I was anticipating a corona spring break all the way in February. My officemates and I had even placed bets. I was excited for what I thought was going to be a two-week-work-from-home-and-binge-Dr. Phil staycation. Instead all of us got a far more insidious six-seven-or-eight-week-and-still-counting-until mid-summer-or-longer leave of absence from our loved ones, routines, security, and (increasingly so for me) sanity.
The “come out of Corona better than you came into it” mentality threw me for a loop. I’m a recovering perfectionist and wasn’t anticipating having so much time on my hands to stare at myself so closely and sit with myself so intently. Instead of finding inspiration in the corona glo’ up, I found crippling anxiety in its challenge. I went through weeks of frantic working out, frantic meal-prepping, frantic hair and nail treatments, frantic vitamin regimens, frantic start-up brainstorming and business plan writing, frantic French lesson taking, frantic book writing, frantic clothes and make-up shopping for when I finally go back outside. Franticly done and never completed because the risk and threat of the next challenge loomed behind the corner of each new morning. And just when I started to truly crack, right down the middle, some angel (in the form of a two-bit Pinterest pin reading something like “Imagine what would happen if you didn’t give up”) reminded me of a little thing called consistency. Ultra-new concept.
That Pinterest pin sent a shock up my spine and told me to forget the antics and get back the girl I thought I’d been becoming. Remember becoming? Not the frantic-un-productive doing, but the consistent-do-what-feels-good being? I’d forgotten about that.
So, I circled back and found myself getting back to myself. Typing out potentially shareable thoughts in Word, which came with a side of hour-long walks designed simply to move, calls with friends, and glasses of wine had for no reason other than they’re tasty and work kind of sucks these days. My simple joys.
My, your, our worlds feel so unrecognizably different that I’d become unrecognizable to myself. I got lost way back there in the time and space where there wasn’t (for me at least) so much time to think and just be and how ironic (or poignant) it is that it was that which threw me from my course.
“This season is happening for a reason,” my mom had told me one day during one of our almost daily calls, “don’t miss what it’s supposed to be teaching you.” That irony (or poignancy) might’ve been just that.
But I’m getting back to that girl becoming, still recovering but ambling forward. Today’s steps feel much different than they did several weeks ago, but they’re steps nevertheless and how wonderful is that?
