Emptying Out

Yesterday was the kind of day that both nourished and drained me.  I had several conversations, by Google Hangout, by old-fashioned phone, and by Zoom, with friends, and these are folks whom I love dearly but rarely communicate with in this way.

It made me realize that while we may be through the acute phase of this new reality, the season of huge change isn't finished with us yet.

We all reported sleep issues during the acute phase.  Many of us worked in a hyperdrive mode.  Now we are settling in.

But I can see glimmers of new grimness on the way. I see reports of impending furloughs.  I see people who once thought their jobs were secure who are now seeing that they may not be.  Yesterday, our governor, the one who has been so slow to act, announced that Florida K-12 schools would not be returning to onground classrooms this school year.

I am also realizing how my life has changed, but it's been more of an emptying out than a retreat to my house.  I still go to the office, where far fewer people are working.  In part, that's because they're working from home, and in part, it's because we furloughed people and moved classes online meaning that we no longer employed non-Program faculty at the individual campus level.  I still go to church, but it's much more similar to our previous church than different--a far smaller in-person congregation, but we didn't have a huge congregation to begin with.

Yesterday was my first day in the pool.  It's been unseasonably warm.  It makes me worry about the hurricane season ahead.  But I'm trying to train myself to focus on the next hour or two, not the next month or season or year or decade.  It's not a practice that comes naturally to me.

As we write the history of this time, I hope historians capture all the ways this time has been different for each of us--and the wide variety of ways that difference made itself manifest.