COVID Log – Isolation date 081120.152

We are at day 152 since social distancing and isolation started for me. We have been at this pandemic thing for so long now that I said to a friend the other day I am starting to forget what it was like before isolation and social distancing, but perhaps that is a good thing.

Here in Ontario, we are now on “Stage 3” of “reopening” and that means that a lot of the things that we used to do “normally” are back open although they all now have social distancing guidelines and mask rules in place. We are finding that as things start to “get back to the new normal” it is actually anything but “normal” as we knew it. 

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What began as a “two week” blip our lives has gradually turned into a “possibly as long as 2 to 3 years” massive interruption. At first it was okay to let things slide for a bit, two weeks of just seeing where things were going to end up wasn’t going to hurt anyone right? There were jokes about feeling all wibbly wobbly like that weird time between Christmas and New Years when everything doesn’t feel quite right but we all expected it to go back to “normal” again sometime soon.

As the months roll by though, 2020 is turning into something of a weird gap year like the one people take between highschool and college where anything goes and there isn’t a clear plan.

When we are feeling extra stressed or scatterbrained it is becoming commonplace to have someone say something to the effect of “well there IS a pandemic going on” as if that is an excuse for any and all conditions nowadays.

With the experts now saying that we will be dealing with the pandemic for the next few years the game has changed significantly because, as we all know, you can’t just let your life “slide” for two to three years.

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I feel like somehow we have been collectively waiting for things to “stop” changing before we make any “big decisions”. There is an inherent flaw in this way of thinking though, it assumes that somehow things will settle down and “stop” changing. While I agree that things have been changing rather more rapidly than “usual” in the last few months, as a student of history, I can confirm that the only thing constant in life is change.

By now, any illusion we were under that made us think that we were going to go back to “normal” after a small “blip” should be completely blown out of the water. I think it is time to start looking at this more as a “life changing event” rather than a “blip” that is going away. 

Much like other major life changing events such as a severe injury, illness, accident, or death, there is a time for grieving the loss of “what might have been”, but at some point you do have to sit up and take stock of what your life is now and make some hard decisions about how you are going to move forwards. 

I do believe the time is now to step up and begin to take responsibility for our futures and find ways to make our lives work better for ourselves within this new context. We need to sit down and look in our toolboxes and use all the tools we’ve gathered over the years and be both resourceful and creative in carving out a new path for ourselves. There is no more time to make excuses. 

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It is the perfect time to redefine our purpose and priorities. We can’t keep waiting for this to be “over” and things to go back to “normal” because “normal” and “over” aren’t possible. We need to look around and make an assessment of the best way to move forward and start moving in that direction. We need to take back control of the things we can actually control in our lives. 

Sitting down and planning out a new routine for our lives is probably the best way to instill some feeling of regularity. Above all, we need to be aware that things will continue to develop and change (as they always have) so we need to learn to be more flexible. 

The only time we have is now, we can’t keep waiting for some ambiguous future “new normal” and we need to accept that things will never again be how they were.

I am reminded of the Serenity Prayer: 

~Elena <3