My family is fine, i'm feeling immensely frustrated.

I've spend a lot of time listening to long form interviews with real experts on the science and i fundamentally disagree with my governments approach. I don't believe a vaccine will ever work. Our lockdown is not saving lives or jobs, it's really hard to imagine how we could be in a worse position than we're in. Despite a recession and the worlds second largest death toll, support for the government is high so i feel kind of bewildered trying to understand the mentality of my fellow countrymen. The news inherently reports things that are rare, therefore most people's ideas fail to distinguish the baby and the bathwater.

In other words, everyone seems to know all the exceptional cases of kids dying, people getting infected twice or Italian hospitals getting overrun and therefore want to base an approach around these exceptional circumstances, as opposed to the 99% of cases that don't involve healthy people under 65 (i.e. the UK workforce). The virus has been around 5 months now and we have not got a national contact tracing system working, antibody test rolled out, we only swab test key workers and laughably the government still debates the merits of face masks. The last thing i'm inclined to do is give the government more time to dither. I've thought seriously about moving to Sweden but my wife has a good, permanent job and it would be hell trying to sell our house the way the market is.

It's getting progressively harder for everyone to stay disciplined to any scenario of a lock down.

For instance, my parents who are alive, are not young.

My father today asked if I would bring the kids over for a visit.

I asked him if he was worried about the virus,

to which he replied,

"I don't want to spend my remaining time on the planet not seeing my family, not matter how long or short that time is."

Florida is opening up, hopefully this will be a good thing.

But, as always, nobody knows.

I'm feeling fat.

The only change for me is not being able to go to the academy to train with the guys. I am still working full time, exercising alot, lifting weights and training with my sons who are both bigger than me. I am typically a home body anyway.

Since it didn't close down my job, all it's done is make things at my job worse for me if anything.

Just when I finally started my BJJ journey it was taken from me. For the time I had it, I was really happy.

Our Governor in Alabama seems to letting everything open again... except martial arts

To put it into a singular word.. I Feel... Demoralized

Yep, with you on that! BJJ (and I guess travel, I love going to visit friends in Germany, Belgium, Austria etc) is the only thing that gets my arse off the couch. Otherwise, I just play DnD online and binge sci fi and anime all day (Babylon 5 at the mo). ;)

Once the UKBJJA tell me it's safe to train again, I will. Unlike the UK govt, the UKBJJA has always demonstrated competency over the years, so I trust them to properly review expert advice, insurance risks etc. :D

Most of us are in the same position and I do understand and know the feeling. But like wills father said ,we can't let this hinder us from being with our families. I work almost 12 hrs a day before this doing what I love ,I teach bjj ,mma cardio classes and run the gym .but doing all that I missed alot in my family, even though I was providing for them i wasn't there ..this time home has made me realize that I need to worry more about family and close friends than money. God has done things for a reason and we should take advantage of it.we will get back to being on top and making ends meet .now is a time we should have faith...some of you reading this may not believe in God or anything in that nature but having faith that everything will come back better is the only thing I can offer and we actually have to hold on to.... I will pray for you all and thanks for responding to me .you guys really helped up lift my spirits....

I'm not religious at all, but yeah, I can see how right now would be a useful time to have faith. Instead, I mostly have Nutella and Netflix, which is better at giving me flab than giving me faith. :P

I live alone but I work in the COVID-19 response here in England and I've been going in to the office all the way through. Getting very fed up of the whole thing, although the overtime pay has paid for three Globetrotters' camps and several new gis so I guess I can't complain too much. Got very fat but have just dropped 5kg - still plenty to go!
I've barely seen any friends since January and haven't seen family since Christmas. We've been back training for a few weeks (actually illegal albeit we're trying to do it as safely as we can). There is UK government guidance ready on return to combat sports (I've seen it) but the government won't sign off on it for now. Things are getting much worse rapidly here in the UK.
Life will never go back to exactly what it was before. Some of that is good - it's made us all re-evaluate our priorities. Some is bad, economically at least for many. Staying mentally healthy is hard.