Tag: coronavirus

A catch-up post

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve felt the inner need to do one of these, but at the same time, it’s been a while since I last posted too.  Not a day goes by when I don’t notice when I post, but between my job entering our busy season, the general busy-ness of raising an infant daughter, night classes, and I do mean night classes seeing as how they’re 9-11 pm, taking up two nights a week with often other nights of the week doing homework for said night classes, as I’ve stated a gabillion times at this point, I simply just don’t have any time.

And with what free time I do have, I’m either usually too gassed and fried in the brain to want to sit down and try and gather my thoughts and write about things especially when feeling unmotivated in the first place, and so I usually end up fast-forwarding through the week’s wrestling programs and when I have them available, catching up on TLC programming like My 600 lb. Life and 90 Day Fiancé.  And as much as I hate to constantly lean on wrestling and TLC to find things to about write about, I can’t remember the last time I had leisurely time to just casually surf the internet for local happenings to rap on, and often times general news around the rest of the world is usually sad and infuriating in the first place and I don’t want to feed into negativity that I can simply avoid.

One day, maybe, I’ll have more free time to write again in the future.  For the sake of my own sanity and gratification, I certainly hope so.

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New Father Brogging, #035

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I last did any sort of post about my plights as a first-time father.  Admittedly, things have been fairly smooth since the last time I really wrote one of these new dad brogs, which might have something to do with the lack of writing about my child, but naturally I know that I’m always another growth spurt or some sort of milestone away from the shit hitting the fan and then the routine that I’ve been living for the better part of the last five months begins to change all over again.

However, for those who might take stock in the fact that my general posting has grown less frequent in more recent times, the thing is that I simply haven’t had the time to write as much as I did, even just a month ago.  And this isn’t the usual, danny is bitching about having so little time because of work and baby, but it’s a little bit more now, because for lack of a better term, I’ve gone back to school.

I’ve been taking a night course over the last month and it will be continuing on until April, so that I can explore the possibility of acquiring new skills.  I don’t think I’ve made much secret of the fact that I’m quite unhappy with where I am at in my life professionally right now, and while casually exploring possibilities elsewhere, the results have not been very positive.  I feel stagnant in my current career path and that I have hit somewhat of a ceiling, and I don’t like my current chances at being able to break through it to ascend higher.

So instead of simply looking for a change of scenery, I’m taking a different approach of acquiring some new and different skills to which I can hope to parlay into something different, and potentially satiate two desires, being a change of scenery, but also to make a career move into a field that is warmer than what I’m doing is, has more potential for the future, and hopefully make more money than I do now, so that I can be a better provider for my family.

Because when the day is over, that’s really all I want to do, is to provide for my family, and hopefully not hate my life in order to do it.  For years, I’ve tossed the idea around in my head to take some sort of class(es) and try to pick up some new skills and make a professional pivot, but I’ve often just been all talk and no action. 

But in an ironic, I have to thank coronavirus, kind of situation, it’s never been a better time to go in this direction, because the school in which I’m taking my course through, is 100% virtual and I can do this from home, because the pandemic has forced them to go entirely virtual.  Otherwise, I’d have had to have gone into downtown Atlanta twice a week to take my course, and I simply have no desire to actually go into the city anymore, regardless of a pandemic or not.

So, I’m getting to take this course entirely online, from the convenience of my own home.  But that also means that for the duration of this class, my already sparse 2-3 hrs of free time a night, two evenings out of the week, I have to forfeit even that in order to take my course, which means that I have even less time to myself, which has occasionally left me feeling a little overwhelmed and overtaxed at times.

But the good thing about having a kid is that it only takes one look at my child to remind me what I’m doing all this for, and to refocus.  And it’s kind of funny how serious I take this course, because despite the fact that I will have the luxury of tuition reimbursement from my current job, I’m still having to front all the costs until then.  And you don’t realize how hard you want to work in school, when you realize your own money is what’s at stake when you’re taking the course.

In addition to the four hours of rare personal time I lose a week to classes, I’ve spent much more than that, on homework assignments and doing my best to really understand the subject matter and actually try and learn, absorb and apply this newfound knowledge, and hope that I’ll someday soon, be able to parlay it into a different career path than where I’m at now.

Love him or hate him, Tom Brady is a winner

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not that I’ve been paying that much attention to the NFL this season other than the ironically entertaining aspects of a season that I maintain probably shouldn’t have happened in the first place; if it were up to me, the upcoming Superb Owl would be the Washington Redskins Football Team versus the Buffalo Bills, so that we could have a repeat of 1991, but a team with an idiotic interim name and a 7-9 record would, give the Buffalo Bills a loss in the Superb Owl, for old times’ sake, and the season would end in an ironic combination of some things change, some things stay the same.

