0120
After 119 straight days of writing, the count has officially been broken. Although I arguably had the most downtime this week, I couldnt get my thoughts correctly consolidated and placed on here. So the below is an entire weeks worth.
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I don’t need to reiterate how strange of a week March 7 - 13th was. It may have been the most interesting week and or time to be alive… ever. That shouldn’t go understated.
And I won’t recap all that has happened with the coronavirus and events (or non-events) that had to revisit their daily schedules to mitigate the virus spread, but it is an astronomical amount that we all watched unfold in front of our eyes.
We’re in the midst of something that will go down in the history books and in our minds - similar to 9/11 except on a global scale versus concentrated in one city.
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I’m normally the one to go against the grain, to do spontaneous things, to zag when everyone else is zigging. But not this week. I was wrong.
I’ve taken an extremely conservative route to adjust my daily schedule and what I am doing with my time because of the current events.
To give an example - I told my boss at my painting job that I will no longer be teaching classes until they figure out the situation. Now, the studio is not canceled and they are still hosting events. This puts me at a predicament because they are totally in their right to fire me. But I personally cannot support something that is enabling the situation to become worse, versus trying to do my little part and stay put and attempt to not spread anything.
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The challenge with all of that is going on, is that its negativity is massively overshadowing the bits of positivity we can take from this. I thought it would be interesting to take a look:
Many of us have been told to work from home. Many of us just 1 month ago would have loved to work from home - but because we are now forced to or it’s implied that we need to, we don’t like it. We feel isolated, we feel out of control.
To further that, we don’t like breaking routine. We’re creatures of habit. But I challenge everyone to think of it in a different perspective - we should (from time to time) walk through a different door, take a different route to work, sit next to a stranger - embrace being uncomfortable and the unknown. Because when you find yourself in situations like we currently are in, it will impact us in a less dramatic way.
Down time. Maybe it’s just me, but if were being cautious in the current state, we theoretically should have more down time. I’m the type that hates to sit still and do nothing. As I enter the weekend and next week, I will have more free time then probably the last 6 months combined. The first response is to catch up on netflix - or scroll MORE social media. Please for the love of whatever you believe in don’t do those things. Take this time as an opportunity to reflect on yourself - more specifically on your goals and where you are in life. Are you happy where you are? I ask myself (a lot), if i died tomorrow, would I be happy? It should drive us to make more educated decisions on our day to day.
(Aside: a couple of years ago, a friend of mine told me him and his wife put together a “goals collage”. And they see this collage every morning when they wake up. It could be a picture of Bali, or a house, or a photo of themselves bowling. They are things and experiences that drive them to go WORK every dam day.)
What are you working for?
We are all overwhelmed by the amount of media coverage to the point it’s annoying us. But when else has the world come together like this? Usually over famous peoples deaths or a terrorist attack. To me this is a bit different, it’s providing education and information to keep us updated on a day to day to be safe. And yet we complain about it.
I’ve written about this before - but I normally don’t watch the news simply because of how negative it is. In a matter of 3 minutes youll hear about a tornado killing 14 people, a murder, a robbery, trains derailed, accidents, and the weather sucks. If you enjoy that - that is truly incredible. I prefer to start my day listening or watching something positive and believe that if we all did that we would actually have a better society.
With that being said, sharing news and updates shouldn’t be negative. Let’s reframe what we are sharing. For example: Instead of sharing that the president is shaking hands with everyone while giving a press conference and focusing on how unintelligent that may be, make a video about how youre greeting people with elbow bumps - lets make elbows cool again. We focus on the wrong things.
This is the time to understand how GOOD weve been living and how much we underappreciate the simple things. Whens the last time you thought about how awesome hugs are (OK for us bro’s out there, how cool dapping up and hugging is). Or how we don’t appreciate the luxury of simple home goods - - toilet paper. This whole no stores having toilet paper is banana land.
Maybe its my bubble that I live in, but I think society has been on this high horse for a long time (the past few years). Anything has been at our disposal. If you want to buy something, you go and buy it. I watch people spend money on the stupidest things (myself included like 200+ dollar shoes) and now that we cant even find toilet paper in stores, everyone is in a frenzy.
I’m not saying we have not been enjoying life. We have - travel was at a high point where were going on ski trips, more exotic places for vacations, going to more beaches, etc. But weve been taking the little things for granted and our current situation has grounded us a little bit; which is a good thing.
I believe we will become better. Everytime something catastrophic happens we learn and adopt. We evaluate where we could have prevented something and make changes to attempt to avoid that scenario again in the future. We’ve learned so much in the past week even (here in the states) about our habits and what we do subconsciously.
For example one thing I’ve recognized is how much I touch my face - thanks social media for pointing that out. Like at least 100 times a day. And now I’ve been catching myself and trying to change that habit. Maybe it connects to the spread of germs, etc, maybe it doesnt - but it’s unnecessary and I can learn from this.
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I’m fully embracing the hysteria and am adopting alot of self isolation practices in the coming days / weeks. The best part is, I hope that I’m wrong. I hope it’s not as serious as I’m making it to be. But I would rather change my habits for a short time, to have long term success.
Hope everyone has a beautiful weekend.
