Hello world!
It's been a minute. In fact, it's been nearly two years. A million and ten things have happened in these two years but the biggest thing is definitely that in February I packed up my life and loaded it all into my trusty Honda Civic, Guthrie, and went on a winding road trip all over the country before ending in Austin, Texas.
I'd been here for all of three weeks when the Covid 19 craziness hit...and I now find myself sheltering in place with someone I've known for a month (hey, Sam!). It's going probably a lot like you might expect. And by that I mean we are surviving and it is sometimes odd and I am almost definitely talking more than Sam wants me to. Another roommate, Lily, has been here some of the time but is primary elsewhere for the time being, and so it's just Sam and I here at the house, day after day.
Have any of you had a hard time keeping track of the days? This is not something I particularly struggle with in a normal world, and I'm mostly still keeping track of the days now (it's FRIDAY as I write this), but also knowing what day it is matters very little to me because each day is just another day in a world that isn't demarcated by working days and non-working days. Allll of my days stretch out before me as non-working days (for at least the next four weeks, anyway) and there just doesn't seem much point to me in differentiating. I wonder if that's considered unhealthy? It's sort of the way I operated as a kid during summer, too. *shrug*
Speaking of summer! Since I'm in Texas now, the best thing about the quarantine has been the fact that it's NOT WINTER here and I can go outside and walk on trails and at parks and pick flowers. It's actually not summer here, which is probably good since Texas summer is supposed to be oppressively hot, but Texas spring, it turns out, is basically exactly what Maine summer is. I am a big fan. That being said, we're currently on day two of a ten-ish day rainy forecast. It's....not great. It's significantly harder to stay positive during quarantine when the sun isn't shining. I know a lot of you feel the same and I totally sympathize with all of you who are stuck inside because it's still winter where you live. Don't worry - it's April now and SPRING IS COMING!
Anyway. Life in Texas, before the shelter-in-place orders went into effect was going fairly well. I got a job almost immediately when I got here (at a restaurant which has since shut down and will hopefully open up again eventually) which was cool, and I was just starting to try to make some friends. I know that everyone (like, EVERYONE. In the whole world) is in the same weird limbo that I am in right now, but in some ways I still feel like I am in a stranger position than a lot of other people. Most of you were living your normal lives when business as usual either came to a grinding halt or was dramatically changed. Now you're in a season of pause before hopefully picking back up where you were (or close to it) and living life again. And yes, I know that for a lot of people things aren't just going to pick right back up. Nobody is going back to exactly where they were when the world got put on pause. Things will be different for all of us. I know this. But part of me is still really jealous of the people who get to resume something a lot closer to normal when this is all over. Because the life I was leading when we hit pause was very much already a pause for me - a transitional period that had been going on for a month already and I'd been working to settle in and move out of. So now I'm in a limbo in the middle of what was already a limbo for me! So strange. When everyone is allowed to go out and socialize again, I'm not going to have anyone to meet up with. The life I'm trying to settle into is now confined to one house and one other person. And while I'll be fine, and I know that there'll be all the time in the world to make friends on the other side of this quarantine, it's hard right now for me to imagine the world I'll be entering into. It's a free/bonus side order of scary along with the already overwhelming emotions that we're all having together (but separately) right now. It just feels like one more thing when I think about it.
So mostly I'm trying not to think about it. I'm living day to day. I'm figuring out each day what I want and need to do with it, and giving myself the space to do those things. I did come up with a list of goals for myself for this quarantine and typed them up on my typewriter (which somehow still works even though I've never replaced the ink ribbon and lord only knows how old it was before I got it about 8 years ago) but one of the items on my overarching goals list is to come up with goals for each day.
Today, my quarantine looked like barely getting my ass out of the house by noon and going for a walk and then changing into clothes that I haven't worn since I left my office job almost two months ago and even wearing high heels because I needed to feel something closer to normal and I wanted to sit down and FINALLY write this blog post. So that's what I did. I didn't manage to put together a fika for Sam, which I've been able to do every other weekday since I started them last week, but that's okay. It fell off the list of things to get done for today and I think the biggest gift we can all give ourselves right now is grace. It's okay to have days where you didn't get done what you thought would be your minimum. It's okay to have days where you literally have to force yourself into things just to get them done - but no day HAS to be like that, and certainly every day shouldn't. Only you can know what you need at any given moment. I think we're all just doing our best and that is - and needs to be - okay.
Anyway. More soon, hopefully.
For now, I hope all of you are safe and healthy. We're gonna make it. Warm and sunny days and happy times are coming. You're gonna make it.