Back around March 13 2020, when the Governor of Pennsylvania first declared shutting down schools for 2 weeks when COVID-19 cases first began to show up in our home state in low numbers, I told my wife that 2 weeks is a joke and that they might as well keep schools closed, and that this thing isn’t going away until it is totally eradicated from the face of the earth.

So here we are, late May 2020, with schools permanently closed, along with non-essential businesses, just as I called it.

And even when everything opens back up and schools and businesses are back to normal, COVID-19 will once again rear its ugly head and we will be right back where we started with more cases.

So what do you do? You can’t keep everything shut down forever. Can you vaccinate the entire human race? No. But that’s what you’ll need to do for life to really go back to normal.

I don’t have an answer. I don’t see anything changing anytime soon. For as long as there is at least 1 person with it, it will never go away and will continue to circulate. Vaccinations will limit exposure. Well, perhaps. We don’t even know if they will work, so that’s more “wait and see”.

It will be interesting to see how this all pans out over the next few years..

Stay safe and stay well my friends.

ASMR is an acronym for the non-scientific term “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response” which was coined by a layperson to describe a unique sensation experienced by certain people in response to certain stimuli. It’s like goosebumps, but instead of a very brief and uncomfortable moment of the shivers or chills, ASMR is a pleasant feeling that usually lasts a little bit longer, and is somewhat like the shivers but more of an electric feeling often described as a tingling sensation or the “tingles”.

There are many stimuli or triggers that can cause a person to experience ASMR. It could be receiving personal attention or being in a one-on-one situation, such as a getting a haircut, on the phone with customer service, or with a receptionist at the doctor’s office, just to name a few examples. Watching someone perform a detailed task, such as painting or sorting, is also a trigger. And of course hearing certain sounds, such as someone typing on a keyboard, crinkling plastic, and whispering are also ASMR triggers. The list goes on and on..

That is why I whisper in the majority of my ASMR videos: to try and trigger ASMR in the viewer and to create a relaxing experience for them as well, and in many cases help them sleep, which is another benefit of ASMR even if people don’t experience it. ASMR, relaxation and sleep pretty much go hand in hand. Of course, being the creative type that I am, my ASMR videos tend to be on the artistic side of things.

I have experienced ASMR all throughout my life up until my late 40’s. It slowly started to fade away along with my becoming less of an emotional person. As the date of this writing, I no longer experience ASMR and it’s been that way for a few years now. I have also become ever more stoic, calm, less-anxious and less emotional, which I believe is directly related to why I no longer experience ASMR.

I still plan on creating ASMR videos for as long as I physically and mentally can, because it is my passion and my artistic calling so to speak (in addition to my humanist passions of being a husband and father).

Make no mistake: I did not show up on the ASMR scene like a parasite looking to profit.

I started my YouTube channel in September 2011 as a means for a creative outlet. I have always wanted to be a self-made, independent artist in some way, I just never knew what I wanted to do with my life in that regard. I dabbled in music, photography, digital art, writing, t-shirts, but none of it ever panned out, nor was I any good at any of it to say the least.

But then I stumbled upon ASMR in the early Spring of 2012. I found out about the videos, realized that ASMR was “the thing” I’ve experienced all my life and thought I would give it (making ASMR videos) a try, and the rest is history…