After 26 months of being very cautious, I’ve finally caught Covid-19. Or, I should say, Covid-19 caught up with me. For the most part, I’ve had the equivalent of a really bad cold or a mild flu. I had a low fever intermittently for the first three days, went through several boxes of tissues and tea, and slept. I’m now on day 5, and though I have a persistent cough and lower than normal energy, it’s definitely passing. Technically I can stop isolating tomorrow, but I will likely continue to isolate until I’m testing negative consistently and/or my symptoms disappear completely because I know too many people for whom a similar week to the one I’ve had would be devastating.
I’ve been able to sit with myself this week in a way that I’ve needed to but hadn’t carved out the time for. I’m not the same person as I was before living through a pandemic. No one is ever the same as they were two years prior, even if they willingly ignore that fact and refuse to deal with it. There is no growth, no forward motion, without change. The pandemic brought abrupt change, and for everyone at the same time. Last summer, coming out of the initial phase of this pandemic, many people felt the urge to “return to normal”. We knew a little more about the spread and prevention, and most of the people who wanted to be vaccinated were, so safety around socializing felt more manageable. The warm weather increased our collective desire to break out of the on-and-off isolation of the prior year (plus some). Since then, precautions have felt very individualized.
The “return to normal” felt too quick for me, and I’ve struggled to reconcile the old with the new. Normally, I am aware when something impacts and shapes me, whether it be a person, hobby, activity, an event, or something else entirely. I tune into that awareness, and it helps me process as it’s happening and reflect on my experience in the time following. In this case, the event is clear - a pandemic - but it feels like a non-event because time held still in a sense. Most of my old routine - the one that included a lot of different people and activities and travel outside of my house - screeched to a halt over the course of about a week. I found three weeks of no outside work, but battled restlessness and cabin fever by working on projects around the house. I found a new routine of different work, and stayed in that routine until people around me jostled me into finding some of my old routine again. I’ve been in weird see-saw of old and new since, and that leaves precious little time for figuring out the version of myself that emerged from the pandemic. My old routine doesn’t quite fit the person I am now, but there are pieces I want to keep. Instead of making small adjustments over time I have to choose which larger adjustments to make and when to make them. The same goes for my newer routines; some aspects are unsustainable if I want to enjoy life and need to be cut back or removed, and other aspects I would like to expand and explore.
So this week has given me the time and the quiet to really reflect on the last 26 months, on myself, and on how I’d like to shape my life going forward. I have ideas about what changes I need to implement in order to find more consistent availability for makeovers while also caring for my loved ones more sustainably and finding more quiet time for myself. Thank you, in advance, for your patience while I make those adjustments.