Amy Lu's View

For my third installment of pondering my life in 2020, particularly as it was impacted by the COVID pandemic, I’m considering the Live Wire question: “What have you learned about yourself?”

Several things I learned about myself weren’t revelations–pandemic life has highlighted things about myself that I already knew. Such as:

• I think a LOT about eating and food and plan my days around acquiring, preparing, and consuming food. Plus, I eat for entertainment (which I think is slightly different than eating because I’m bored).
• I like having (and feel I need to have) a “project”–anything from blogging to a maintaining a running streak to performing at virtual coffee house.
• I really like performing! Thank heavens I’ve been able to do online performances–yes, they lack the connection between audience and fellow performers, but they’ve been an important (and convenient) outlet and I’ve developed new skills.

The biggest and most surprising thing I’ve learned about myself is that I actually like spending a lot of time at home. I mean a LOT of time. Thanks to my fortunate circumstances and my ability to work at home and get everything I need delivered, I can go weeks without getting in a car or setting foot in a building other than my home (Yes, I do go outside–although there have been days this winter when I’ve only taken out the trash). And I’m–mostly–okay with that. I don’t seem to miss running errands or having casual contact with strangers the way many people do.

I also seem to have a higher than usual tolerance for living my life via screen. I’ve rarely had that feeling I’ve heard others express of “Lord, I can’t take another moment of Zoom (or whatever).” I even hope that many (although not all) of my work, church, and entertainment life will remain online in the after times.

A less far-ranging but highly surprisingly thing I’ve recently learned is that I like Wild Turkey (the bourbon, not acutal wild or slightly domesticated turkeys that wander around NE Minneapolis, setting off StanLee and intimidating me when I run. I still hate those assholes).

No, it’s not surprising that I like a bourbon, but I had it my head that Wild Turkey was not a “good bourbon.” This has been a deep-seated, long standing assumption with it’s roots in college. Chad had a couple of unfortunate experiences with Wild Turkey when we were in college, so for 20 plus years I have associated Wild Turkey with bad alcohol that one drinks in college. And, I knew nothing about bourbon in the early 90’s, and I’ve never liked turkeys, so it was easy to be prejudiced.

Turns out, Wild Turkey is a totally acceptable and enjoyable mid-level bourbon. This is a pandemic-related discovery because my efforts to clean out our basement kitchen (part of our larger Pandemic-stay-at-home effort to declutter) led me to try the bottle of Wild Turkey that had been languishing there.

I have no idea when we got this bottle. That remains an unsolved mystery.

Maybe I can expand my new-found appreciation of Wild Turkey to a more far-ranging discovery about myself. I can re-think long held assumptions, and learn to appreciate new things. I can be curious and brave and try questionable foodstuffs.

AND the whole Wild Turkey revelation reinforces something I knew about myself before the pandemic: I’m terribly cheap and can’t stand the thought of wasting something. That really does seem to exlempify my pandemic related learning: Confirming something I knew about myself while also allowing for new discovery.

To paraphrase Popeye, I am what I am…but who knows what I might be?