“ONWARD!”
Moving & Moving…
too fast?
This past spring, i moved apartments almost exactly the same time that i picked up a restaurant job a few days a week.
The new apartment is beyond lovely, and not solely for the fact that it’s free from any dark quarantine memories (but i’ll tell you—it sure doesn’t hurt). The restaurant job is the best situation a girl who doesn’t currently desire a restaurant job could hope for.
Long story short: this recent “post-pandemic” season saw me both starting a brand new chapter while also returning to a very old one.
Inevitably, some of the first questions i received from my carefree patrons were “oh, you must be so happy to be back to work.” I would smile, behind my mask, and reply “yes of course.” And it’s partially true; i’m both relieved and deeply heartened that restaurants are re-opening. I had never nor could ever imagine a world where restaurants weren’t a thing. So the return is wonderful. But just because i hadn’t been working in restaurants since the shutdown certainly doesn’t translate to meaning i had been “out of work”.
In fact, over the last year i think maybe i worked harder than any other in my entire life – for myself, on myself, and toward something that i’ve wanted for a really. long. time. Something that only the stopping of time, it would seem, could allow space for.
[Granted, my experience is coming from a very privileged place. I was fortunate enough to not lose any close family members or be significantly affected—other than financially, of course—by this rotten virus.
Still, I went through it too. The Point is that there were a lot of different experiences had over the course of 2020 and i think we would be remiss to forget them so quickly for the sake of “normalcy”.]
Then all of a sudden, it feels, the time we spent with ourselves & by ourselves trying to keep alive this person or this idea of what we want the world to be…has evaporated almost overnight. As quickly as this pandemic came to our door, it has been swept back out and better left forgotten.
But it happened! And it was a lot! And it’s not over!
Now, see me schedule in—nearly two weeks out—time to read, or to make myself a nice meal, or to have a phone date with friends whom i had gotten used to having multiple daily check-ins. It’s too much, too fast!
I heard somewhere that the time it took to get through 2020 performed like the equivalent of 5 years of uninterrupted focus/work/free time. Because a lot of us had the strange and unique opportunity to think outside of a routine. Nothing made sense. Everything felt scary and uncertain. And also…wide open, in a way I hadn’t felt since summer vacations of grade school.
What will happen to the people we learned to become?
Will we stay committed to supporting our favorite small businesses?
To eradicating social injustices? To the adorable quarantine puppies who now, like us, are nearing a more difficult life stage to navigate?
[ i don’t have the answers to these questions, partly because
only time will tell, but mostly because
i barely have time to ponder anything these days. ]
i hope you’re taking the time.
