Before I lived in my retirement community, I used to drive 22 miles to walk the mall every Friday. That ritual included lunch out in selected places. Now that I have the walking path around our community I have gotten out of that routine. Just for old-time sake, I decided to walk the mall one more time. It is now about 0.5 miles away, so it takes much less time to get there.

I put in my 1.8 miles of walking and then I looked for a place to eat. Nothing sounded good, so I came home and made myself a grilled ham & cheese sandwich on rye bread. I just wasn’t in the mood to eat out and haven’t been for some time now. I wonder if I am the only one to have that change of mood? If I am typical then the restaurant industry is in trouble as there are far too many restaurants around for the reduced demand.

Will that industry shrink as the local brick and mortar businesses have when Amazon started overnight delivery of almost everything? Changing subjects a little, the “Great Resignation” has depleted the people who have normally been waitresses and such. I don’t know where they are now getting their money to pay the bills, but going back to a minimum wage waiter job is not one of them anymore.

Hopefully, we have seen the worst of the pandemic now, but the new normal maybe much different than before because it happened. That just gives those who worry about the pace of change another reason to panic. 🥴 Being the contrarian I look forward to what this new paradigm will look like. If you have any ideas on this subject let me know. I did stop and get a Whopper the other day, and it was about $9 for a #1. That is about a 35% increase from the last time I got one, so that alone, will reduce my dependency on such things.

Of course, all of this stuff is just my uninformed opinion…