I think the pandemic might have broken me.
I have been spending way too much time doom scrolling – the daily COVID case counts barely register anymore amidst all the horrible there is out there to discover. That’s fixable, at least, once it’s been identified. It’s common enough knowledge that human brains are wired with a negativity bias. We just lap that negativity up and tend to remember the negative over the positive. It’s a psychological thing. Google it if you don’t believe me. You can podcast it in many forms as well (click here for one!).
Needless to say, being hardwired toward negativity plus endless access to truly grim news means that essentially every time I open my laptop to write a new blog post I end up “just one more click”-ing myself into oblivion and never actually accomplishing a darn thing. And then it’s time to make breakfast (or sometimes lunch) and then my me time is O.V.E.R.
But I’m back! TODAY is the day! I figured out I was in this unfortunate cycle and am righting the ship and re-prioritizing my time. I have put an end to the doom scrolling and re-committed to putting the screens away earlier in the evening to preserve time before sleep to read an actual, held-in-my-hands book. Lo and behold, it works! Here I am writing again and getting back to what counts. I just updated my blog Resources pages and added a Happy Healthy Kids page. Hello world!
Don’t get me wrong, summer is also just wrapping up so I was a little pre-occupied with squeezing the freaking marrow out of this LIFE. Except it also rained a lot (wettest July on record – lucky us!) or was otherwise 95 degrees with 85% humid and truly, honestly, totally disgusting outside much of time. I may have started to mold, but then again I also didn’t need to water my plants much so there’s that.
It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see.
Henry david thoreau
One thing I discovered over these last several months is that I seem to have left the feeling parts of my brain somewhere back in the spring of 2020 and now live in this strange numb-ish state – like I am sitting on the shore observing from a distance as my active self/life floats by down the river. It appears that the pandemic and all the endless foreboding desensitized me in some way so that what was once a heightened sense of grief or anxiety is now toned down a little. My scientific evidence?: I did a high ropes course with my kids this summer that we had done a couple pre-pandemic summers ago as well. I used to be downright shaking and sweaty-palm scared. I had planned not to participate this time, in fact, knowing how much I hated how it made me feel last time. But that seemed like a lame example coming from a mom who’s always saying things like, “we have to face our fears!”, “lean into the uncomfortable!”, “you only need to be brave for 10 seconds.” So I harnessed up and off we went to the treetops. Same circumstances, same heights, same equipment, same course, same me. Except that I was totally calm. I didn’t dread the bounce in the middle of the tight rope walk. I threw myself off the platform on the zip lines. I just kept moving forward. Sure, I was roped in and checked my gear appropriately, but I wasn’t stuck thinking on the platform. My brain is simply not as reactionary as it was before the pandemic. So that’s good.
However, it’s quite possible that this past summer I also didn’t have the correct date to pick my child up from sleepaway camp. And perhaps I planned a short getaway for my husband and I while the kids were away? To my credit (but really thanks to a friend’s super helpful intel a week before camp started), I figured out that said sleepaway camp was only 3 nights, not the 5 I had planned for in my head. Which meant that if I was in Rhode Island on my child’s third day of camp I would also not be in New Hampshire on what was not only the third but also the last day of camp (hypothetically speaking, of course). That was problematic. Did I mention it’s been a strange time?
Never fear, it ALL worked out. Everyone was retrieved at the right time and in the right place. But, seriously? Never in my prior life would I have imagined coming close to doing such a thing. I pride myself on my organization skills. DAMN. In my defense, I mean, the plans we had for like a year prior never really happened so I just kind of stopped paying too much attention to dates. I didn’t honestly believe the kids would actually GO to camp, so why worry about when they would come home?
Needless to say, I seem to have let go a little, both of control and of schedule (and perhaps orientation to time – maybe that one I want to get back). This pandemic period has taught me all about being imperfect. It’s an honest state of being human. Do your best, always strive to do well by yourself and others, but being perfect is so overrated (that’s the title of my forthcoming, yet-to-be-written book since I am, after all, an imperfection expert). It’s not such a bad thing (I mean, assuming all children are returned to their rightful homes safely and in a timely fashion, of course). Embrace it. Own it. Help others out. Tone down the judgey. We are ALL human, we are all imperfect.
Take a deep breath. We are on this planet, in this life, together.
Update: This Adam Grant article and podcast sheds some light on all the pandemicky feels:
“Adam wrote a viral article for The New York Times on a feeling many of us are struggling with right now. It’s somewhere between burnout and depression: languishing. This neglected middle child of mental health can dull your motivation and focus—and it may be the dominant emotion of 2021. This article originally appeared in The New York Times on April 19, 2021, with the headline, ‘There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing’. ” Check out the podcast here and other good ones like it here!
Put Your Own Oxygen Mask on First 