Instead, we have the heavily favored Chiefs, which in itself is a little difficult to comprehend, because for the longest time the Chefs (yes the Chefs) were that one team that always made it to the playoffs, but would always get bounced in the second round, usually losing to like the Steelers or Broncos, and nobody would ever really take them seriously as legitimate contenders, especially since Andy Reid took over, and that guys manages timeouts like he manages cheeseburgers, which is to say he devours them all, and then there’s nothing left at the end.

And opposing the Chefs, is a team that hasn’t sniffed a championship since 2002, but at the very helm of it is a guy that has sniffed more than his share of Lombardi trophies in his time, in none other than Tom. Period. Brady. Period.

Just about anyone with a sports pulse knew of the general story of how Tom Brady left the New England Patriots, and instead of retirement, he just kind of inexplicably signs with, of all the teams in the NFL, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  A team that had gone 59-101 over the last decade, and was coming off of three straight losing seasons, with two of them placing last in the pitiful NFC South division.

For a guy that literally had nothing left to prove, as he already has six Superb Owl championships, an underwear model wife, and lord knows how much money earned in his career, another season for a cellar-dweller like the Bucs seemed like a really sad way to end his career, and likely injured on the way out as a shit team usually can’t protect their QB.

But I guess Brady really wanted to prove that he could win without Bill Belichick, and put to rest permanently the answer to the question of who really was the talent behind the Patriots’ success throughout the last 20 years, and seeing as how one has reached the Superb Owl, while the other didn’t even make the playoffs, I guess the answer is pretty abundantly clear now, but it really shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Love him or hate him, Tom Brady truly is the GOAT of football.  It doesn’t even matter if the Bucs win the Superb Owl or not, although me personally I can’t say that I kind of would be rooting for Brady, despite the fact that I’m most definitely no fan of the Bucs, but I’ve never really had any issue with Brady, and I respect the greatness.  But he’s already proven his point and one that really was inconsequential in the grand spectrum of things but was clearly still very important to him to stamp his claim over Belichick as the real reason for the Patriots’ success.

But really, I just kind of sadistically enjoy how everyone fucking hates Tom Brady so much, but it’s like he feeds off the hate and burning rage that his existence incites within haters, and it only makes him that much more effective.  Patrick Mahomes is a legend in his own right, being someone who was capable of lifting the once-hapless Chefs into becoming the respectable defending champion Chiefs, but in two weeks’ time, he’ll be going up against the literal god of professional football, and he’ll be back to square one at having his own thing to prove.

In the end, I don’t really care who wins, because the NFL is kind of a sad sack of an organization, and I resent just how much pull and influence it has on the entire, well country.  Which is why I’d like to see Tom Brady hoist up yet another Superb Owl Lombardi, because it’s the closest thing to a giant middle finger to all the haters there possibly could be.

The year-end post, circa 2020

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This video by Carters encapsulates how I feel extremely succinctly.  I know 2020 has been a historically catastrophic year by any number of measures, and I’m not going to even try and change anyone’s mind who’ve already decided that there’s absolutely nothing at all redeemable about it.  It’s a fair judgment, and there’s tons of justification to where I just have to shrug and agree that such X and other Y really are terrible things, and leave people alone to continue believing that 2020 was the worst year in human existence.

Frankly, if not for the one obvious event in my life this year, I’d probably be right there with them.  But because of said event, there’s absolutely nothing else that could really occur that can make me possibly think that 2020 was anything other than among the greatest years of my life.  Like many, I too know my share of people whom coronavirus has dually affected throughout the year, or had some very unfortunate events or news take place, and my heart genuinely, sincerely goes out to them, and I wish for nothing but the best for them and their loved ones.

But nothing is going to change my perspective on 2020 being a magnificent year, because nothing has been a greater event in my life than the birth of my daughter, right before all the shit really began to hit the fan.  And throughout the remainder of the year, for every piece of horrible, shitty news, note about someone dying, bad day at work, or any other reason for stress and unhappiness, I was always mere steps away from being able to go pick up my daughter and hold her in my arms and will away the negativity.

As ironic as it may seem, and I’ve said it as much, as much as coronavirus and the global pandemic have been devastating to the world throughout the year, it’s inadvertently put me in the most optimal position in the sense that I’ve gotten to work from home since the shit hit the fan, and I’ve gotten to spend a tremendous amount of time more raising my daughter than if the world wasn’t in lockdown and I had to go back to work in the office while my child would be in a daycare, in the hands and responsibility of people I don’t know. 

I don’t fucking want that, even if there were no coronavirus in play.  I’ve been fortunate and I treasure all the time I’ve had and will continue to have being close to my kid, and it’s ironic that I have to thank the selfish stupidity of ‘Muricans for being so stupid and greedy that they can’t or refuse to comply to the behaviors that would’ve eradicated all of this if we just had some collective cooperation.

But outside of my child and coronavirus, 2020 has been somewhat of an eventful year.  Yes, most of it was bad, but not everything was completely putrid.  And as I tend to do every year, I take some notes on a daily basis of the things that happen that are remotely interesting to me, so I guess behind the jump, we’ll take a look back through the year that everyone loves to hate and can’t wait to see end:

Continue reading “The year-end post, circa 2020” →

It’s a good thing my machete came in

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because boy, do I have some anger I’d like to take out on some unruly shrubs and wild growth that need to be scaled back anyway.

