There was a quote from Gretchen Rubin that I first read when my daughter was small: The days are long but the years are short. It was meant to describe, at least in part, how time drags on when you’re the caregiver for little kids but afterwards the time seems to have flown by. It perfectly encapsulated the first few, physically demanding, years of being a single mom. And now, with a 21 year old, it REALLY describes how the years were so short.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic I’ve had that feeling again. The days, when you’re not sure what’s going to happen one to the next, when sometimes the news changes every single hour and always every single day, seem long again. And yet the time keeps slipping by. So the years will be short again.
And of course we’re heading into summer so the days really are getting longer. Stuff is growing. The weather is warmer. And here, at least, the numbers are coming down for the pandemic. The cases are beginning to plateau and leadership at all levels is carefully working on how to get us back to the regular world. Except I think the regular world is going to be the Old Regular World and what comes next will be the New Regular World.
I can’t quite see what that’ll be yet. I hope we take some of the lessons from the pandemic with us. I hope we carry some of the good things over. I worry about how many people are getting hurt, never mind sick or dying, along the way. I’ve been productive with my art, in fits and spurts, making good stuff some days before spending a week doing only the minimal stuff to get by. I haven’t found my footing yet.
How are you guys doing out there?