Since my last post was all dramatic and depressing, my goal for this one is to keep it a bit lighter. No promises though because my general mood lately has been very “angsty teenager-esqueâ€.
On Monday, August 16th Nia went back to school in-person for the first time in a year and a half (I’m not counting that half day she got in March 2021 because it wasn’t even a full day of school). Here she is looking all big and 4th-grader-ish.
She has transitioned back amazingly well. She springs out of bed in the morning and starts getting ready before Nick and I have even woken up. She comes home tired and happy, full of stories about the friends she’s meeting and the new things she’s trying (like soccer!). It makes my heart sooooo happy.
During my year and a half of non-stop Nia/Mommy time, I’d been fantasizing about this exact moment when she’d head back to school and I’d FINALLY have time to do things for me again. Oddly enough, when the big day finally arrived, I didn’t know what to do with myself! My list was full of exciting possibilities and yet I found myself paralyzed with indecision and unable to do anything except mindless phone scrolling and house tidying. This was totally unexpected!
As the days went on and she kept going to school, I found myself facing this teensy weensy identity crisis. It was strange going from being too needed in 2020/early 2021 (so much so that I had to quit my job) to having no one need me anymore. With Nick heading off to work each day, the housekeeper taking care of the house stuff, Nia at school for 8 hours, no work to go to and no school board even, the day suddenly felt very long and unstructured.
I also noticed that I had forgotten how to do several key things like:
- Make simple decisions. I think this is because decision-making has been so depressing during the pandemic (what’s the least worst option??) and I have a tendency to over-analyze everything these days.
- Focus on a task for a long uninterrupted period of time. I blame this on being so centered on everyone else’s needs for so long that I didn’t find much time for myself. There were also the constant interruptions, so at some point during the pandemic I just stopped doing things that required high levels of concentration (I even remember not being able to read books at one point).
- Feel passionate/excited about something. This comes from two things, I believe. One is lack of practice looking inward and reflecting on what I desire (I was too stuck down on the base needs of Maslow’s hierarchy vs the more evolved upper levels). I think hope also played a part here because I was afraid if I got excited about something and started really digging into it, that COVID would flare again and the rug would be pulled out from under me again, leaving me with little to no personal time.
This in itself is bizarre because these are all things that came easily to me before. And so now I find myself in the strange place of trying to relearn all the behaviors I had mastered before but abandoned over the course of the pandemic. I am focused on cultivating new habits and have resorted to scheduling the most basic things on my calendar (like right now I’m writing during “Creative Timeâ€). The structure of it feels comforting and when it’s on my calendar I feel more obligated to do it. I’m also interviewing coaches who will help me suss out who I am now and hold me accountable for creating this new chapter. This feels equally scary and exciting.
That feels like a good place to stop. Hopefully that wasn’t too depressing to read and that you could find some aspect of it to relate to in your own life. I am grateful to be on this journey together and appreciate the chance to be vulnerable with you. Your support and encouragement mean the world to me.
