Life's Simplicity

Well, it seems like we all might be on day 5-billion of this lock down/quarantine thing. Which is good, because seriously you sitting at home are the hero's of this story. #stayhome and #plankthecurve are real "jobs" at the moment. It's not as though these jobs make us all feel like we're contributing at the moment, but when we look back at the stats and our contribution to it - "job" will be a word that comes to mind.

Chaos vs Simplicity.

It's most likely easier to find all the ways in which chaos rather than simplicity have found their way into your life at the moment. For example, you might be working from home, which comes with all of it's trials and tribulations from Zoom Meetings to tech that is glitchy and IT's who aren't always available. Then you may also have preschool or school age students to top off the fun of being at home and trying to get some work in. These little people require all the snacks in the world to survive (#covidsnacks it's probably trending!), they require your help on Google Classroom (#imnotateacher also probably trending!), and of course you'll need to fill their day when they aren't in "school" with something other than screen time (#momascruisedirector should be trending!) Finally, if you have teens, take a knee mom, this is going to be one long (#imnotevensuretheresahashtagforthat sorry!)

Simplicity for the Win.

OK, let's just be serious for a moment. The world is broken. There's a #PANDEMIC and all bets are off for normalcy. So those screen time rules that we all had once, well those were nice, but let's be real. Today is a new day. Today we get to choose our sanity over fighting with our young little ones. I know that my sanity is directly related to the rest of the family's sanity - so if I choose to go down the path of MOST PAINFUL resistence, I'll loose my supporters. But if I choose my own sanity, every single one of my family wins including me.

Here's another thing. Your normal days will return, when and how are not our concern right now. Life will return to normal. Figuring out how to return to normal might be just a difficult as finding a path to this temporary period between our old and new lives. Here's what we know for fact: our old lives revolved around our routines. Routines in essence provided us with predictable days that began with waking and ended in sleeping. Our routines were things we relied upon. We also relied upon the calendars and schedules we held near and dear to our hearts because they helped us to remember the gazillion things that were constantly swimming in our heads, on top of the several meetings, appointments and extra curriculars. We had so many things going on, we relied on our repetitive routines and our easy-reference calendars for our stability (and, if you were me, so our collective crazy wouldn't show too much!)

So now that we're in "limbo-land" why can't we simplify with routines and schedules and all the things that pre-covid made us who we were? Predictability in a very frightening, unpredictable time - yes, we could all use a shot of that.

Simplified Routines.

Here's some tips on simplifying your life by creating predictable routines that don't eat up all of your remaining bits of sanity:

1. Think small. You do not have to schedule every single waking moment for your children. I think it's good to say that your kids were fine before covid, and they will be just fine after covid - and quite frankly getting through covid is a experience most of us adults wished we already had in our repertoires. Unstructured time is ok. Your kids will be ok finding things to do to occupy their time. Make a fort. Paint the recycling. Make friendship bracelets and origami. Use the untouched toys that they were too busy prior to covid to actually play with. Yes, they are going to be fine. If you make a plan to do one thing each day or simplify it to lengthy blocks of time where your kids can do certain things during those blocks, you've won the day. Truly it can be that simple.

2. Screen-time is ok. The day has 24 hours in it. 9-10 of those hours are sleeping. Let's give another 3 hours to eating. You're left with 11 hours of the day in which you are expected to entertain your children and follow up on the demands of your job. Let's go back up a few paragraphs where I laid out there is a #PANDEMIC going on. Screen-time has always been a lifesaver. Pop some popcorn, sit down and relax in front of a movie with your kid. What other time in life are you afforded the time to do that. If you're doing it too, you can't feel that bad about it. And if you have to work, screen's are the new Mary Poppin's-Nanny McPhee hybrid that you've always dreamed about anyways. Take a load off of your high expectations, come down to earth where the world crisis is happening and breathe. It's going to be ok.

3. Don't fret if it doesn't get done. School has less than 2 months to go. Some school boards have already called it off for the rest of the year. We don't know what will happen and I don't have a crystal ball, so I couldn't say. But what I do know is that if you are not a #homeschool mom, you don't have to be now either. No matter the pressures put upon you about school, you do not have to do it. You can pull the plug on that today if you need permission. Life is already tough add dodging covid and having just a few hundred square feet in which to retreat to be alone - you don't have to. Take the pressure off of yourself. Your kids are like all the other kids - they are also going through a world crisis pandemic. Teacher's are aware of this. Teacher's know how they will transition students back into their classroom's when the time is right. For now though, being the teacher-principal combination you've always wanted to be - you choose when to end the school year or how much work to assign your "students" to make it a healthy environment for all. If school is over for you, it's over. Don't even worry about it.

4. Put hard stuff first. Get it over with. Like ripping off a bandaid - get it done first. Then you have all day to play around. You can also feel like you've accomplished something. If you have decided to remove school from your daily to-do's - make the hardest things the kids have to do first thing in the morning, like chores or exercise. This way it's over early in the day and isn't dreaded to happen later on.

5. Schedule "Me-Time." This might be the most crucial part of the day. Get up earlier if you need to get it done, but do take the time to do this. If you can make sure you take the time in your schedule for reading, learning and writing for your own self - outside of work demands, then you are taking time to breath without anyone else around. It's the way you'll get through this.

The Unprecedented Paradigm Shift.

At the end of all of this, you need to know you are in charge of your life. You choose what your children should focus on and what you focus on. If it's living life in this chaotic time without stress, then live without stress. If it's scheduling out every single moment of the day for your child and it doesn't cause a lot of discourse in your family, the schedule away. You choose. You always choose. You are in the drivers seat. This is the in-between phase of a paradigm shift - we don't always witness them, but when we do we should breath into it and listen to our intuition. Between the Spanish Flu and Covid-19 there's almost 100 years, life will return to normal and your life between now and then can be exactly what you want it to be. If predictable routines help you with the world's shift start small and add more as things progress.

Extra Love, where Love needs to go!

If you are an individual on the front-lines of our community, the world thanks you. You are true hero's. You feed us, save us, and give so much of yourself in this time of great stress. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If we could hug you, we would.

#stayhome #staysafe #bewell

Heather xo