THE TEMPO IS DIFFERENT AND THAT'S OK

Working From Home

We didn't intend it, but it seems like our life is on hold.  We've had unintentional holds before.  When we're sick; or a child, parent, partner or good friend is.  When we're job hunting or don't know what's next.  When someone we love is absent, or we wish we had someone to love but don't.  My clients often felt like their lives were on hold until their legal problems resolved.  And it's like that now, isn't it?  There's a lot of uncertainty. Not only "Will I catch (and survive) the coronavirus?" But when will we next see (and touch) our family and friends, not to mention a steady paycheck?  And it's just beginning.


One help is to remember that being in a difficult situation is real life too.  Waiting for the coronavirus to end does not have to put us on standby.  It changes our life, it doesn't stop it.  So we do things differently.  Unless we are on the front line, we do things now more slowly, more intently.  Auto-pilot no longer applies.  We're settling in.  

What does this mean?  For one thing, we don't have to be productive at pre-virus stress levels.  To continue that way doesn't make sense, does it?  We owe it to ourselves and others to confine stress to those direct coronavirus consequences that are unavoidable.  That's enough.  

We also don't have to follow every on-line time-filler.  I thought I would watch an opera replay from the Met every night, but I haven't.  I thought I would de-clutter more but there's no where to drop off.  I thought I would face-time more often, but do I need to get together with friends more than we did before social distancing?  I'm attending only one Zoom class (yoga) and contributing to two fun chain-mail invitations. I'm reading what I please and keeping Alexa busy with my music choices.  My outdoors never looked so good.  My meals are delicious.  We each need to pick what's right for us. The last thing we need is to import guilt into these days at home that we've been given.

I know I'm not the only one giving this advice.  To let go of expectations.  Do what we need to do with our kids and our work.  Then what we want to do.  For our families, ourselves, others . . . .  The tempo is different now and that's OK.  
                                                    Nina Naomi

Lulu enjoying the family stay-at-home Order