my computers.

I live in a condo apartment with my bouncy, bundle of energy English bulldogHudsonand I am soglad I have him in my life right now. He keeps me grounded, focusing on him makes me laugh every single day without fail.

The main thing I am trying to do during this unusual period of time in our history is to make use of the extra time we have.

Time is a truly precious gift and I decided to make good use of this. I organized my apartment including my spare bedroom/library as I could barely walk into it; apparently I am a hoarder who knew?

I ended up throwing out a bunch of stuff and organized all my books by author andgenre. Ieven found some extra copies of some books.

Early in this, I saw a post on Facebook mentioning that many Ivy League universities in the U.S. were offering free online courses. I browsed them and settled on my first:a course on the U.S. Civil war from Yale. I am 20 lectures into it and have seven to go. It has been a fascinating subject as there is so much more to it than people realize.

I brought my guitar out of my spare room and am slowly learning to play it again.

My dragon boat (paddling) season was sadly cancelled a few weeks ago but honestly if that is the worstthing that happens to me I will call myself very lucky.

Generally I am trying to stay healthy andpositive and am trying to keep in touch with my friends, especially those who,like me, live alone.

Thanks for listening to me. Take care, stay safe

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