Member-only story
How I’m Handling the Pandemic
Spoiler alert: Not well.
2020. What a year.
I thought I was doing ok with everything. After all, I work from home. There have been no major changes to my work or daily routine, other than having my kid at home all day. But even that hasn’t been a huge adjustment, as he’s a teenager and spends a lot of time talking to and playing games with his friends online.
When this all started for us in March and my son had to begin remote learning for the rest of his school year and we started shutting things down, I was prepared. I had been paying attention. And although I didn’t resort to hoarding toilet paper, I did stock up on pantry staples, just in case. I viewed it as no different than when I lived in Florida and used to do an annual check to make sure we had what we needed in case of a hurricane. I thought, “no biggie; we’ll ride it out, and it will be over by summer.”
Back then, I was reading the news every day, obsessed with finding out all of the new information. That went on through the end of April.
And then.
Then, I realized just how much this was affecting me. I was becoming depressed. Sad that this was happening. Sad that life wasn’t “normal” any more. Sad that we didn’t know what was going to happen. Sad that there was so much conflicting information being…
