sameness

Time to rewire “temporary”

lynnmorstead5 Comments

Note to self:

2020 is half over. It’s time to get out of idle and shift into gear again.

Enough of “waiting” to pick up and carry on … until this …

Enough of “postponing” life events … until that …

Enough of “suspending” connections … until the other …

I’ve been thinking this is temporary. Just wait it out. Soon enough we will be able to pick up where we left off, and carry on as usual — mostly. In the meantime, four months have flown by and it’s looking like we’re in this for the long-haul. A nebulous soon has turned into a nebulous distant future – maybe even 2021. I’m pushing myself to consider this possibility – while also not having a panic attack about it.

Do I want to continue living like this another year? Absolutely not.

Does this mean, I’m going to cast all care to the wind and sport mask-less bravado? Also, absolutely not.

I’m working on re-wiring my own personal internal thinking about how I arrange my life. Staying within the bounds of COVID safety to do all the things I want to do, involves greater effort, greater planning and greater discomfort. Thus far, I’ve made rather lazy and comfort-seeking decisions behind the veil of caution, comfort and lack of urgency.

Rejecting Zoom invites, because I might self-combust if I have to sit in front of the screen another hour. Not making the effort to arrange for creative outings, because … well … it takes effort. Forgetting to call people I would normally collide with in my daily comings and goings, because out of sight is out of mind. Dragging my feet to invite others to social distance with me, because it’s hot and buggy outside these days – and muggy too on the Texas gulf coast. Pushing things off til tomorrow, because there’s no sense of urgency for today.

Do I want to be taking inventory at the end of 2020, and see the whole year was a holding pattern? Maybe one year is fleeting in the grand scheme of time, but the sands of time on my personal clock are not endless.

I need a paradigm shift. I don’t have lots of answers yet, but I know “Awareness is the greatest agent for change” – thanks for that thought Eckhardt Tolle.

On a whim, I cycled by a friend’s condo yesterday, called her on the phone and asked her to step out on the balcony. She’s not in a position to social distance, so we waved and chatted on the phone. Even though she was 14 floors up and I was standing on a busy street corner, it felt more real and intimate than a Zoom session. More of this …

It gave me a real bounce. I hope it did her too.

The spontaneous balcony visit was on the way home from a patio coffee shop visit with a friend I haven’t seen in person since late last year. It was a multi-sensory technicolor experience compared to the flat world of emails and Facebook posts. We could laugh, catch up, wander down assorted paths of conversation, recycle topics, chatter and debate and go back-and-forth in real-time. More of this too …

It was invigorating for me. I hope she feels the same.

Working on it …

Non-Zoom ideas most welcome 🙂

Stuck in No Man’s Land

lynnmorstead1 Comment

The grand re-opening continues unabated. The public has risen up and said “enough”. All the while virus cases are on the rise, letting us know that “it’s not over yet”.

I’ve had enough too.

Yet, I watch and wait for it to be “over”, though I have no clue what that might look like.

The initial glow of a welcome respite from routines, commitments and schedules has long lost it’s shine. Once we had mastered the new challenges of acquiring our basic needs and caught up on a few back-burner to-dos, we settled into a comfortable sameness. I’ts been rather dull some days, but tolerable nonetheless.

Tolerable for a while. That comfortable sameness is now old. My tolerance is wearing thin. I’m done with it.

I’m ready to move on, but not sure what makes sense.

I’m caught between friends who are out eating at restaurants again and others who haven’t even gone to a grocery store in three months.

I’d love to meet up at a noisy restaurant for fancy cocktails and tasty deliciousness served up in multiple complex dishes. My heart is ready — “you go for it girl!”, but my mind says “wait, what about all those droplets spewing into the air?” Feels too risky. I reconsider.

I’m stuck between joining in on group gatherings and life moving on without me. Are we creating even more divisions in our world? Those who meet up in person and those who remain virtual?

I’m conflicted about saying goodbye to family members moving out of state, for forever, without a hug goodbye. Should we take a leap of faith and do it anyway? We all feel healthy. Surely one big bear hug would be fine, but what if it’s not?

Time with our older loved ones is precious and yet we’re trying to limit our visits? There’s something not quite right about that. I’m questioning my efforts to protect my dad so he can stay healthy and yet more disconnected. What if I got tested before I visited? There are too many reasons why a negative test is no guarantee that I might not bring the virus to his door anyway.

