Post Covid Reflection

Unlike everyone else who was bemoaning lockdown, not being able to get out, do things, see people, etc., I was actually happy in my solitude. I had my kids at home at the start, but aside from them, I was content, ridding myself of the extreme burnout symptoms and finding ways to mentally heal.

I hear soooooo many people bitching and moaning about how bad covid was, how much they hated it, how much they were missing out on and on and on and on. I realize that a majority of people literally have no way to exist with just themselves and their inner circle. That most people don’t sit with themselves and spend time actually listening to their inner dialogue, or, maybe never having heard it to begin with. I get that those long periods of time where you have to spend time alone can be painful for people, but it just seems like so many people missed a great opportunity to work on themselves, become better and overcome their personal hurdles.

Now I’m not talking about those whose problems originate from someone else. I understand that for some, lockdown was a horror show as they were locked in with their abusers, their tormentors, the people who have made their lives the absolute worst. I am not talking about those people. Those are real problems that so many had to deal with and believe me, my heart aches for everyone who had that situation.

I’m talking about the extroverts at the office who live for “office culture” because it fulfills their energy needs, allows them to become energy vampires through gossip, idle chitchat and nosing into other people’s business. People who can’t go 5 minutes without interacting with someone to stop the inner dialogue from happening because they fear what their brain will want to talk about. People who have never learned how to self-entertain when bored and must rely on others for their entertainment source.

Even though as the time progressed and I got further and further into my nihilism, I think that was still good for me. It helped me explore some of the depths of myself, some of the darker parts that I might not have been willing to process out of worry at how the end of that tunnel would turn out. The processing however did help me a great deal in understanding what my feelings are about my life, what I won’t seriously ever contemplate and that I’m here for the long haul, for better or worse for everyone else because I’m 100% okay with that. Then I started my B12 and so it only went up from there!

For me, though, the Time of Covid was good. I took the time to do some things I had really wanted to do. I became a certified life coach, I became a certified hypnotherapist, I learned how to create effective meditations, I learned how to improve my emotional IQ. I was able to put the stress of every day living behind me, enjoy my quiet time, crochet and create. I may not have filled my time always, but I also took time to enjoy the smaller moments. Walking on my deck among the new plants from spring. Enjoying the time with my cat who has become a vital companion. Experimenting with recipes and cooking things that were good, nutritious and good tasting. Taking time to live like people lived before we had things like an 8 hour a day/ 40 hours a week job that sucked up all our time. I got to put priorities on the things that were important to me. I was able to decrease my burnout in such an amazing way that honestly, I find I don’t want to do the “traditional” work. I want to do the things I like to do. I wish I had spent the time more focused on things that would benefit me now as I would have 4 years behind me, but it is what it is. I know my mindset during that time was not what it is today and I would have been exceptionally self-defeatist as I looked at the dumpster fire the nation had become and how horrible people are being to each other and how hopeless a lot of our situations really are in this country. (I mean…I still see the nation and people this way, and I honestly don’t believe there is going to be any sort of improvement and that things are just on the rapid spiral downwards to our own suffering, but at least now, I can still be hopeful about myself, my trajectory and my desires and screw the outside world.) After all, the only thing I can truly control in this world is myself, and I am going to try to control the things that bring me joy, happiness and fulfillment, despite the determination of everything else conspiring to make sure we fall into a chaotic hellscape.

I think about how things were before The Industrial Age, before there was a clock, or a comprehensive value of time. Where labor was so very different. People worked less, enjoyed more. Yes, I understand the concept of the extremist classism, indentured servants, tenants and such, but while they still worked, they also had their own lives. They weren’t always easy, but honestly, life now isn’t easy either, despite all our “advancements of civilization”. We now work twice as much as a human was ever meant to for less gains than ever. We don’t really have freedom because we are so priced out of a reasonable existence, we already are mostly indentured servants to our employers, slaving away for so little and getting even less time to be human beings. So I saw the lockdown as a sort of reset where maybe, we would regain some of our humanity and start changing society so we didn’t fall back into those patterns. That unfortunately isn’t what happened.

This all may not sound cheerful or even positive, but I think it is. For every negative thing happening in the nation, it pushes us either closer to taking immediate corrective action, however that may present itself, or towards simply giving in and letting these things happen. Since I can’t control either of those directions, I will do what I can to control myself and try to do my best to add my small light to the collective of those also trying to outshine the darkness looming.

So to all those complaining about how Covid was the absolute worst, mostly because they couldn’t socialize in the ways they prefer, that seems a small price to have paid in hopes that people bettered themselves, found better ways to exist and work towards those ways as opposed to just going back to what was that made no one but a very minute percentage of people happy. We aren’t in this life to make others happy. We are there to find what makes us happy and put that out in the world.

So many people seemed to have completely missed that point.