How This Pandemic Rearranged My Life and Confirmed My Beliefs

Keep living and loving to your fullest potential.

We are near the end of the lockdown. Gyms, restaurants, and movie theaters open up to limited capacity, and my bikini waxing place and hair salon recently texted me with their new limited hours of operation.

We are aware of a post COVID life on the horizon…the same, only slightly altered with restrictions and masks. My state requires one where masks in public, although, if this requirement weren’t a requirement I would still wear one.

Was it just a bad dream?

Somedays, I wonder.

My mood ranges from fear the pandemic will never end; I’ll get sick and die from it, to “fuck this, I need to get out and eat at an actual restaurant,” while throwing off my mask.

Then I open the frig and see what scant ingredients I have that I can throw together for dinner.

Life is strolling on the streets again. Traffic on the freeways. Drivers in cars annoyed as they whiz by honking their horns, warning you to get out of the way. The going is slow, a little unsure as we navigate the highways and drive on roads we haven’t traveled on in months.

No, it wasn’t a dream, it was a shit reality leaving behind in its wake unbelievable death tolls. And still it threatens and kills.

We learned a few things about ourselves or relearned the essentials we were already aware of; the pandemic just made them harder to ignore.

Here are some takeaways.

Family is important

Trevor Noah said it best when he tweeted quarantine is like “relationship boot camp.”

There is nothing like a lockdown with your loved ones to show you what your relationships are made of, and how they can improve. People in your inner circle often hold up a mirror and show you who you are. This is especially true when you are locked at home with nowhere to go except CVS and the grocery store.

If you didn’t know what your problems were in your relationship before a pandemic, when you had work to run to or the gym to hide in, you sure know now.

Being stuck at home with family, and friends — I chose to quarantine with — reinforced my beliefs that close relationships are essential to my well-being and my life.

Without them, I’m nowhere.

I like who I was stuck with; spending even more time together confirmed my belief that the effort I put into having connected relationships with my family and friends is one of most important things I do with my time.

The quality of your intimate relationships determines the quality of your life. — Esther Perel

Happiness is determined not by money, but by who you spend your time with.

I’ve been social distancing my whole life

Right before COVID, I finally got around to taking the Myers-Briggs personality test. My partner took it and wanted to know what mine could add to his knowledge of me. Flattered, he was curious, I took the test.

I never felt the need to take the test because I knew what it would tell me, I’m a big-time introvert, committed to that aspect of my personality 100%. I took the test, and it confirmed what I know — I’m a big time introvert and observer.

I like alone time — a lot of it.

If I do not get enough of it, I tend to get grumpy with those brave enough to stand me.

The last couple of months reinforced the knowledge that if I don’t a good amount of alone time to write, read, and think; I’m unpleasant to be around.

It also confirmed something I wasn’t fully aware of, along with my need for huge amounts of time by myself, I need time to socialize a few times a week with my close friends, or I’m not happy either.

We don’t need a lot of acquaintances to fill our time or people around us who we kind of like, or worse, people around us who drag us down, aka, energy suckers. The negative.

The people I spend time with, I regard highly.

COVID made me realize that I rely on my time with my few close friends for coffee, movies, dinners, walks, conversations, hikes.

I’m a social creature, after all. We all are. We need each other.

Being outside is essential

My gym is the mountains surrounding my neighborhood. They were the last thing to shut down. When the mayor of the town I live in finally closed the trails in the mountains surrounding my city, it was a punch in the gut. The only thing that put me over the edge for a bit was this.

Being outside makes me feel alive.

Hiking, walking down the sidewalk in my neighborhood, walking my dogs feeds my soul, and my soul needs to be fed daily.

Being in nature is therapeutic and meditative. Being outside is where I’m able to take in the deepest breath into my lungs. There is no need to look down at my phone when there are interesting things to see all around me.

Putting one foot in front of the other is reflective, just as writing is for me. I get some of my best writing ideas while I’m walking and hiking through the hills.

I don’t worry about anything, I feel relaxed and at peace.

Don’t inundate yourself with news

Most news outlets peddle fear. It is addicting. It helps to be informed, but you don’t have to be consumed to a point of exhaustion.

You can pick up a paper to read for information, but you do not need to inundated 24/7 with cable news in the background. It is not healthy for your mental state to hear news all day.

An abundance of news — news on the TV is mostly negative — will affect your perspective, increase your anxiety, and potentially disrupt your sleep, setting you up for even more stress the following day after a restless night and lack of restorative sleep.

COVID put an end to my Rachel Maddow habit and my Trevor Noah addiction — which was hard because he looked exceptionally handsome unshaven during his Social Distancing Show. I limited Facebook and just hung out with my family watching classics like Jaws, Saturday Night Fever, Tootsie, and all nine seasons of Seinfeld.

By reducing the number of hours you spend listening to and watching the news, you reduce your anxiety significantly. This is more challenging now because of the internet and social media feeds.

Checking the news for some has become an hourly task; logging on to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter will expose you to the latest headlines, whether you want to see them or not. Be aware of this when considering logging on.

Here Time.com writes,

“The way that news is presented and the way that we access news has changed significantly over the last 15 to 20 years,” says Graham Davey, a professor emeritus of psychology at Sussex University in the UK and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Experimental Psychopathology. “These changes have often been detrimental to general mental health.”

The need for routine

Quarantining with my child and partner, threw off my routine. My exercise, writing, and life all got out of whack, confirming my belief that habits and routines are essential to getting what we want accomplished, accomplished.

I’ve been fine-tuning and perfecting my routine and what works best for me and my life for years. I’ve firmly established my habits, which allow me to get as much completed as I can.

Productivity is off without routine and habits.

Writers, entrepreneurs, gig workers, online business owners, we work by routine. We have our sleep routine, morning routine, exercise routine, writing routine, this all feeds our work and our lives.

My morning routine drives my writing routine.

When my workout routine is off schedule, I don’t write as well; I’m not as confident without my exercise routine. I need confidence in myself to write well. When I don’t write as well, my productivity declines. My morning routine starts the night before with my nighttime routine; they all propel my output and creativity.

It is a cycle of habits that affect the next pattern and so on, making my day and my life work.

When I get my essential tasks — like writing — finished in the first half of my day, it drives the second half of my day and my life toward my goals.

My life works because of my routines.

Nothing made this more evident than an interruption in routine because of the pandemic.

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Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering Type A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.