Surprisingly, shopping and watching sports aren’t that big of a deal

So it turns out there are a number of “essential” things I can live without.

One of the more surprising elements of this whole pandemic deal is it has shown me that things I previously thought of as key to my happiness and well-being are largely superfluous to my existence. In fact, I may be better off without them.

Let’s take professional sports. For years, Saturday night was for watching NHL hockey on TV, followed by a Sunday afternoon on the couch taking in football or baseball or golf or basketball or whatever else I could get my eyeballs on. I’ve even watched glitchy streams of European bike racing.

Then there was all the time spent keeping up with all the sports news and analysis, hours spent watching talking heads delving deep into the defensive capabilities of a fourthline left-winger (dubious at best) or the playoff prospects of my favourite team (almost always grim.) How will the Tour de France route impact this year’s race? I better take the afternoon to absorb every piece of information I can find.

That’s all gone now. There are no games to watch, aside from reruns of old glories, and all the speculation is focused on when the leagues might resume, which is even more unknowable than when the Leafs might win the Stanley Cup (though the answer might be the same: never.)

Surprisingly, I don’t miss it at all. Saturday night is now fillin-the-gaps family movie night where my kids are forced to watch key films from the parental oeuvre — what do you mean you’ve never seen “Armageddon!!!” — and Sunday afternoons feature a long walk with the dog, maybe some bread baking. Instead of delving into shot charts and scouting reports I’m fixated on COVID-19 log scales and worldwide heat maps.

Shopping therapy has also come to a screeching halt, afternoons frittered away in malls and retail chain stores looking for bargain wool socks, another “Star Wars” T-shirt or just about anything on sale. I haven’t bought a new item of clothing or a new pair of shoes in several weeks and ... absolutely nothing has changed. Turns out I have of plenty of stuff to wear, probably forever.

I kind of miss my hairdresser because she’s a nice person but these clippers are doing a fine job of providing not-for-public consumption haircuts (which works because I’m rarely in public.) I now have the perfect excuse to not go the gym: it’s not open. And my drinking arm is putting in tons of work anyway.

I used to go to the grocery store several times a week, sometimes to grab staples but often a key ingredient for that night’s dinner. Now, we plan our meals and our once-aweek trips carefully and if we run out of something, well, that’s just the way it is. Our kids have finally learned orange juice does not magically reappear in the fridge every time the jug is empty — and that drinking two litres a day is a bad (and expensive) idea!

Life will one day return to a semblance of normalcy, or so they keep telling us. And while there are some things I’m looking forward to — most of which revolve around spending time with humans who live outside my home — I hope that some of the changes I’ve been forced into become habit.