Is it seriously only January 10? The first week back after New Year’s felt about a zillion years long. Which makes sense, because only about the first two days were “normal” in any sense.
On Wednesday morning, my daughter’s daycare abruptly closed due to Covid exposures and I had to make an emergency call to my mother-in-law who (thankfully) was able to back-up babysit. I made it to school by the skin of my teeth. Due to freezing rain and bus driver shortages, I wasn’t the only one. Several busses came in almost an hour late, and once attendance was finally taken, I realized that almost a third of my students were out. Many were sick or quarantined; in other cases, parents had seen how Omicron was raging and chose to keep their kids home. By the final hour of the day, we’d gotten word that there wouldn’t be enough bus drivers for the rest of the week, so we all had to abruptly pivot to remote learning (necessitating my bringing home a trombone, drumsticks, and a stack of music, among other things).
(Insert diatribe about how Omicron may be a milder variant, but its contagion is bringing our country’s institutions, especially schools and hospitals, to their knees.)
(I’m not up for delivering the diatribe myself at the moment, but I may post it later this week.)
Fortunately, the last day of the week ended up being a snow day.
It wasn’t a busy week. In fact, I had more available time than I expected (or wanted). But it was a stressful week. A common pandemic paradox: I have time to do things I really want to do, but summoning energy to do them is hard because my brain is overloaded with worry and stress.
Still, on paper, I did manage to:
- Do 6 exercise classes
- Order a Peloton (delivery on January 25!)
- Clean and organize the house
- Work on my new novel
- Read several flash essays
- Finish reading two books
- Start writing an essay
- Bake two types of cookies, including a brand-new recipe
- Start and keep up with my kid journals
The thing that I’m wondering is, did I do all of those things because I really wanted to, or because setting and achieving little goals got me through the stress?
I keep telling myself that BEING is more important than DOING, and that I must prioritize my own mental health if I’m going to get through the pandemic. But I still end up doing too many things and expecting too much of myself. And I’m at the point now where I’m not even sure if that’s healthy behavior or not.
Here’s hoping that week two goes as planned…