What am I doing?

COVID-19. It is the ever present world everyone is talking about. You go to the grocery store you hear it, you turn on the TV you hear it again, you log on to zoom it occurs again, you call a friend again, turn on social media — you guessed it, again. Everywhere. So many thoughts, emotions, feelings, about this one word.

Well it is more than a word, it is a nasty virus that is infecting the world today and destroying people’s lungs, livelihoods, and schedules. But how do you respond? What do we do when we are trapped inside our houses and are forced to give up our highly demanding schedules? I have actually found it quite frustrating that so many people I know are wanting to continue with the demands of daily life during this interruption. The demands to do everything and be everywhere that all college kids face have not gone away. People want to facetime every club meeting, go to all bible studies, even have virtual intramural sports. This time of nothing is so valuable to our generation yet we are wasting it by filling it with numerous activities and loads of school work.

We needed to reset, we needed to let go and drop all that was filling our daily lives because ultimately it was too much. It is too much that we place on ourselves that it shoves us into swirls of pressure and fear of not getting enough done or having enough things in our lives. Yet when it is all stripped away, we find things to immediately fill our endless time. I want to step back and do nothing and enjoy this time of rest and resetting our minds and bodies to a more sustainable speed of life. So I have.

I have been playing tennis (no worries staying way more than 6 feet apart)

I have been reading for fun, which if you know me I literally never do.

I have been sitting at the dinner table with my family for way longer than normal.

I have also been doing . . . nothing.

With all this going on, I have been thinking a lot about work. I am a NA at UNC Hospitals. Although the thought of going to work during all this really scares me, I am glad I get to be a part of this and doing my part to contribute to this pandemic. I know that one day I will tell my kids that during all of this I was still working 12-hour shifts on the front lines of this bug that is highly contagious and killing so many people. So many mixed emotions, but this is a little bit about how I feel during this time.