Sometimes in this strange pandemic world I just feel like I am existing, marking time, treading water, … I’m not sure what the future holds and I don’t know how I can get there. I just plan week by week, rarely looking much beyond that. The furtherest date in my diary is a medical appointment in a month’s time. There’s no point thinking about holidays or going away. Even planning for Christmas seems like wishful thinking.
I’m a sociable person and I do miss seeing friends and family, but part of me quite likes this existence. Checking my diary is no longer so important. I’m not likely to miss anything because I have nothing booked in. In some ways it feels less pressured, less stressful. Looking back on my pre-pandemic life, I wonder how I managed to fit so much in and not be exhausted. I wonder how I mannaged to juggle everything without too many plates being dropped.
The days, weeks and months are blurring into one. Now we are changing seasons into autumn, it feels like the year is slipping away, but I have done nothing with it. I don’t think I’ve achieved very much. Partly this was because I wanted to make the most of the fine weather and spent a lot of the spring and summer outside. Partly I think I just needed a rest. I’ve had a stressful few years one way and another. I spent a large chuck of 2017 and 2018 dealing with crap that had been thrown at me. 2019 was better, but I didn’t have a chance to really recover. Being forced to slow down has helped.
Sleep has been a real feature of 2020 too. For years I suffered from sleep deprivation. It started during my son’s babyhood, but he was a early waking child once the disturbed nights were over. I almost never had a chance of a lie in and when I did my body would work against me. For a lot of that time I felt tired all the time. In 2017 I got the chance to lie in more and my body started to work with me on that. My son got into the habit of sleeping a bit longer at weekends, so I gained more sleep. Some weekends he’d be at his Dad’s and I could lie in. A lie in for me is unlikely to go past 9am even on a weekend.
For me it’s made a real difference being able to have later starts. This extra sleep made such a difference to me. I began to feel better (but at some level I hadn’t known I was less than my optimum). 2020 has meant less mornings where we have needed to be up. 8am was fine during lockdown as J could get up in time for online school to start. I regained more of the lost sleep from years past.
We are likely to be in this pandemic phase at least until the spring I think. So I’ll need to continue living in this strange pandemic world. I think my body will appreciate the extra rest. I’ll be looking forward to restarting life though, when I can.