Time to Get Up and Do the Work
No, I don’t have a job in an office away from home where I should be. And while I do have the shipping set up in the basement for my online stationery shop, I don’t mean that either.
The current stay-at-home mandate is not stopping me from going to work, because my work is to get up each day and go through my health-supporting routines, then go through the day pursuing creative efforts and mental stimulation. That’s my job in these dark times and it’s a seven-day-a-week gig.
Routine is the right-hand enemy of fear and anxiety, while the left-hand works on staying active through creative or mentally stimulation. Without this right-left defense, that foe (or obstacle) could easily render me incapable of doing much else beyond fretting and stewing.
My perspective on these odd times has slowly shifted to an appreciation of the opportunities during this new, highly restrictive phase of life. That may seem like either a crazy idea, or at least insensitive to other’s plights. I can only control how I react to my own plight, but I do empathize and understand others struggle daily.
How many of us have various projects, whether around the house, starting a journal, sketching, painting, or fill-in-the-blank we’ve wanted to get to for a long time? Now you have the time.
How many of us feel we haven’t engaged enough with family in a meaningful way because we’re too busy with other things? Now you have time for that also.
One way (some would say it’s the best way) to deal with an obstacle in life is to go through it, meaning adapt to it and creatively deal with it. Skirting around it does nothing but give it a chance to do its finest obstacleness later. Trying to run headfirst into it without a plan or thinking it’s fake news or hoax, is unfortunately the modus operandi of a certain ill-prepared political party. And we are witnessing that epic fail. By finding ways to defeat it through personal actions you control, by choosing to take advantage of what is available (in this argument that being ample time for x, y, or z), is how you can shift your thinking away from “it’s in my way and I give up,” or “It’s big and scary and I can’t do anything about it” and to seeing opportunities.
One quote found on that infrequent source of gems, Facebook, amplifies this change of thinking approach to what you can control:
Do not change your behavior to avoid being infected. Instead, assume you are infected and change your behavior to avoid transmission.
To spin it differently:
Don’t focus on the unknown timeline of when we’ll be able to resume normality, but instead look within to make the best use of daily opportunities sheltered time provides.
