From Living Our Best Lives to Hoping to Live

Like everybody else, the pandemic is "top of mind" 24 x 7 for me. I'm writing to help myself not internalize all of it. You can find other posts in the series at https://odonnellweb.com/pelican/tag/coronavirus.html

As I was laying in bed this morning procrastinating getting up (it’s not like I have anywhere to go!) I was thinking about how much life had changed this year, uh, month, um maybe week. I started the year looking at having maybe my best personal income year ever. Michelle worked for a school, so she had the summer off, and we had big plans for taking advantage of the fact that I can work from pretty much anywhere. We had a Puerto Rico trip booked for Spring Break, beach weekends booked for Memorial Day and July 4, a grad school commencement, and plans for extended visits to Boston and Atlanta over the summer.

Today, the Puerto Rico trip is canceled, the Memorial Day trip is likely a no-go for sure, commencement ceremonies at every college will likely be canceled, and the Boston work conference that I was planning that trip around is canceled. Michelle is unemployed, we are on social distancing lockdown, and instead of dreaming of a summer laying on the beach I’m just hoping we are still alive when the pandemic finally runs its course.

We’ve gone from living our best life to hoping to live.

I liked living our best lives better, but I’ll make do no matter how long it takes in the interest of keeping my family safe and not contributing to the problem by being a vector to spread the disease. Puerto Rico will still be there next year.

If you aren’t doing the same I am judging you.