What if this situation lasts the rest of the year – into next year? Beyond?

If it’s just a matter of time before we all get exposed, maybe I should just get it over with. But then again, the longer I can delay the inevitable, the more knowledge and research I will benefit from as an eventual patient.

Hang on a little longer.

It’s clear that at some point each one of us is going to take the next big step out into the open. Just like making the decision to get into my car and drive somewhere in Texas, where the rate of fatalities is tracking close to our current Coronavirus deaths.

I don’t stay at home because of car fatalities, so should I continue to stay at home because of the virus? I feel more comfortable with the risk on the freeways because I drive along under the illusion that I have more control over my safety. But I’m not so sure about this new virus.

We will eventually learn to cozy up to this new threat. We’ll integrate it into our daily micro-decisions about safety. A choice to not drive after midnight on New Year’s Eve might become similar to a choice not to go bar-hopping in the inner city. Some will still do it, but many others will choose not to.

STOP PRESS: I just learned that our local gym has reopened with strict safeguards. OH! This might be my moment of daring! I’m not rushing over there yet, but I am doing some serious investigations on their new COVID setup.

Stay tuned …

Sliding in and out of COVID ‘Lassitude’

lynnmorstead3 Comments

Go ahead, look it up, nobody will know. You’re going to want to use this word again. I certainly did, when I confirmed its definition after it landed in an apology email in my in-box. It’s one of those almost-onomatopoeia words. Just the sound of it signals the meaning.

The luxurious ‘lassss’ at the beginning hints at lazy-ness with tones of languish. The hard certainty of the ‘itude’ at the end rings of attitude and a powerful hold. There are some notes of ‘laissez faire’ emanating from a sense of languorousness, rather than just letting things be.

Yes! I get it!

There are many overused attempts to express this phenomenon with something newer and catchier. TikToks and Memes are proliferating like never before. They’re all very clever and amusing, and delightfully visual.

But nothing is quite as elegant as ‘lassitude’.

It quietly sneaks into the day’s unfolding, though it can retreat into dark corners after caffeine shows up. It slinks around in my attempts to get things checked off my to-do list. You think it’s finally loosened its grip on you and then it pops up after lunch when you can’t seem to move on to the next thing. It vanishes entries from my mental calendar of appointments on Zoom, phone and FaceTime, making me an embarrassing no-show, on occasion.

Yes, it’s a signature word for 2020 and me.

My closet is atrophying

lynnmorstead1 Comment

I got an email last week from a charity group that periodically drives by and picks up ‘gently used’ articles of clothing and household goods. I guess they’re also back in business, so I clicked YES. In January — another lifetime ago — I came up with a respectable load, but surely I can scrounge around and find a few more things for them.

It turns out maybe not.

There has been little action in my closet the past 3 months. Nothing new coming in. No Spring sales to tempt me when I’m out in the world. No new fun, fresh additions to push out some of the tired-looking dated fashions from earlier years. Most of my clothes are untouched, collecting dust and wondering what their purpose in life is.

There’s a small jumble of Athleta, lululemon, Under Armour, leggings, tops, etc. in one corner that experiences a daily turnover. If I ever change out of these before getting into bed at night, there’s a small collection of casual REI-Columbia-esque styled skirts, pants and blouses for that interim window that spans supper, evening Zoom calls and the nightly neighborhood stroll. All of the above could fit in a miniature carry-on.

I can’t give away any of those essentials — I don’t even consider whether these over-used items bring me ‘joy’ or not, they are my life right now. Sorry Marie Kondo.

What about all the other stuff? Will I ever surface from this endless recycling of the same old comfy, stretchy, sameness?

I touch the flowing dresses, high heels, swishy skirts, crisp blouses, smart dress pants and wonder when I will put them on again. Will it be this year, or will I skip this season entirely? Maybe I should just dump them all and start anew — after COVID? I’m definitely too cheap for that and besides don’t have the energy to rethink new clothes. I’d better keep them for now.

Clothing has become less and less interesting the longer I hang around the house. It’s rather like eating the same meal every day – after a while you lose your appetite.

Maybe I’ll dig around in the kitchen next for some household goods to donate. That probably won’t yield much either. The kitchen has been running on overdrive — we’ve been using e-v-e-r-y-thing in there these days.