My life is not on hold

Today marks Day 14 of shelter-in-place.  It’s been a ride, with constant ups, downs, and flippity flops.  Early on, it was just constant surprise after surprise, with changes coming almost hourly.  It was a flurry of facetime calls with friends and family, “happy hours” from our respective living rooms, and the domino effect of canceled plans and travel.

Now it’s been two weeks and, oddly enough, there is a “new normal” emerging.  A new routine, though I still find myself wondering when things “will go back to normal” – as though we’ll ever return to what things were like a month ago.

And here’s what I’ve decided (between the bouts of boredom and grief and loneliness and delight) – my life is not on hold.  The rules of the game have changed, and the materials I’m working with are different, but my life is still my life.  My life is not on hold.

And neither is yours.  Unless you choose to put it there.

Make no mistake.  I have my moments of anger / rage / sadness about the things I had planned and was looking forward to (my friend’s wedding in Vegas!  Jazzfest in New Orleans!  My month in Chicago!).  There are tears and stomping and pouting.  And then something else happens.

I get bored of all that.

So I do something a little different.  I make a choice about where I want to focus, and I begin again.  You still get to have your life.  It’s just that the rules and configurations are different, for this moment, than what you’re used to or what you had planned.  But that, in fact, is actually how life always is.  We just don’t like to think we don’t have control over those things :-)

If you find yourself bored and want a few moments of something else between waves of grief and distress, try this.  Write a list of the things you want.  This may bring up some feelings because you don’t have those things exactly as you’re imagining them, but that’s OK.  Let that flow through (for however long that takes) and then come back.

Then, go through that list and come up with how you can have some part of what you want for each thing you wrote down.  How does this even work, you’re wondering?  I did this exercise, so I’ll share a part of mine.

• Travel:  a bunch of my trips and plans have been canceled (refer to earlier despair).  And I LOVE to travel.  It is what I look forward to, how I save and spend my disposable income, and how I feel connected to the bigger world out there.  Well, right now, the actual act of traveling is not available to me.  So, instead, I made a list of all the places I want to see (or return to) and I am going to map out what my next 5 years of travel will be.  Who knows if it will pan out this way, but planning a trip is one of the most delicious parts of taking a trip, so I am going to delight in that part for now!

• Dating:  I want to find a relationship.  I can’t exactly go out to bars or concerts or events right now, all great places to meet people (which is my preference).  So, instead, I am dedicating blocks of time in the day to being on dating apps (I NEVER thought I would be thankful for those…..but oh, how times change!) to send and respond to messages.  And now, since everyone is in that boat, people are open to calls and facetime dates (hello Instagram drone guy with his rooftop girlfriend!), where you just bring your own drink and have a conversation.  You know, kind of like any other regular date, just appropriately socially distanced :-)

• Connecting with friends and family:  I am an extrovert, so I usually have at least 3-4 things planned in a given week that are my social time.  It is HARD being away from friends and family – besides being social, I am also a hugger.  UGH.  That one is HARD.  My workarounds are having facetime dates, trivia nights, game nights, and collaboration sessions instead.  I also delight in sending snail mail, so I have been keeping USPS folks busy delivering mail across the country and globe.  No, it is not the same as it usually is, but I can still connect with people.  I can still have meaningful interactions.  Right now, this is just how that looks.

• My workout:  I miss my gym.  I even miss the sweaty smell, the grunts (that OTHER people make, I am not a grunter, or at least not a very loud one…), being around others who are working hard for results too.  So for now, I get out on the trail by my house every day.  Every.  Day.  I see people – from 6 feet away – and we say good morning and wave sometimes.  The other day, I waved to someone on a balcony of their house as I jogged by, and they waved back!  Working out AND connection all in one hit!

I’m not trivializing our circumstances.  This is hard.  Even writing this out for you all, I get teary-eyed missing the things I love or that I want and can’t currently have.  It’s hard.

AND.  And.  My life is not on hold.  It is still mine.  These choices are still mine.  How I live them is still mine.  And yours are yours.  You can still have the life you want.

Sending big [virtual] hugs, until I can see you and snuggle you for the longest, squeeziest hug of your life.