Back to “Normal”

Around the world, most people are wondering when we will be able to go “back to normal.” Until there is a vaccine there is no way we can go completely back to normal, and no one knows for sure when the vaccine will be ready. Three months? Six? Eight? Dr. Amy Acton, the director of Ohio’s Department of Health, said on Monday that the general public could be wearing masks for the next year. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around that, but then again it’s still hard for me to wrap my mind around this entire situation we have found ourselves in.

I’ve developed a routine to my days that I find comforting. Walks, work, reading, writing, puzzle making – the days have a simplicity to them, but also a busyness to them that gives me some distance from the harshness of what is going on in the world. I find that I don’t have much time left over each day to check the news. I do get an email every morning from the New York Times with their daily news brief, and at the end of each day I have a ritual of taking screen shots with my phone of three of Johns Hopkins University’s charts – total cases worldwide, confirmed cases by country/region, and confirmed cases per US state. I then put the three screenshots in a photo album in my phone called “Coronavirus.” I started doing this in mid-March. I guess it’s sort of a way of keeping a scrapbook of this experience.

Life is “on pause” right now. I do work (remotely) 25-30 hours a week (I’ve worked my way up from 15 hours a week), so things aren’t totally on pause, but the pace of life has drastically slowed. And in a perverse way, when I think about going “back to normal” I’m not sure how much of “normal” I actually want back.

I’d love to keep working 25-30 hours a week, but that’s not going to happen. Retirement is still a long way off, and we need my employer-sponsored health insurance. So, going back to the office 40 hours a week is probably going to happen at some point in the next few months. And I have a renewed gratitude for actually having a job, as I wrote about in my last post. I do enjoy working, but I’ve had some distance from the normal work dramas (is there a workplace anywhere without drama?) and I must say I like the distance. So, when I go back, I will give myself mental space from those shenanigans, even if I can’t physically remove myself from being a witness to them.

Before the pandemic started, I would spend a certain amount of time on Pinterest, curating my boards. I do love Pinterest, if only for the fact that it is a great way and place to collect recipes. I’ve still spent time searching for recipes during lockdown, but only when I’m looking for something specific. No surfing. I used to spend a good amount of time looking at the fashion postings on Pinterest, something that has gone completely by the wayside. I just don’t feel interested in that type of consumerism right now. Will my interest return? I honestly don’t know. What’s more, I don’t know if I want it to return. I had already been toying with the idea of a minimalist, capsule-style wardrobe. Having experienced this pause in normal life, minimalism in all areas of my life is more attractive to me.

I think that like so many other types of life-altering experiences, life post-pandemic will be at best a “new normal.” Some parts of this new normal, like wearing masks into 2021 and feeling my “fight or flight” response activated any time I hear someone cough or even see someone approaching too closely, will be unavoidable. This will be similar to how, in a post-Sandy Hook world, I now look for emergency exits when entering a movie theater or concert venue, in case a mass shooter decides to be there, too. 

But other parts of the new normal I will be able to choose, and I intend to spend a lot of time in the next weeks and months deciding what those parts will be.

Stay safe, friends. Xoxo