adjustment | Life as it happens to be

Today is 30th September 2020. At almost this exact time last year, on 25th September 2019, I wrote the following blog post, which you may be interested to read:

livingfully2017.wordpress.com/2019/09/25/the-racing-doesnt-stop-even-when-you-do/

I talked about the way our busy, fast-paced lives can leave our minds racing, even when we physically stop at the end of the day, and the ways in which our use of technology can contribute to this mental and emotional overload, while also highlighting the personal benefits of blogging as a use of technology. I explored ways in which slowing down, creating more space and time to do things that benefit our wellbeing, creativity and taking time out of the usual busy lives we live, can be beneficial to us on so many levels.

And here we are, in 2020, and many if not most of us have found ourselves, by default of the pandemic, ushered out of our busy day to day lives and routines and into a slower, more ‘removed’ kind of a lifestyle.

Of course, there are so many of you who have not had the chance to slow down this year. Those of you to whom the rest of society owes a huge debt of gratitude. Those who are front line or key workers, whose lives have only got busier and perhaps more stressful as you care for the sick, the vulnerable, deliver essential supplies of food, medicine, and so forth.

So many of the rest of us, however, have found ourselves spending much more time at home, perhaps working from home, maybe isolated and living alone, or seeing only immediate family members as the restrictions that the Coronavirus pandemic have brought upon us, continue to refashion the ebb and flow of our daily lives.

Yet, how many of us have been able to embrace this as an opportunity to slow down and look after ourselves and those around us, as we may have wished to be able to do a year ago?

With various health issues, I have often ‘dreamed of’ being able to work from home in the past, but was never granted the permission to do so, yet this year, many other mainly office-based workers like myself have been able to benefit from working from home as the new default in this public health crisis. I have personally found this beneficial, yet I know of others who have really struggled with working from home, and am aware of others still for whom being at home is an unsafe or unsettling environment.

Isn’t is strange when the things we may have hoped for become reality but through very unexpected circumstances? In 2020 we’ve seen our world be turned upside down by the pandemic, and across the world despite us approaching October and the end of the year, countries are still trying to navigated these uncharted waters, and find a balance between protecting public health and keeping economies afloat, all in the midst of some key political and social events in certain parts of the world.

I wonder where you are from and how you have been managing the changes this past year, if any of the changes have been positive for you, or what has been particularly challenging. I wonder how your country has responded to the Coronavirus crisis, and what you think could be done better? What were your thoughts around this time last year?

I’d like to think that looking back in a year from now, we will see progress, on a global scale, and green shoots of recovery, yet there are many challenges ahead, and in many places across the world, it seems that governments, medical professionals, and scientists are at the moment ‘fire fighting’ to address the immediate damage while trying to plan and prepare for the longer term.

We may not have a great deal of control on what happens on a global scale, but as we approach the autumn and winter of this year, we are once again reminded by nature’s gentle changing of the seasons (and as I write I observe the beauty of the juxtaposition of green leafy trees with bright autumnal reds and oranges beginning to appear), that it is time to slow down, reflect and move from one season to the next.

Many of us may have physically slowed down, but as described in my post from this time last year, are our minds still racing and overloaded even when we stop? Have you been given a chance to take time out of the busy day to day of your previous life, and are you yet still overwhelmed by the constant stream of bad news that we’ve been hearing this year?

Do you have any stories of inspiration of how something positive has come out of this collectively difficult year, or how you and your community have responded to help others?

Have you embraced a slower pace of life? In this year where we are all in such need of encouragement and community even as we perhaps are physically isolated, do you have any words of hope to share here? It would be an honour to hear your stories, but in the meantime, try to remember to take every opportunity you can to seek Peace and pursue it, even in the midst of the storms. Be blessed. x

*The readjustment phase*.

Like a trusty friend during isolation, You Tube has given me insights into and inspiration from other people’s lives, that have helped me build upon the positives in my own life, during a time with no face to face company. From bullet journaling, to crafts and creativity, prayer and faith, exercise, cooking, morning and evening routines, to simple entertainment, I’ve had plenty to think about and be inspired by. While pondering what possible analogy I could use to try to express the psychological and emotional shift that happens during times of change and readjustment, and the mixed emotions that some of us may be beginning to feel, it was in fact some videos from You Tube that came to mind!

There’s a lovely and entertaining family that vlogs about their life, and in recent videos, the parents were working on a surprise for their young twin girls to upgrade / redo their shared bedroom. When the girls finally saw the surprise they were so happy. They were excited about the new floor space to do cartwheels that their new bunkbeds gave them and were ‘over the moon’ with all the new things that they had and were able to do in their space. Well done parents ! 🙂 . However….. after a few nights the girls started shouting for help and saying they felt scared and ended up explaining that they loved their room but they were ‘going through an adjustment’. Pretty articulate for six year olds to express and explain that emotion, I thought.

I don’t know about you, but in the past few days I’ve experienced feelings of excitement, hope, apprehension and tiredness. It’s been a long four months, with many things to be grateful for, but despite the restrictions, the ‘cabin fever’ and so on, there has been, at least for me, a growing sense of comfort and stability in the predictable nature of day to day life. There’s been a sense of security and even of growth, and I’ve certainly benefited from a slower pace of life. Now, however, it’s like we’ve been given more ‘floor space’, and while at times we may feel like doing cartwheels and handstands, we may also be faced with unsettled or sleepless nights.

I think it’s worth recognising that there will be a degree of psychological and emotional shift for all of us. We’ve braved our first (and hopefully last) pandemic (but it’s not over yet!), we’ve made it through to the other side of our first ‘lockdown’, and restrictions have been significantly lifted in recent days. Yet what we’re moving into isn’t quite the same as what we had before. We have new freedoms, but they’ve changed. The excitement of meeting with friends may be slightly dampened by not being able to embrace them just yet. We might feel a sudden thirst for adventure again with the renewed prospect of being able to do more things, go places, see things for the first time or after a long time, having had the same surroundings day after day for one third of a year. But things have changed. We’re not out of the woods quite yet, there is that underlying risk of a ‘second wave’, and we still need to be aware of all the public health measures that we need to stick with, and maybe some of us are not quite ready to take the next step.

I think the mental realisation that this is a time of adjustment, of processing and reprocessing change is a shared reality in differing ways and to different degrees depending on our experience and circumstances.

I find it helpful though to be able to tell myself that the mixed emotions and figuring out of thoughts is a normal part of adjustment and readjustment to change, and the ‘new normal’ that we are still not yet all that familiar with.

It’s ok to feel unsettled at this stage. It’s ok to feel excited one moment and apprehensive the next. It’s ‘normal’ (or ‘new normal’, or something!).

One of the ways I began to process my experience of lockdown to enable me to have a productive time rather than days drifting into days into days, was to create for myself a ‘vision board’ (online) for my time in quarantine. While grappling with change and uncertainty, my first point of reference will always be the Unchanging Truth that I build my life and faith upon, however, for the day to day practicalities and making sense of what to do, I find I need to ‘reorient’ my brain, my mind, to figuring out how to look forwards and take the next productive steps as I walk through and navigate the changes ahead.

So, I guess for me it’s time to draw up a ‘post-quarantine vision board’ to help make sense of the next few weeks at least, and the adjustment phase we all find ourselves in. It works for me to a certain extent, or at least it did before.

Maybe you can inspire me, if you feel like it with how you are adapting to, managing and making sense of these changing days.