Throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work as a consultant with various organizations. I’ve written grants for nonprofits and schools. I’ve given presentations and developed workshops for parents regarding how to be an active participants and advocate for their children’s education. And I worked closely with major, private foundations to identify high-quality schools. It seems as if every time I left a full-time job, I was asked to provide consulting services for another organization. As much as I loved consulting, it never felt permanent, regardless of the length of the contract. Even those contracts that were for multiple years felt temporary. I think it was because my daily routine was so different as a consultant. I worked from home, set my own hours, and had a few meetings during the day and workshops in the evening. And although it was a great life at the time, it was always in my head that at some point, the job would end, I would begin another full-time job, and my life would go back to being normal.
Many would say this last year has been heartbreaking, depressing, and paralyzing in almost every way. Our lives have been at a virtual stand-still for the last 12 months. We’ve stayed an abnormal amount of time in our homes, barely leaving to even go to the grocery store. We’ve had to cease visiting family and friends, traveling, and seeing our co-workers on a daily basis. We’ve completed our civic duty by voting in the presidential election in record numbers, although some still want to claim it as an illegitimate election. On top of that, we experienced death on a level I never imagined – due to the pandemic and videos on social media on repeat detailing the atrocities happening in our country from police brutality, rioters, and insurrectionists. All of this while so many have also lost jobs, lost businesses, lost homes, and are suffering food insecurity issues for the first time in their lives. It’s no wonder why so many of us are desperate for life to go back to normal.
With the distribution of the vaccine, I have heard more and more people now talking about life going back to normal. The excitement of being able to attend church, sports events, concerts, eat inside of restaurants, and travel makes some of us giddy with just the thought. We are already planning spring break and summer vacations, as well as our menus for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner with our extended families.
And yet, call me crazy, but I have begun feeling a little panicked about life inching back toward normal. Even through the heartache, some things about this year have also been liberating and I have come to realize that I need to figure out how to cling to those things in a vaccinated future – even when others expect me to move forward towards normal. It took a pandemic for many of us to realize we’re way overworked and have not valued the most important things in life.
Prior to the pandemic, I can’t imagine ever attending a meeting without make-up or my hair not curled and fluffed. I worked nonstop – always having my phone next to me to check for new emails and texts from colleagues. I made time for extended family when I could fit them in between work. Weekends were for catching up on my sleep or finishing work items that I wasn’t able to complete during the week. Friends share with me how their evenings and weekends were spent driving their kids from activity to activity and grabbing something to eat on the way to or from the activity. And we did this for years, thinking our lives were full and wonderful.
But what I have come to realize is that my life wasn’t full – it was busy, and I was tired. Having this year where I was forced to slow down, I was able to have a more balanced life. I was able to gain an appreciation for a more relaxed way of living. Not only professionally, but personally. Working from home allowed me to schedule my time so that I worked only during the day, leaving my evenings and weekends to talk to family and friends and watch television shows and movies I always told myself I didn’t have time to watch. Not having a day inundated with driving from meeting to meeting or program site to program site allowed me consistent “office time” to complete grants, emails, and phone calls. I also found a renewed appreciation for the “natural” look. Due to the pandemic, many of us weren’t able to regularly cut or color our hair and although I’m sure I looked very blah, I found I didn’t mind. I was able to be my authentic self and know people were listening to my voice, not looking at my clothes or hair.
But now…now that life after the vaccine has arrived, I have found myself and my schedule slowly going back to what it was pre-pandemic. Although I am still working from home, with more places opening, my schedule is now full again. In fact, I am working more – out during the day in meetings and program sites, then working on emails, grants, and paperwork in the evening. There are positive aspects to working from home, however, because you are home, you seem to never be “off” from work. It becomes even easier to pick up a laptop or phone to work.
In this post-vaccine era, in order to not make the same mistakes as before, we have to choose to do things differently. I don’t want to work nonstop every day. I don’t want to spend my weekends sleeping or continuing to work. I don’t want to wear blazers to work. I want to talk to family and friends as much as possible and do fun activities with them and travel with them. There will always be something we need to do, but we can’t lose sight of what’s important. And we can’t forget the feeling of this last year. The feeling of the missed touch or missed hug. The feeling of joy as you sat at the kitchen table with your children eating dinner together or playing board games. The feeling as you watched (or created) silly videos with your children or family members. The feeling of cooking that perfect meal and sitting down to leisurely eat it. The feeling of falling asleep at night knowing your family is safe.
The phrase “back to normal” is overrated. If normal means over-worked and over-committed, I want no part of it. In many ways, if we allow it, this last year can be a gift. A reminder of what and who is important. A time in our lives when we were able to slow down and actually hear what was happening to our fellow brothers and sisters. We were able to hear the suffering and the pain. And hopefully, we were changed by it. We can choose to go back to normal or choose to do things differently. Choose wisely.