You know, the most surprising setback for me in this whole COVID-19, quarantine, unemployment, social unrest fiasco is my lack of discipline.
I used to think of myself as incredibly focused and hard-working. And for years I felt I had lost it, but this quarantine really brought that problem out into the light. My motivation seemed to dwindle by the day. I didn’t want to work out, I didn’t want to get ready for the day, I didn’t want to write, I didn’t want to edit photos, I didn’t even want to sing. Okay, I still wanted to sing haha, but not the exercises!
And honestly, I’m seeing it as a huge blessing. Because if I didn’t have this opportunity for it to be this noticeable, I maybe would have never realized how complacent I had become. Or, at least, it may have taken much longer to realize I was wasting my life by being a little too comfortable. And that’s a good thing. Comfort and contentment is a huge step up from the trenches of grief I had previously been sitting in. This feels like a lovely moment to realize I am starting to truly move forward again.
In finally realizing my momentum is gone, I can now begin to reclaim it.
I know we all must still try to remember to give ourselves time and grace during quarantine. But it certainly has lasted longer than we all expected. Don’t get me wrong, the current weightiness of the world still looms, still gives me an extra dose of grief for things I never thought I would have to miss. Or things I never thought I even WOULD miss if it was suddenly gone. There is still opportunity, though. There is still time and ideas floating through the air around us, just waiting to be snatched up. In the absence of the things that usually fill up our days, perhaps there’s room for new things to flood in. We simply have to have the mindfulness to try to choose which things we allow to claim that space.
So I’m going to start reaching out for those ideas again. And grabbing hold with more strength than I’ve had in the almost five years since mom died. Hell, the seven years since she got sick. When you’re at the bottom, I guess there really is nowhere else to go but up.