It’s hard not knowing what’s going to happen next.
Over the last few years, I’ve learned that this plays a big part with my anxiety because I do much better when I have a plan to follow and specific things that I know I want/need to be focused on.
With this pandemic, though, everything is up in the air and I’m often working on the fly … which is why I’m still up writing this blog post at 3:18am instead of asleep in my bed like I should be… 😛
I’ve really been trying to tell myself that these are not normal times and you can’t expect a lot of anyone – including yourself – while we’re all in the middle of chaos, yet there are some things I’d love to see change in my current day to day:
- I’d like to feel as if I’m not just cleaning in any spare moment that I have because no matter how much I get done, it feels like the three cyclones that are my kids manage to tear it all back apart by the time I get up the next morning.
- I’d like to make better use of my work time. Right now it feels like most of my time is spent jumping from fire to fire, and admittedly that’s what probably too much of my job felt like a month ago before all of this started, too! But in general, I’d love to find a way to stabilize that so I can start working towards my actual goals again and not just spend all of my time treading water.
- I’d also like to find more time for calm in all of this because, well, HA! I mean, I’ve been blogging and writing humor a little more, which I think is nice, and I had a therapy session over telemedicine on Friday that gave me a chance to just talk through a lot of random frustrations. From the tone that I find myself taking with the kids, though, I know that I desperately need more.
It’s tough because there’s so much to worry about right now. Will any of my family directly catch and struggle with the virus? Will our jobs make more changes … they’ve already made a few … that suddenly change our finances at home? Will politics or businesses continue to heed the advise of the medical community or will we find ourselves backing off from social distancing too early and end up making this thing even worse?
Are my kids getting anything out of their e-learning in the absence of their traditional school environments?
What about the damage from missing out on things like their in-home autism therapies?
And what about all of those people who aren’t even as lucky as me to be able to work from home and try to support this demanding e-learning effort???
It’s a lot to handle, and as much as it feels like we’ve already been doing it forever (in reality, it’s been about a month), at this point I still have a hard time picturing an exit strategy to get everyone back to work and school…
Maybe some businesses can make adjustments to their workplaces, but many (like mine) have switched to open office floor plans that don’t even give us the privacy of cubicle walls anymore.
Schools on a good day are basically filled with walking petri dishes, so I really don’t see the kids doing anything other than virtual learning until the fall.
And all of those large gathering places like theme parks and beaches … I worry those places might end up being where we have to learn the hard way because if my local Walmart can’t even limit the number of people coming in the door, there’s no way that Disney World is going to when they’ve got people paying $150 a piece and they’ve grown accustomed to packing them in like sardines. 🙁
Still, I get the opposing argument – we can’t just stay locked away forever, and if a vaccine could still be 6-12 months away … what then???
I don’t know the answer to that one. I just know that all of the answers that come to mind sound scary, and I hope that there’s a team buried in data and brainpower somewhere that has some better ideas.
And that when they’re ready, we have the wherewithal to hear them.
Until then, all that we can do is take this one day at a time and not make any rash decisions.