Most days I write this, and the number of days going up kind of just breezes over me. But sometimes when I hit a milestone number, it sinks in just how long we’ve all been living in this surreal altered reality.
It’s hard to comprehend that I started writing this blog 150 days ago. It was the day Amelia’s school started what we thought would be a temporary closure. And now we’re getting ready for virtual learning in a few weeks.
In some ways it feels like forever ago when life screeched to a halt and warped into whatever this is now. We were just talking about eating out at restaurants with the kids and that already feels like a quaint, ancient memory of a different time.
But we are doing our best every day to roll with it, adjust and make the most of what we have. That is a challenge for all of us. It’s a challenge as parents, it’s a challenge as professionals, and it’s a challenge as human beings.
Professionally, my life changed quite a bit. I have always worked from home, so that part stayed constant, but I used to be traveling every few weeks, and spent a lot of my time doing presentations and visiting the offices of architects and engineers.
Like so many others out there, I had to figure out ways to remake my job and accomplish the goals I’m supposed to accomplish in different ways. I’ve become very adept at giving presentations via Zoom, and as more people get used to that, I believe I’ll be doing more of that even in the post-COVID future.
Likewise, as parents we’ve had to rethink how we do things. So many of the things we took for granted before…parks, playgrounds, restaurants, kids museums…are now much more the exception than the rule. As I’ve written about here, we’ve found ways to dip our toes into some of those things as safely as we possibly can, but it has required tons more thought, preparation and caution that we ever could have imagined before.
As human beings, we have to find new outlets, new ways to connect and stay connected, and new ways to stay sane in insane times. Me personally, I’ve had good weeks and bad. Some weeks I can keep it all in perspective and chug along cheerfully, and other weeks things seem very heavy, if not impossible.
But here we are, 150 days later, and still making it work. It takes creativity, persistence and faith in better days and in each other.
I was thinking about all of this while watching the kids play “basketball.” Not the traditional version, mind you, but something more Harlem Globetrotters-esque that involves challenging each other to ever more absurd shots from on top of nearby objects.
These kids have been much in lockdown for 150 days and clearly need to find their own fun, because a lot of the normal outlets have been shut off to them. So that is what they do. They take a slightly different approach to something normal. They make a trick shot.
And that’s what I think all of us are doing. I’m taking trick shots in my job. Trying to get the ball in the hoop from very different angles and unique, and often challenging ways. Same thing applies to all of us facing parenting challenges and having to get creative with the way we score points and keep things moving.
Maybe if there is a silver lining at the end of this craziness, it’s that we’ll all be a little more creative, flexible and adept at those trick shots. The regular game might feel a little dull, in the end. That said, a little dull doesn’t sound half bad, either.
