Making room for a new normal 🌈
✨ Issue #57 ✨
Well, that escalated quickly.
When I hit send on , I’d just started social distancing and was not-so-secretly judging everyone who’d posted pictures from the bar the night before. A week later, pretty much everything in North Carolina but the grocery stores and pharmacies are closed. Even the beaches are shut down, police officers patrolling the sand and arresting anyone who doesn’t comply. Other states have told their residents to shelter in place, or issued mandates to stay home. And let’s not even talk about the economy.
Needless to say, the unknowns and uncertainties have me feeling more anxious than usual, full of questions with no easy answers. Will I get COVID-19? Will my parents, who live on Long Island and are both high-risk, get COVID-19? Will the grocery stores run out of food entirely? Will someone break into my home and steal my toilet paper? Will my friendships wither away? Will every business in Wilmington, a tourist town driven heavily by the hospitality industry, be destroyed by months of social distancing and mandatory quarantines? How long will this go on?
And yet: if it wasn’t for the panic bubbling beneath the surface and the fact that I haven’t left my house in days, this would have felt like a pretty normal week. I caught up with friends via Google Hangout, attended a comedy show on Instagram Live, did Yoga with Adriene and DailyBurn workouts in my guest room, and talked to colleagues via the magic of video conferencing. Global pandemics, I have learned, are scary and isolating, and I was grateful for the sense of normalcy these opportunities provided.
I'm also a tiny bit overwhelmed by the onslaught of invitations. Here in North Carolina, we’re a week into our new normal, and already folks have rushed to fill the void with virtual versions of our old routines.
I appreciate these efforts, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to recreate the world that was. Instead, I want to take this opportunity to slow down, to step back, to be bored and lonely and scared. To figure out what’s left when routines are removed, when schedules are stripped away, when daily distractions are distant memories.
We’re living in an unprecedented time, and while I’m anxious and afraid, I’m also incredibly curious. How will this experience change us? What will we uncover about ourselves, and our communities, and the systems we've built?
I want to stay connected, to protect and preserve the life I loved. But I also want to leave space for a new reality. The world is changing right in front of our eyes. Let's see where it takes us. 💛
🍪 Snack of the Week 🍪
Is anyone else anxiety-baking to help pass the time? This week, while working from home and social distancing, I baked, among other things, these chocolate chip cookies. I chose this particular recipe because it has over 15,000 ratings - most of them five star! - and in these times of uncertainty, I found such consensus extremely reassuring. And for once the internet was right! The cookies were a perfectly delicious distraction.
Relatable Reads
(I've read roughly 1000 articles about COVID-19. These are my favorites.)
You Have a Moral Responsibility to Post Your Boring Life on Instagram, The Atlantic. "Without a steady stream of brunch photos, beach-vacation selfies, and horribly loud concert footage in which the singer is not even recognizable, platforms such as Instagram and Facebook have mutated into hyper-intimate scrapbooks of days spent cooped up inside." This is the kind of social distancing content we need! 🏠
Against Productivity in a Pandemic, New Republic. "This is a time to sustain. To find ease where we can in a world rapidly placing us into chaos." Wow, I needed to hear that. Maybe you do, too? 🦠
Go for a Walk, Slate. "Exercise is going to be crucial to getting through this, not being cooped up in your home is going to be crucial to getting through this, watching (from a distance!) dogs waddle around like nothing is going on with the economy or ventilator counts is going to be crucial to getting through this." 🌸
We're Not Going Back to Normal, MIT Technology Review. Don't read this article if you're looking forward to going back to work in April. 😬
A Tiny Challenge
Maintain what you can. Let go of what you can't. Give yourself permission to do whatever you want. Stay home.
See you next Sunday. 💌
Thanks to Carmen R. for the generous donation last week.
I spent it on coffee I drank during a WFH video conference call.
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