Tim Kohlstedt practices skateboarding during quarantine. Image: Tim Kohlstedt
Editor’s note: This story is part of Coping with COVID-19, a series of brief looks at people in a pandemic.
By Morgan Duerden
When life gives you a pandemic sometimes you just have to get on a skateboard and take a ride.
Tim Kohlstedt, lost his job as an insurance salesman in March due to the stay-at-home order. Residing in his parent’s Lake Orion home, Kohlstedt has been taking this time to better himself.
He doesn’t want to be an insurance salesman.
“I want to find a job that I care about, that I love doing,” Kohlstedt said. “I’ve learned that I need to reel myself in. I kind of indulge in pleasures too much.”
Jobless, he has had more time to pick up old hobbies, or… ride them.
“I started reading this book called Tribe by Sebastian Junger,” Kohlstedt said. “I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos about art and how to process looking at a painting.”
The Night Cafe’ By Vincent van Gogh https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151915
He watched one about Vincent van Gogh’s Night Café. The painting is full of red and green, colors that go together, but contrast each other at the same time.
“It gives the feeling of angst and I can relate to it,” Kohlstedt said. “Everyone in the painting is hunched over. It’s how the world is feeling right now.”
Kohlstedt has gotten back on his skateboard to try tricks but keeps falling on his wrist. He said this resembles a little of his life right now.
“It’s a good life lesson. You gotta get yourself back up,” he said.
Meanwhile, he is rebuilding his relationship with his father.
“Me and him have always butted heads my entire life, especially when I was a teenager,” Kohlstedt said. “I never really gave him the respect that he deserved until this coronavirus.”
His father, Dave Kohlstedt, was a paramedic firefighter for almost 20 years. Now, he sells medical equipment.
“I would never listen to his stories about his work, I just you know brushed them off,” Kohlstedt said.
But recently nurses asked his father for a supply order that they needed the next day or people would die. They said they needed a miracle. His father emailed a supplier and got an immediate response back, he said. The supplier knew his father was a no b.s. guy and that if he said it was bad, it was bad.
His plea had been read out loud to the production floor and caused many to swell in tears,Kohlstedt said. The order shipped out that night.
“I just realized my dad is trying to move mountains for people and I didn’t give him that respect,” Kohlstedt said. “I know he has much love for me and I have much love for him.”