Part 1 post can be found here.
In retrospect, I’m wondering why it took me most of a month to figure out my Shelter in Place routine.
Thinking back, I recall the initial chaos of a world turned upside down. Tatyana, Jennifer, and I made the decision to close Sarana on March 17th, the first day of the Shelter-in-Place order. Before that, we thought that, as a health clinic, we might be exempt from the order. But as the severity of CoVid19 became apparent, the necessity of closing became obvious. We spent our first week in a flurry of canceling appointments, putting staff on furlough, doing the last of the laundry, making changes to Sarana’s website, and a myriad of similar details.
image by Kyle Cottrell via Unsplash
Week 2 was rest-and-recuperation from week 1 and the start of facing “staycation” as the new normal. I learned what I could and couldn’t do and explored substitutions for my usual activities. I created online accounts and experienced my first Zoom chat, borrowed my first e-book from the library, attempted jogging for the first time since high school, and signed up for a couple of online courses. By weeks 3 and 4, I was getting used to new routines and working around the schedules of the people who share my household.
Thinking again, I’m amazed at how fast I’ve managed to create a routine even while the new normal keeps changing: masks no, then yes; parks open or maybe closed; re-opening dates that keep moving forward; and ever-changing images of what re-opening may look like.
But despite the real hardship that this sudden turmoil creates, I choose to see hope.
CoVid19 has shown us that our world can change – dramatically and near-instantaneously – given sufficient incentive. I’ve often thought that our ability to solve problems has been limited both by a lack of imagination and a lack of belief in the possibility of change. CoVid19 can be a reminder of what we are capable of as we forge our future.
May our shelter-in-place time be not only a time of loss, when life-as-we-knew-it evaporated, but also an opportunity to jettison some things in order to focus on others. But selecting what to toss and what to create: that is the challenge.
Stay well,
~ Pam Chang, 24 April 2020