Between May and November 2020, Jeffery recorded six personal audio journals while the COVID-19 shutdown changed work, travel, health routines, family obligations, and ordinary contact with other people. I treated the recordings—not the brief WordPress slugs—as the primary source for this summary.
Across the recordings, Jeffery kept returning to a practical question: what does a person do when the usual sources of movement, stimulation, and social contact are interrupted? In the May 12 recording, he described the emotional flatness that can come when there are too few ups and downs to make life feel active. He did not present that observation as a simple complaint. He was trying to understand the function of difficulty, motivation, and change in an ordinary human life.
That same recording moved between biology, work, health, money, housing, music, and personal space. Jeffery connected his curiosity about RNA and instinct with a broader concern about function: what are living beings organized to do, and what gives a person a reason to keep moving? He also tracked his weight, blood pressure, steps, sleep, food, and work schedule. These details were not separate from the larger reflection. They were the measurements through which he tried to understand his own condition.
By July 21, the pandemic had become more than a public event. It had become a test of how much isolation a person can accept and how much human contact he actually needs. Jeffery said, “The only thing that we really know absolutely for sure is how things affect you and yourself personally.” He also recognized a tension in himself: he could treat his apartment as a sanctuary and work alone for days, yet still need the friction, energy, and unpredictability of other people. In his words, “You need your ups and you need your downs.”
The July recording also marked a return to Youngstown during the pandemic. Jeffery traveled to Ohio to clean out his father’s house, arrange a truck and removal help, manage family logistics, and work through the physical and emotional weight of an old home. He described the trip as “one hell of an accomplishment.” The experience placed COVID precautions, family history, property, aging, and responsibility in the same frame. It also included a paid recording session in his home studio with the LA Maggots—a creative achievement that might have received more attention under ordinary circumstances, but was partly overshadowed by the work waiting for him in Ohio.
The late-October recordings became quieter and more domestic. On October 27, Jeffery talked about weather, clothing, worn shoes, walking, football, weight, food, and the way his mind wandered while he moved through the day. On October 28, he described routine itself as a subject. The shutdown had reduced travel and large-scale activity, but it had not removed the need to make choices, maintain a body, clean a room, prepare food, work, and remain mentally engaged. He was learning to notice the ordinary instead of treating ordinary life as empty.
The October 29 recording sharpened that theme through a small experiment: wearing a regular T-shirt and jacket instead of a long-sleeved shirt. The change was minor, but it gave the day a point of attention. Jeffery connected routine with freedom, describing an ongoing tension between the spontaneous side of “the funk” and the more experienced, organized side of himself. His routines were not simply restrictions. They were structures that allowed him to test how he felt, observe the result, and keep moving.
By November 17, the focus had shifted toward continuation. Jeffery described work, weekends, eating, exercise, creative projects, and the repeated effort to regain momentum. The recording does not resolve the tension between boredom and stimulation, discipline and indulgence, solitude and contact. Instead, it recognizes that the struggle itself keeps returning. There is no final point at which the work of living is permanently completed; there is only the next day, the next walk, the next recording, the next improvement.
Taken together, these six recordings document Jeffery’s movement through the COVID period from public disruption toward personal method. He examined the shutdown through his body, his apartment, his family history, his work, his music, his finances, his travel, his routines, and his need for both independence and connection. The story is not that he found a perfect answer. The story is that he kept observing, testing, recording, and acting.
— Presence
Source recordings
- May 12, 2020 — The Blah Blah Blah Of It All
- July 21, 2020 — The Covids & My Ohio Travel
- October 27, 2020 — The Tuesday Whatevers
- October 28, 2020 — Routine days
- October 29, 2020 — When wearing a short sleeved shirt vs a long sleeved one is the highlight of the day?!
- November 17, 2020 — What the Hell are we doing?
Prepared from the original audio recordings in the jefferyTV podcast archive. The existing WordPress entries were used only to identify the recordings and their dates.
