We are living in a surreal time. The birds are singing, the trees and flowers are blooming and yet, life is anything but what we used to call normal.
Huge changes are in the wind, in ways that we hadn’t predicted as 2019 was coming to an end.
If You Had More Time, You Would…
Funny how we fool ourselves about the reasons we haven’t gotten around to doing some tasks.
Example: A person on Facebook wrote, “After years of wanting to thoroughly clean my house, but lacking the time, this week I learned that wasn’t the reason.”
I’m sure similar thoughts are conjured up in your mind.
Normal Routines
I’m retired but I still had a daily routine. I got up every weekday with my wife, had breakfast, saw her off to work and then poured myself another cup of coffee while watching a morning television news program.
Then I’d start my day.
The media I used consisted of streaming TV and streaming audio. Over-the-air radio was something I played in the car when I went shopping for food or supplies.
Then COVID-19 invaded everyone’s normal life.
Disrupted Routines
With my wife now out of work, we didn’t have a need to rise with an alarm. Watching the morning news with that second cup of coffee was now a memory. Going out for the daily food and supplies is now something done much less frequently. Streaming movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hoopla and YouTube now make up more of our day, as has Face-Timing with our kids and grandkids, as they too are all home now.
I can only imagine, how even more disrupted the lives of parents are, they now find themselves trying to work from home, plus home school their children.
New Normal
On average it takes a person over two months to form a new habit, 66-days to be exact. That’s the length of time, most of us, will be staying-at-home. What will we be like after that time?
Will we immediately make plans to dine out, go to shows, be in large crowds or will we cautiously proceed?
Will we maintain some of those new habits, never to fully return to the way things used to be?
Will we begin to maintain a basic stockpile of necessities, like toilet tissue, to be sure we never find ourselves looking at bare store shelves when we’ve run out?
Will we find that saving more money in our bank accounts is prudent for times when we may find ourselves out-of-work again?
Will the new media choices we’ve found during our time of forced hibernation become the ones we now depend on in our daily lives?
How Has Your Life Been Changed by COVID-19?
In the comments section of today’s blog, I hope you will share your COVID-19 stories about how your lives have been changed by this virus. How you are adapting and how you are surviving. Maybe there’s something you’re doing we might all enjoy doing as well.
We’re all in this together.
Stay safe, stay home.
DickTaylorBlog 
I have discovered curbside pickup of grocery shopping for a $5.00 fee. This does take some planning ahead as the slots fill quickly a week in advance. Since I can not attend my yoga classes I have found “Yoga with Adrienne” on YouTube. Deepak and Oprah are offering 21 days of free meditation, reflection, and journaling. Jimmy Fallen and Tina Fey demonstrated a distance game using an Alexa that is silly and fun. I am in the process of planning a mosaic project. I have not started that. I am still researching and can get off on tangents online. But I figure i have time to be less focused and can just go where it takes me. This situation has changed my sleep patterns. I have been staying up later, but still rising early. I find myself in need of a short siesta (which I so much enjoy) most afternoons.
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Hi Bette, Thank You for sharing what you’re doing during this stay at home phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
You’ve shared things I wasn’t aware of and will be looking into.
I hope others benefit from all your great ideas.
-DT
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I’ve been working from home for almost two years now. Basically got downsized with the option of commuting to the head office 50 miles away, or writing radio spots from home, on a contract basis. Choose the latter (and looking for more writing gigs).
So in terms of my work routine, no change at all. I live alone so that’s the same as wel. Just me and my cockatiel, Ringo.
What I miss is going to my local sports bar at the end of the day. It wasn’t quite Cheers but many knew my name and I made some new friends among the regulars.
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John, I hear ya. I’ve been working from home, writing this blog and other articles for magazines since I retired in 2017. What my wife and I enjoy is traveling and dining out at new restaurants we find. Both are now on hiatus. Even something as simple as my daily trips to the market for fresh food items for that evening’s dinner has been curtailed to ordering what we need for about two weeks and then driving to the market to have those groceries delivered to the car. We do that mainly because when we go into the market, the things we wanted are usually not there. You have to plan ahead and it usually takes about a week before you can go and pick it up, but that’s our new reality.
Thanks for sharing yours.
-DT
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Thanks, Dick. I’ve also been supporting the local eateries that are still doing takeout. Picked up a few items at the dollar store…plenty of liquid soap on their shelves…and there’s a Mediterranean restaurant in the same plaza so I got a chicken shawarma wrap and salad for dinner.
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Thank You for sharing. -DT
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I’m still at the radio station every day. My nephew and I are cooking at home a lot. (Fortunately, our pantry and fridge are full). But, I could work from home if I needed to.
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It seems to me that to be most effective in serving the community, radio people should be reporting for work (as First Responders) because that’s where all of the listeners would call in and where all the news sources are located.
I could see, going forward, that in addition to radio air people having their own headphones, they might be bringing in their own microphones and/or windscreens to prevent the transmission of germs from person to person.
-DT
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