One of the (many) atypical things about COVID-19, is that
the people helping you cope are experiencing and coping with the same thing, at
the same time. Whatever your profession, you’re probably also a parent, partner,
adult child or friend, and, as we try to help others through this pandemic, we
are also trying to help ourselves.
Even as we recognize that everyone has their own specific
large and small crises, we can still have a great deal of understanding and empathy,
by virtue of being in the same boat.
Whether you have to separate your child from their
grandparents, be mindful of your, or someone else’s, compromised immune system,
or console your high school grad who will be missing experiences they’ve
anticipated for years, there’s still a lot of common ground.
There are some things we must all figure out in order to
cope.
How do we manage (a lot of) unstructured time?
Due to a meeting cancelled at the eleventh hour, I had an
entire day completely free.
Normally a dream for a busy person, it felt a little more
like a nightmare because of the circumstances. It wasn’t like I decided to take
a little staycation. It was last minute, so I didn’t have a plan. It was out of
my control. Routine was lacking. Hence, it felt more like a worry than a wow.
