I am realizing that returning to my old busy life is going to be very hard. I have to go into the office and work in the office a full day for three days in a row and I am struggling. I feel out of sorts and rushed. I feel like life is not manageable and spinning.
I have been blessed to have worked this whole time and mostly from home. I work well from home and like it. I am productive and get a lot done. I also like working in my office. But my year at home is now interfering with my ability to juggle a life that has always been a lot to manage, but somehow, after my year shut in, I feel less capable than before...
Do you ever find yourself returning to something that in that movement towards something, you find resistance? Down right foot dragging? Almost like any dog I have ever owned who is moved toward the threshold of the vet’s office? Just like that...
I do not want the busy, crazy life back. I want to remain in my house, and work from there. I have gained so much in not having to get up, get dressed and out of the house every day. The two plus hours of my life spent getting ready for work, plus the hour commute, I have put to good use, hiking and working. I split the difference between personal and work life, giving and hour and half to a hike and an extra hour and a half to work. So I have worked more, not less, in my time at home.
I am somewhat panicky at the thought of having to go back to my old routine. The resistance great and a certain level of fear that I can no longer do life like that anymore. I am sure that I will rally, but I have to own that I do not want to and really do doubt my actual ability.
Today I have to be in the office no later than 8:30 and I am really, really, really stressed about it. I have thought of a million ways to NOT leave for the office at 7:30. And it was all for not, I am needed there, so I will show up there at the appointed time but I will do so at a personal sacrifice that I didn’t used to feel.
Do I feel more stressed about it or am I just more acutely aware of the stress that I just glossed over before?
I am not sure...
Does it matter?
The point is that my life is changed, I am changed and the things that I used to do without a thought because I had no choice, no other frame of reference, are now questionable and leave me with a feeling of uncertainty and stubborn refusal to return to the life I used to know.
Regardless of how it all goes down, I am still very aware of how lucky I am to have a job, to have been able to work from home all this time, and that my family and I have survived the past year without illness, death or attendant destruction. I can see that I really have nothing to complain about, I am and have been extremely cared for...
I guess I am just trying to own that I am having some issues with returning...to a life that doesn’t seem to fit the person I am today. How can I fit the old life with this new person I have become?
We will see. Today it will fit just fine. I just have to maintain a flexibility of mind and schedule that is hard for me. I have to literally move myself out of my own way, say the set aside prayer and trust that someone or something way bigger than me has carried me this far and likely will continue to move me and my life forward, even if that forward is actually a loop back to a place that I have been before.
The thing about returning is that you are going back to something you already know with new information, new ideas, new thoughts and new feelings...so I guess returning isn’t really possible because while one detail may be the same as before, the rest of them are not...because you or I are not.
No wonder I am having trouble with returning...the person I am today has never been asked to do this before. So I am returning to a place that the me that is here now has never been before and so it makes total sense that I have all the feelings one would have when one is asked to do something new, foreign and unknown. The me that is present today is quite literally changed from the person that showed up last March. So in returning, there is only a small part of me that returns and a greater part of me that begins a new course, new challenge and new day.
And a very large part of me that just wants to work in sweat pants thirty feet from my bed...
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