The Curve

 In case you hadn't noticed, there has been a pretty steep curve during this pandemic. Yes, THAT curve...

...but also the learning curve. In the spirit of end-of-year self-reflection, I want to share what I've learned a lot about myself during these last few months.

Being the self-aware Type-A person that I am, I've always known that I like having structure to my days. The highly regulated schedule of my school workday and my various dance classes, yoga classes, climbing sessions, and soccer games kept me busy in the best possible way, with just enough leeway for most of the other things I wanted or needed to do. Three years into teaching, I finally had a healthy work-life balance.

So when the pandemic first shut everything down way back in March, my suddenly empty days scared the SH*T out of me. If it had just been a break from work, I would've been fine. Usually on a school break, I would hit the gym more frequently, see friends and family, pick up some extra dance lessons, travel...none of that was an option this time. Suddenly I had a whole lot of free time--something I try to avoid at all costs--and nothing to fill it with.

It was as though the loom upon which I'd been weaving the strands of my life together had vanished, and suddenly I was a tangled pile of string on the floor. All I felt able to do was stare at my computer screen, endlessly clicking "Continue Watching" whenever the screen paused and asked if I was still there. (Why don't you just keep your judgment to yourself, Netflix?) The self-loathing that accompanied these days of binge-watching was just an added bonus.

After about a week or so, this tangled pile of string knew she had to learn how to do macrame and give herself some structure. Who knew if or when that loom she had before might come back?

I did a lot of walking and running in those early days...anything that got me moving and out of the house made a huge difference in terms of my sanity. I can recall one day when I walked non-stop for 4 hours. (One of the perks of living in the same town you grew up in: almost no thinking required for navigation.) Often, I would call and check in with family members and friends while I walked. 

Unlike the many sourdough dabblers and banana bread fiends at that time, I couldn't really get into cooking and baking due to a less-than-ideal living situation. (Read: psycho roommate who, among other things, couldn't share the kitchen. Fortunately, I was able to escape at the end of April with a few shreds of my sanity.)

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

It was honestly such a relief when we started teaching online in the spring. At that point, we only had to be online for a couple of hours a day, and it was more about checking in with our students and their families than anything else. Still, that tiny bit of structure made all the difference. Having that one block of time that I needed to work around each day allowed me to build the rest of my day into some semblance of normal. Or at least functional.

(Of course, virtual school is now eating my entire life, but more on that later.)

Having had the experience of everything shutting down, I know now just how crucial it is for me to have structure in my day with some form of external accountability in place. I've always thought of myself as a very self-motivated individual, but it turns out that when I have all the time in the world, I become a couch potato. A rather disappointing discovery, I'll admit, but if (Universe forbid) everything were to shut down all over again, I like to think I'd be better able to handle it, armed with this new self-knowledge.

TLDR; Type A millennial falls apart when COVID shut everything down (shocker) and pulls herself together (ish).