I was chatting with a friend the other day, not sure which day because they’re all starting to run together. But that was the point of our talk… how time has kind of lost all sense of meaning right now. With the entire family at home… all five of us plus four pets… ALL…THE…TIME…the days are running together, the weeks just keep rolling into the next, and I’m having a hard time believing it’s almost August because it was just April two days ago.
If you’re like me, you started the lock down with mixed emotions. Fear because nothing like this has ever happened in my lifetime. Worry about how to keep my loved ones safe. Sadness at the loss of life.
But I also had a sense of gratefulness, that I had a safe place to hunker down surrounded by the ones I love most and that being forced together might make us slow down and appreciate our time together. I also thought I’d be able to get SO…MUCH…DONE!
What I failed to factor in was the emotional toll just existing in this time and space would take. So instead of cleaning my entire house from top to bottom, implementing a daily exercise regimen, and learning how to cook fresh, healthy meals from scratch that my entire family would eat with glee, I found myself staring at my computer, trying to string words together to make a deadline that I’d already pushed out once… searching for the motivation to shower since no one would be seeing (or smelling) me anyway except for the other people in my house who didn’t seem too keen on keeping up with personal hygiene either, and spending countless hours scrolling through the news, wondering how this country got to be in this situation with no end in sight.
Whew.
So here I am and the months have steamrolled past and I can’t get them back. But what I can do is pull up my big girl panties (not granny panties… there’s a big difference) and start to put myself back together again.
We may not know where we’re headed or what next year or next month or even tomorrow may bring. But I’ve decided to start living more in the moment and to be gentle with myself (and the other four people who are stuck with me for the duration.)
And since I tend to do things in threes… I’m working on three things I can do each day to make sure I’m not just clueless in quarantine. So when I look back on this time I can see that it wasn’t one big vacuum.
Each day I’m going to do a little something extra… something for someone else, something for my home, and something for myself. Maybe it’s just spending an extra ten minutes rubbing my son’s back before bed or asking the neighbors if they need me to pick anything up for them on my Costco run. Maybe it’s spending time on a bigger project like clearing out a section of the basement that we’ve let fill up with clutter over the past fifteen years. Or maybe it’s treating myself to a bubble bath (after I clean out the tub I’ve been neglecting) and a nice, long soak with a good book.
So tell me… how are you avoiding being clueless in quarantine? What are you doing to stay connected to the ones you love and yourself during these crazy times?
Text my sister, talk to the other sister, text/talk niece/nephew and great nephew/text out of state son, talk/see in state son…despise the whole process