The Iso: Patrick Chung

The Players’ Tribune is introducing a new series called The Iso. With so many of us keeping our distance from each other in a variety of ways, we decided to ask some of our favorite athletes to share how they’ve been dealing with life in the Covid-19 world, and how they’re spending their time away from their sport.

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I’m just relaxin’. I live out in the burbs here in Mass. It’s me and my son, Taj. I’m not a huge city guy. I prefer to drive — get away and escape a bit.

During the day, I’m running around fixing stuff. I try to stay busy. I can’t really sleep late, so I get up around 6:30 or 7. I just lay around for a minute. Then I go downstairs and boil some eggs. I hit the Peloton, do push-ups and work with resistance bands — quick stuff like that.

Cooking a lot, cleaning a lot, and finally getting to those little house chores. I put up the lights, installed cameras outside, working on making a field for Taj in the backyard. I like being outdoors and doing stuff. We’re cooking and grilling. Me and my family truly are homebodies, so this works for us.

Everybody always asks about my tweets. Listen, my tweets mean everything. Sometimes, I’m just being a clown, and sometimes I tweet because maybe I want to say some stuff. People are always like, What do your tweets mean, what do your tweets mean?? That’s why I do it. It just makes me cry laughing at people trying to crack the code. And you’re never gonna know.

I’m playing new games with Taj. We did a push-up competition. I made up an egg challenge — you hold an egg on a spoon and walk around the house. But the trick is it’s timed. (You gotta try not to break it!) It’s been a really good time getting to hang with him and spend time with the family.

My son, Taj, I beat on ’em in 2K! I’m whoopin’ on him the whole day in games — basketball outside, 2K, NHL. We give each other crap the whole time, but it’s all love and it’s hilarious.

We’re playing Scrabble of all things. I have never played Scrabble for fun. For the first time, I can actually say I do now. And what do you know? I’m actually not bad. My highest score was … maybe in the high 40s for a word? That was luck, though.

Here are some videos from the last couple weeks. Make sure you turn that sound on:

I think a lot about my parents — they’re older. I also have nieces and nephews that I worry about. We all have to be talking to each other about this stuff, make sure everyone’s being safe and being smart.

HGTV, Food Network, and Family Feud — that’s my therapy. I haven’t really gotten into meditation. When I can’t go to sleep, I might sit down with the TV off and think about some things. But as far as my mental health, I just watch my shows and chill out. Keeping everything as normal as I can, while being a little more cautious.

We should have been doing this hygiene stuff the whole time. Washing our damn hands. Everyone’s living normal, cleaner lives now. So that’s a plus. Who would have thought we needed so many PSAs on handwashing. I saw a car commercial that said, “Wash your hands,” at the end. It’s great.

This is just one of those things where we don’t really know what could happen. All you can do is follow the rules, hope for the best, and make sure your people have what they need and go from there. This is something where you can’t be ignorant to what’s going on in the world. Be smart. Don’t think you’re Superman, or think that this can’t affect you or your family.

Football can wait. There’s a lot more things in the world to be worried about, to be honest. We gotta be safe. Football is a job, it’s a sport. It’s done a lot for me. But at the same time, we got this thing going on, we have to make sure that everyone is safe. Football will be there when we get back, but we gotta make sure that everyone will be there to watch.