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It's the 10th episode of Conversations and we're still in the middle of a global pandemic. Join me as I talk with old friend, collaborator and fitness instructor, BJ Watkins, about what it's like being in New York right now, the racial and economic disparities that continue to shake the city and country as this collective trauma unfolds and so much more.

Episode Notes

On being in New York during the coronavirus quarantine: "People are wild tense. We don't have the luxury of some other spaces who are quarantined or holed up, who can just like hang out on their front porch or in their backyard and have a lot of space. People are cooped up in super small apartments. Just trying to make do."

"It's a wild time to be in New York. It's a wild time to be living right now."

"There is no plan for how we all come back."

"People basically are stimulating landlords and paying utilities. That's all [the stimulus] is really good for. And trying to buy food."

"Think about it, it took people like basically three weeks, maybe a month - grown ass adults - to figure out how to wash their hands and stop touching everything."

"I find myself working harder than when I did having to report to a space every day."

"When you have a lot of people telecommuting - working from home - there's this new expectation of availability and false sense of productivity."

"I also feel pressure as a black person, as a black woman, to create content and to produce and perform in a way that pleases everybody around me."

"I'd much rather do something right and well than do it in a mediocre fashion and it be such a low benchmark or starting point. I, more or less, want to lead by example."

"All these things about ourselves that we hide for whatever various reasons are really starting to show."

"Black people have been saying what about reparations, what about reparations, what about reparations? And it's always never been possible. But all of a sudden we were able to turn around and create stimulus like it's no big deal. That was instant."

"I think this is a defining moment where actually people have a lot more power than systems have power because everything is so unknown."

"This is a moment for us to access our power especially from a communal space - and also start to understand there are disparities out there and if you are experiencing these just for 30 days, if your world is rocked, you are feeling shook, like this is the experience of the rest of the world and this is what we've been trying to tell you for a very long time. And you have not listened. You are only listening now because it is impacting you."

BJ is a certified trainer, cat lover, bacon enthusiast and a 3 Sport Gay Olympian.

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