Pandemic projects

Masked-up at Road America.

It's a day that many didn't think would arrive in 2020: Opening Day in Major League Baseball.

Yes, it's true. MLB teams will head to various ballparks across the country today and play baseball, with plenty of modifications because we're still in a pandemic, after all. One of the most notable things is that they'll be playing in empty ballparks without fans in attendance. Although from watching the Twins exhibition game the other night, the general buzz of crowd noise being pumped into the stadium is a nice touch.

It's certainly been a strange year, sports-wise and otherwise. In April, I struggled a little with how to fill my time in baseball's absence. Adjustments were made, and I started keeping a list of things I accomplished during quarantine times. There were small things and some bigger projects, but whatever made the list seemed like a productive use of my time, so I wrote them down.

Here are some of the things that made the list, in no particular order:

Tuna pasta dish.

• Organized/tossed five year's worth of Twins boxscores/stats
• Organized files on my laptop
• Updated my LinkedIn profile
• Grabbed PDFs of my various stories I've written over the years
• Updated my website (a task that is never finished) 
• Organized my nail polish container, tossing a lot of old bottles
• Organized/deleted items on my Google Drive to go from 84% full to 33% full 
• Saved audio recordings to my laptop folders - and deleted nearly 200 recordings off the recorder
• Wrote a blog post for the National Institute for Social Media 
• Phone interviews, transcribing, writing for Otter Tail Lakes Country Magazine stories
• Made a list of what to keep/delete from the DVR 
• Organized my phone apps into folders
• Organized/deleted photos from my phone
• Made GIFs for work
• Put together two puzzles
• Wrote five feature stories for USAHockey.com 

  

  Nail polish collection.

• A League of Their Own movie commentary
• The Rookie movie commentary
• Guest on a couple of sports podcasts
• Watched old Twins and Wild games, leaving commentary on Twitter with #HeathWrites hashtag
• Stayed active on social with #TwinsTuesdays, #MNWildWednesdays and #TBT posts 
• Made new connections via webinars, Zoom happy hours and various social-media messaging
• Played piano
• Became active on TikTok, wasting a lot of time 
• Went for a lot of walks
• Tried out a bunch of new recipes - and then did a lot of dishes
• Enjoyed free evenings and weekends (sports colleagues feel me on this one, right?)
• Read books
• Attended the first IndyCar race of the season with (socially-distanced) fans at Road America
• Binged the last four seasons of Castle (ok, this one isn't really productive, but still)

The upright piano.

I hope loyal readers and followers will recognize a few things on the list, specifically the movie commentaries. I'm particularly proud of those. I think I will look back on this time and remember those as my biggest accomplishments of quarantine. And stay tuned, because I don't think I'm done with sports-movie commentaries yet. I'll see how that goes because writing up 14-part commentaries after watching a movie and taking notes isn't done in a day. 

Some things on the list are more for fun, like reading books and playing the piano. I've never stopped, it's just that during this time I started hitting the keys a lot more. I tried to work on the sheet music for "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic so I could play it a little more smoothly. It's definitely much-improved now. To let you know just how empty my calendar/planner was early on, I started writing things like "play piano" and "go for a walk" in there just so I could check something off my list for the day. 

I know a lot of people cleaned things out in their homes in an amped-up spring cleaning this year. I didn't do as much of that with physical things, except for the nail polish collection and Twins boxscores, but I chose the electronic route. It felt good to get my recorder down to nearly zero, so I can stop having to delete random files to make room for additional recordings. Organizing photos, documents and files on my computer was also a necessary task. 

As I stayed active on my social media channels, I wanted to make sure I set aside time to update my website with writing clips and PDFs. It's a task that never seems to end, but I enjoy having the online portfolio to showcase my work. 

Thanks to Todd Kortemeier with Red Line Editorial for throwing some work my way with USAHockey.com; it was nice to have some stories to write during the downtime. And thanks to my friend Marie Noplos, who got me started with the Otter Tail Lakes Country magazine feature stories. I was glad to get a jumpstart on those this spring and summer. 

During a time when time takes on a different meaning, it was nice to be able to enjoy evenings and weekends. I have some opposite feelings of other friends, who felt busier and more stressed as they shifted to working from home and had no idea what day it was. That's how I often feel in the heart of a sports season working evenings and weekends (What's a weekend?). So, a silver lining for me was the slowdown and enjoy some of this time. Part of that was going for walks in the neighborhood after supper with my parents. 

Bring on Bomba SZN!

And now, baseball is here. Sure, it's for a scheduled 60-game season in roughly two months rather than a 162-game season in about six months, and there are more than 100 pages of rules for it to happen. COVID-19 is still here and ultimately still in control of what might happen. It's a consensus that the Minnesota Twins are fielding a team that's the best in the club's history - on paper. And this year more than any other, "on paper" might have a huge meaning.

For the Twins, it's 60 scheduled games for their 60th season in Minnesota. The record-setting Bomba Squad won't break the home-run record it set last year with 307 Bombas, but with most of the pieces back, and additions like Josh Donaldson and pitchers Homer Bailey, Rich Hill and Kenta Maeda, the Twins should be entertaining to watch once again. 

As we all get back into the swing of sports, the best we can, I'll still be mindful of caution and health. I'll also be working from home this season, which is a bummer especially from the standpoint of the camaraderie I've been missing with friends and colleagues in the press box. But let's hope we can all adapt and find ways to get our work done while still enjoying some baseball. 

Thanks to everyone for following along with me on my social channels and reading my work. It's always appreciated. 

Now... bring on baseball!