Life will look different someday

Even now, I can usually find something to keep myself engaged, either physically or mentally, or at least entertained.

But every now and then, I get bored.

Not bored enough to take Suzi up on her joking suggestion to spread more mulch — I did enough of that over the weekend, thank you — but still bored.

The problem is that when I get bored, my mind begins to wander, and it’s not always productive.

Sometimes, my mind feels like the walls are closing in, and it starts to wonder not just “Is this all there is?” but “Is this all it will ever be?”

It passed. It always passes. This is just temporary. I know that.

And at this time, being bored is the First World problem of First World problems.

I’ve created a page for people to read all of the posts I’ve seen imagining the first weekend after all the quarantine rules are lifted, along with some other things. Read what everyone has written, go on their pages to give their posts some love and take a shot at doing your own! (Just make sure to share.)

Given a chance to fantasize about doing whatever they want, once there are no more restrictions, people have mostly chosen to write about doing “normal” things: visit families, spend time with friends, head to the beach, throw a housewarming party.

No one has bought all the tickets for games or shows they can find, or jumped on the first plane to anywhere.

I keep going back to how Giggles from No Love For Fatties replied when I brought up people opting for normal life over fantasy — “I think ‘pure fantasy’ right now is doing normal things.”

No one has any idea when “normal” will come back, or what the “new normal” will even look like.

But whenever it comes, and whatever it looks like, once we get it all sorted out, something else will happen, and we may not even notice.

We’ll look at life differently.

This time in our lives will never fall down the memory hole, and it shouldn’t, but it won’t be the first thing in our minds, either.

We’ll just … live our lives.

Right now, everything is shot through the prism of COVID, as it should be.

Sure, I can get a haircut now if I want to — as much of a mess as the mop on top of my head is, I’ll probably wait a bit — but people are still getting sick and dying.

The businesses that haven’t shut down have to make it work at a fraction of capacity …. if they’re being allowed to open at all. People who were making a comfortable living have seen their livelihoods thrown into turmoil.

But even among the lucky ones, everything in life is affected — what we do, when we do it, who we do it with (or no one at all), how we pass the time.

And where our mind wanders when we’re bored.

That’s why, unless I was writing specifically about people getting sick or dying — because I didn’t want to be disrespectful — I started calling it … “you know” … when I wrote about it.

After all, what else would I be writing about?

But someday, I hope, that will change.

This time in our lives will never fall down the memory hole, and it shouldn’t, but it won’t be the first thing in our minds, either.

We’ll just … live our lives.

And yeah, that does seem like a fantasy right now.

 

 

 

 

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