I don’t really like to brog about my job, because it seems so cliché and there used to be this off-chance concern that someone who doesn’t know me could piece two and two together, identify where I worked, and do something unpleasant with that information.  But I keep things rather vague enough to where that aspect of it has gone away, not to mention the fact that I have like, zero readers, so I don’t have to worry in that regard anyway, but it still remains pretty cliché to bitch about work.

Regardless, let me tell you a story about how I am rather displeased with my job these days, and this is a very specific reason to add to the lengthy list of things I’m keeping documented for if and when the time comes to where I ever can bounce out of there.

I asked my bosses (because I have 1.5 bosses, as in one person who is the actual boss whom I shall refer to as “boss,” and the spineless puppet husk under them who is technically my actual boss, whom I shall refer to as “puppet”) if I could have next week off, as I believed I had a week of vacation left, and was feeling pretty burned out from the combination of being a first-time father on a 24/7 daddy schedule, combined with an unnecessarily, artificially busy holiday month.

Boss said sure, I felt a little bit of relief and satisfaction at knowing that I might finally get a little bit of time to relax and to not be so, on, with a combination of work and baby duty.

A couple of days later, I get an email from puppet, saying “they thought I had used all my vacation, but could be mistaken, please give me a list of dates you took off,” which is pretty easy, because I only had three substantial breaks throughout the year, given the fact that because of coronavirus, I’ve been working from home since March.  I took a week off prior to the start of my paternity leave to extend my time, and I took three days off back in May when I was really fried from being a first-time dad, and I took two days off to celebrate my first-ever wedding anniversary.

I cited the week off as vacation time, and declared the five other days as the sick/personal time that all employees are entitled to get.  Puppet responds back to me that they’re “fairly certain” that salaried employees (like me) sick/personal time doesn’t act in the same manner in which it works for hourly employees (which I used to be), which is basically auxiliary vacation time, if you’re not prone to getting sick.

They’re going to check with HR.

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That’s one way to make AEW more interesting

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Unfortunate: Jon Huber AKA Brodie Lee in AEW, Luke Harper in WWE, passes away at the age of 41, due to alleged non-COVID related lung disease

Firstly, I genuinely do feel bad to hear about this story, because Jon Huber was an extremely good wrestler, and it is always a tragedy to hear of a guy leaving the world this soon, especially when he’s leaving behind a wife and two kids.  At 41 years of age, he’s not much older than me, and many of my current friends, which is also very harrowing to hear of.

I had a high opinion of Jon Huber, and it was a running joke between one of my friends and I that he was a picture-perfect future IWGP World Champion if he ever decided to cross the ocean and go to Japan, because the mold of the evil foreign white man that NJPW loved to use to have their heroes pursue for championships was basically built off of guys like him.

Instead, he went to AEW, where he briefly enjoyed a modicum of success, being unveiled as the leader of the Dark Order, having one World title shot at Jon Moxley which he lost, but then squashing Cody Rhodes for the TNT Popeyes Championship, before losing it back to him a month later.  To my knowledge, that was his last appearance, and he never appeared again on television until the news of his passing.

Here’s the thing though: the news is still fresh, the grief among the industry and the fandom is still outpouring, but I hate to be the guy that wades through all the sadness to wonder just what really happened.  From what I’ve heard, Lee passed away from an unnamed “non-COVID” lung issue, but I can’t help but feel all sorts of skepticism for these vague circumstances.

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I’m going to be screwed when/if the pandemic ends

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As is often the case, I struggled immensely to come up with things I wanted for gifts for Christmas.  In the end, my general listed pretty much revolved around all sorts of sweats, compression gear and athletic apparel, and I was fortunate enough to be thought of by enough people to have gotten quite a good bit of it.

That being said, since none of this stuff really serves me much purpose outside of the gym, or at home, or while working out at home, when and if the pandemic ever ends and I have to start going back on-site to work, I’m pretty much going to be screwed as far as the usefulness of all this stuff is concerned.

I’ll definitely be better equipped for the gym, outdoor running, or when I feel like feeling like a sausage at home, but in the grand spectrum of time spent in this kind of stuff is going to pale in comparison to the kinds of clothing that I’ll be expected to wear in the workplace, or going out for societal functions again, not that I couldn’t just be that guy who always wears athletic gear everywhere he goes.

It’s just kind of funny though, since this just feeds the narrative that as we get older, the more and more practical our gift choices become, and how ecstatic we are to get things like socks, accessories and mundane clothing.  Because this isn’t in the least bit facetious or resentful for my gift haul, I couldn’t be any happier with all the things that I got, because they’re all things that I’ve wanted, but been too cheap to spend my own money on, and now I don’t have to, but can have all the athletic gear I always wanted in the end.