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The Art of Routine in a Pandemic
I’m not a big fan of prescribed routines in general. I do have a morning ritual (Morning Pages as suggested by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way), and I write out a gratitude list at the end of the day, that’s it. I see bloggers and YouTubers with these elaborate morning routines of juicing, and meditating, and sun salutations, and ginger shots, and chanting, and cold showers, and I think, “yep, they don’t have kids.” In general, I find that having so many things to remember as part of your routine adds to the pressure of said routine, thus making the routine another Thing To Do Right, negating its entire…
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A gift to be simple…
For as long as I can remember, people have been paying lip service to the joys of simplicity. Even before Marie Kondo taught us how to tidy up, Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Simple Abundance, a Daybook of Comfort and Joy extolled the simple pleasures of coffee in the morning, using the good china for meals other than holidays, and waking up after a good night’s sleep. Now, in the wake of a pandemic and 30 million unemployed Americans, those efforts seem so… quaint. Like, “awww, isn’t it cute how we had to be told to appreciate fresh air. That was before we were cooped up inside all the time!” Two days…
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How to keep your sanity in this new normal…
Well, here we are on day 45,623 of quarantine. And the novelty of it all is wearing off. Here in Spain I’m spending a lot of time doing Instacart orders for my parents, figuring out homeschooling, and wondering when I’m ever going to be able to fly home again. In my last post I talked about the grief we feel that our normal has flown out the window. And so quickly. With so little warning for most of us. It just came up and smacked us upside the head, and here we are, boom, stuck at home watching the economy collapse as we eat banana bread in our six-day-old leggings…
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Adaptable Humans
One thing I am amazed about with this state of lockdown is just how quickly it’s all felt normal. Scientists say that humans might be the most adaptable species on earth, and I’m seeing that play out in real time through this pandemic. “Our brains are essentially social brains,” he added. “We share information, we create and pass on knowledge. That’s the means by which humans are able to adjust to new situations, and it’s what differentiates humans from our earlier ancestors, and our earlier ancestors from primates.” – Rick Potts, director of the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History The first three weeks…
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Hibernation
What do you think historians and sociologists will say about this time, this period in our collective lives when they look back on it in 50 or 100 years? Will they look at all the good people are doing, donating masks, 3D printing protective gear, taking food to the vulnerable people? Will they look at the rallies people have against social distancing measures, and try to break down why America more than other countries is experiencing this pushback on public health? Or will they wonder what life was like for regular people cooped up in their homes for a month or more? I have gone into hibernation, and I’m trying…
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Spanish Lockdown Day 5: We Keep a Schedule
One thing I am realizing about this whole Forced Confinement gig is that you absolutely must keep a schedule, or you will lose all sense of time, and anything you had planned will go right out the window. You also have to get dressed, and when you live in a house with multiple people (especially children) you need breaks from each other. Living on top of each other 24 hours a day is hard, even if you’re in a large house, and you need some space and quiet time. Today we started our new schedule. The guy who owns Impact Gym in Marbella is doing daily kickboxing classes via Facebook…
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Spanish Quarantine Day 3: We make Inspirational Signs
We’re still on quarantine here in Andalucia, and they’re taking it pretty seriously. People at the beach on the coast are being given tickets for being out and sunbathing. A woman was fined for being in the park with her daughter. A friend posted on Facebook yesterday that he thought the restrictions weren’t going into affect until Monday, and tried to go for a bike ride, and got yelled at by three people including a police officer. He quickly rode home, shamefaced. We live out in the countryside, so it’s not as hard, but it’s still weird not having any structure to our days from external sources. There’s no school…
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Day 4 of the Spanish Lockdown: We start homeschooling
My daughter goes to a Montessori school where they do pretty granola–and-nutty kinds of things. Now that we’re off, her teacher is sending work to us each day on a special WhatsApp group chat. We respond by sharing photos of our kiddos doing the work, everyone sends smiling rainbow emoji’s, and such is the new schooling situation. One thing that really helps is creating a schedule each day with our Little One. We make up the schedule with her together first thing in the morning, and it really makes a difference for all of us to know what’s coming, what the goals are, and what we want to accomplish, so…
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The Quarantine Begins…
This past week everything took a back seat to the pandemic. That’s a weird sentence to write. I remember hearing about the 1918 Spanish Flu, and watching that Downton Abbey season where Matthew’s fiance died tragically. And as someone who is passionately into history, of course I’ve studied all the various plagues like the sweating sickness, which came on and killed in a matter of hours sometimes. But watching all of this happen in real time is so surreal. Last week the newspaper reported that there was a case of coronavirus in our town. Our daughter has always had respiratory issues since she was small, and got croup all the…
