How many hats?

From the moment that I commit to getting out of bed, I juggle the roles of self, parent to my four-footed crew, neighbor, friend, colleague, consultant/vendor, consumer, middle-aging woman, community member, board member, member of professional organizations, author, coach, domestic worker, family member, mentor, volunteer — and the list goes on.

Do you find yourself switching between multiple roles all day long? If so, how does that make you feel?

Pre-pandemic, we used to segment our work lives from our home lives, and our working relationships from our personal relationships. Colleagues and clients would tell me how they used the drive home to let go of one world and prepare themselves for the next; and how important it was to decompress.

Where is the decompressing time now?

How is it different for you when there is little separation?

Pre-pandemic, a percentage of us worked from home and travelled to our clients, and occasionally the office. The difference between then and now is that during this pandemic we don’t even travel to our job sites.

How is the lack of geographic variety affecting you?

Have you come up with any solutions for managing the workspace in the home space?

Have you established boundaries for the time you start and stop working?

With the continued development of technology, the significance of office hours has been fading. We have been able to call, email, or text from our phone from any location at any hour of the day. The pandemic has simply amplified the blending of our worlds and erased many boundaries.

However, “All work and no play….” Finish the cliché for yourself.

Every day, in the late afternoon, I run out of speed. I have been switching the metaphorical gears in my head, and my mind is tired. My shoulders and neck ache from sitting at the laptop too long. If I risk laying down for a nap, I find myself asleep until dinner time.

As we advance towards spring, the lengthening of the daylight helps keep my energy up and my napping down.

I try to break up my activities with sitting and moving, blending work-work and domestic-work to change up my routine. My best time to focus is in the morning so I always do the hardest thing first. Like everyone, I never know what interruptions will drop onto my plate of responsibilities at any time of the day. So, if I have procrastinated something important, the risk is that it will be edged out by new ‘upwardly leaping monkeys.’ And I seem to have more monkeys than ever.

I wonder how it will be different when we are all vaccinated. What habits will I keep and what to former norms will I revert?

The day is too full to spend too much time thinking about what might be in the future. If I have learned anything from this pandemic experience, it is to let the next phase appear and take form in its own time. This collective event of our lives is not to be rushed or controlled. I just have to have the confidence that I can flex to whatever comes next and that I will discover something new about myself.

What thoughts and feelings are bubbling up for you?

Do you have any new awareness or observations about our Pandemic Life that you would like to share?

A symptom of my gears showing their wear is that I totally missed something on my schedule today. It fell off my radar and I was blissfully unaware until I wasn’t.

Has this happened to you during the pandemic?

As the weather warms and we start to advance towards heard immunity, each of us needs to take a desperately needed vacation. A time to break away. To rest your mind. To switch up the activities. To visit with loved ones. To do nothing or something very different from what you have been doing for months. There is going to be a crush of vacation requests in your organizations. Consider getting a jump on the need and proactively start the schedule, so that everyone gets some respite.

Where will you be going?

Leslie

One of the challenges of wearing so many hats
is that I love each and every one of them!

— Andrea Davis Pinkney