Protecting Your Time

Do you remember at the start of the first lockdown in the United States because of COVID-19? It was mid March. People started noticing that they felt different after a few weeks. I know that some people are restless, but that's not what I'm talking about. People started to feel less stressed and they were saying, ‘Wow, I've really had to slow down my life.’ They were less stressed from the ordinary parts of life that were present before Covid. I'm sure that the stress of a global pandemic outweighed the stress that was decreased when I was able to stay home, but I'm not addressing the stress of a global pandemic today or my insomnia or anxiety or fears about it. I'm addressing how I felt less stressed because of certain things that were in my life were taken away like my commute. Here I go.

The world is starting to try to go back to life before Covid or life after Covid. And I'm noticing that people are trying to rush back to whatever they were doing before. I understand that people want to go back to how life was in some sense because they miss it and with Covid-19 and quarantining and all that, it's dangerous and it's anxiety-inducing. Going back to life as it was would mean that things were safe. You could feel secure, you could have fun, you could do or see or eat the things you've been missing.

03:16

Life after covid can't be the same. But people are pushing for it to be the same and they just want that consistency, things you can rely on, and freedom and a lack of worry.

03:35

I don't think I'm alone in saying that I don't want life to go back to how it was before and I'll tell you what my life was like before.

It was way overbooked and I know that I'm a personality type who is a people pleaser, an achiever and so those things go together and make for a very busy life, sometimes one that's misaligned with what I actually want to do and I'm just doing what people ask me to do.

But I'm not the only person like that. So many people try to fill too much of their time, and they're trying to juggle things or do everything or achieve it all. And there's a lot of pressure in our country to achieve a lot. And some of that is to make money. If you're not busting your *** then you're not going to get anywhere, and that's sort of the message that I've seen in a lot of different places in our culture.

But haven't you heard about other countries who work less hours in a week? They have the same amount of productivity and their citizens are happier. The fact is. America has a broken system of work and expectations and uneven amounts of work based on gender.

We don't have to live as busy as we do and we don't have to achieve as much or we don't have to achieve what we want by doing the things that we've been doing. There are other ways, right? What's that phrase work smarter, not harder? So I guess my first point is that you don't have to make your life the way that it was before COVID-19.

I want people to be intentional. And before you go back to the world, before everything is open again, before schools go back to full time, before all that happens and you run out excited to see the world again, why don't you spend some time being quiet?

I want to do that because I really want to decide how I was using my time, what I value and what has come to my attention during Covid quarantining and such.

I have to reevaluate and see what I'm willing to let into my life again. And what I want to keep out when things are back to normal as they say…

And getting back to quarantine, lockdown, I had to do less. I didn't have to drive, the musical got cancelled, and I became a lot less stressed, like just the commute was stressful to me. I could tell the difference in my body.

A lot of times I would feel an obligation to something. A lot of times we stay in a group because we think that it's too sad or you're going to disappoint someone or what will they think of me if I quit? It's really not as big of a deal as we make it in our heads.

Covid also gave me some time to think about how much free time we have and how much time your brain needs to be bored. If you were fortunate enough to be able to stay home and fortunate enough to not get sick or recover from being sick, you ended up having this experience of boredom. And we have Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime. So we we could fill our time and not get bored and not feel those creative juices flowing anymore, but I think a lot of people still did. Having that time to think and nowhere to be, I had time to think about things and I found that I found so so much of my alone time sorts out the world. When you are doing something that doesn't require a lot of thought or interaction, you sort out the world and you, you figure out how you feel about things and you get new ideas. That's why people get ideas when they're in the shower because they're not distracted by other things.

What do you want to be a part of your life when things are more back to normal? What do you want? What did you appreciate about quarantine?

When you can do more things and go more places and see more people, I hope that before that happens, you make decisions about what you want in your life. Because if you don't make the decision in advance, you'll probably end up getting caught up in a busy schedule or in other people's social calendars, and then after a couple months you'll be like, whoa, what a whirlwind. This is too much, and now I have to scale back.

So if you're intentional in advance, you'll make sure to do it the way that you want the first time. I wish you lots of peace and lots of safety and lots of joy in the coming year.