Anyone else been feeling just plain exhausted?
For a year now, we’ve been dealing with a lot.
Wearing masks everywhere. Canceled events. Avoiding human contact. Zoom fatigue. Ugly politics.
If you’ve been lucky throughout this pandemic, that’s been about the worst of it.
However we’ve been experiencing it though, we’re all feeling the effects.
If you’re like me, you took on even more in recent months. To try and help out; to try and fill the “extra” time with distraction; maybe just to feel as productive as possible. After all, it’s a thing you can control, unlike so much of everything else going on. But while it initially seemed like I was “doing less” by removing travel, and time spent with other people, there really was no extra time.
So it turns out that while it was a nice idea to keep on adding to our to-do lists, at a point it becomes counterproductive and we risk burnout. We were already overwhelmed by this new and unknown situation. Many of the fun things that helped us recharge had to go altogether. Yet we gave ourselves more stimulus, more responsibilities.
You won’t find many people claiming that they had a fantastic 2020. What we can claim with surety however, is that we all learned so much, and came through stronger for the experience.
Now, let’s try adjusting our expectations and giving ourselves a better chance for success.
Take care of yourself, whatever that means for you. Give yourself permission to do more of what you want to be doing, and not what you think you should be, even if that means just getting some rest. Hustling towards our goals is fantastic, but some of us may need to slow down right now. Despite my plans, I didn’t learn another language during quarantine, pick up a side gig, or ever bake the sourdough I started months ago. Maybe you didn’t either. That’s okay.
This may seem a little belated, considering that we’re now a full 12 months into the pandemic. Like the ice storm still lingering in our minds giving way to warm spring weather, we’re starting to see the light at the end of this tunnel. But there are no rules or timeline to this for anyone; we all cope and restore differently. The important thing is that we do so, together.
The world still isn’t clear on exactly when life may look ‘normal’ again. But there’s no time like the present to begin healing, and bringing ourselves back to a place where we can feel more at ease. I, for one, am feeling optimistic for what’s to come.
