Precious phones and being a #stayathomo

I was once on the cover of GCN magazine, in the background of course. That's me up there, doing an impression of a pirate. Don't I say ARRRR to you? I do. Embodied the character well.

My phone has always been very valuable. Not in the sense of any actual value, or my actually looking after it. 

In fact, it's so old, and so broken, that sometimes, for months on end, the mic doesn't work. People will chat away to me, and get silence. And that's when it's working! No, really. I have an irrational fear of phone calls. So, that malfunction actually works for me. Sadly it's resolved itself again now. The home button also doesn't work, so no screen grabs. And I have to shut down all applications if I want to switch between any. It has two artful cracks at either end. They mirror each other, as if on purpose. Like this was a decision I made. 

The value part I'm talking about, though, is that it keeps me occupied! It shows me where to go (back when we used to be able to go anywhere). It holds all my precious photos. And now it keeps all my friends in it too. At times though, in this new now, it can also be a phone bomb. That little cheerful pling notification. And that next dose of dread that's become so familiar recently. Recession! Death! It's at your door! I don't know whether to hold it tight or throw it across the room.

A comfort today has been looking on at our cross the road covid neighbours. They are doing virtual hugs to visitors out the window and through their door. Would warm your cold pandemic heart.

I can't imagine what this would be like if we didn't have technology. I guess I'd be writing this shite blog with ink and a feather! And doing less mom fitness (see MIF post). I ran up a hill today in the park though, which would constitute some old timey entertainment. Wife accompanied me on my morning pant through park in pants. She ran with me. She was the one who suggested running up that hill. (Hi Kate Bush, thank you for reading my blog.) She also suggested a race. For a human sloth like me that was never going to work but I still gave it a good go! I arrived at the corner a good 15 minutes after her.

We've taken to leaving the curtains open in the evenings now too. Such is the extent of my desire to look at other human beings. Even if they're just walking past me with a mask on.

My valuable phone plinged with a message from a dear friend. She is the captain of GCN. I'm sure that is her title. Anyway, she wanted people to talk about a hashtag the young gays will be adopting. That hashtag is #stayathomo. It's a campaign GCN are doing. GCN is the Gay Community News magazine. They do all the gay news for the gays. Staying at homo is when homosexuals stay home, for you straights out there. It's supposed to have a positive slant and attitude to staying at home(o). 

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure how positive I'm being. I'm also not sure who my target audience would be. (Likely my wife and my mother in law and my two work besties, HI FAVS!) And to be fair, think they're all staying at homo pretty successfully. So I'm not sure how I could spread this message much. I'm no virus. But, I digress. This is about positivity!

I guess one positive thing for me has been carving out a little time every day to write a bit. I've started looking out for things. Like that 'look for the helpers' thing people say to do in a crisis. The helpers for me are: 
cute dogs, 
window hugs, 
weird lady in the park stretches, 
anything my wife does (except if I'm ON A WORK VIDEO CALL AND SHE RE-ENACTS THE FINAL SCENES OF GAME OF THRONES WITH DOLLS - NOT KOOL)
and any and all episodes of 'Couples Come Dine with Me'. 

The biggest helper though, has been making note of it and writing it down. If no one reads it, or if people find it irritating, that is SO GRAND. I can be quite irritating. Ask everyone. 

But I definitely do try to take a positive slant on things. And after a good few days of this, I can confirm that it helps. Would recommend. Worries do creep in of course. Yet that positive slant has been formed by my forcing myself to embarrassingly blog. Even though that's very 2010, isn't it? 2010, a fine year. Was v. gay that year.  A year I appeared on the cover of GCN (in the background). See above! Arr! And this homo staying at home(o) is enjoying pretending it's 2010. Pretending anyone might read this. And most of all, trying to wrench some joy out of this absolute shit show we find ourselves in right now. 

If you, (my readership of 3) have a nice positive picture or video or activity, you can use the hashtag #stayathomo too. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could collect up lots of nice happy positive things for ourselves. All through our tiny phones. Opening us up to a big lovely valuable world. (If we do it enough, we might even drown out the scary parts and promote our lil phones back to being our fav, cracked, broken, diamonds).