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I remember saying to my husband right before the shutdown happened in early March, “I feel like my life is just on this train that’s moving so fast, and that I have no control over right now.” My life was moving incredibly fast. I work during the day. I’m a live performer at night. I’m very social, and have lots of friends I want to make time for. I didn’t even have enough time to see them nearly as much as I wanted, but I’d squeeze social interactions into the limited free time I had. My life was beginning to feel like a montage scene from one of those Groundhog Day-esque movies, where you just see the main character hit the button on the alarm clock, get up, fast forward through the day, and be back in bed before you know it. In some ways, I was grateful for the busy nature of my life because it meant that things were going well for me. I was lucky to have as many performance gigs as I had. I was lucky to have as many friends as I had. But I also felt like everything was passing me by – like I wasn’t even able to cherish any moment because all of my moments were just so damn busy. “I wonder how or if I’ll ever get more time back,” I said to my husband. Little did I know that around the corner crept a pandemic that would cause the entire world to shut down. Be careful what you wish for, right? After the initial fear and depression calmed down, I did see something great happen: I got my work-life balance back.
We aren’t always rushing
We were always in a hurry before. I always knew exactly what time it was – I had to, because my life was scheduled down to the 20-minute-increment. I packed so much into each day, that running even the tiniest bit late would mess up everything, or mean I missed some things entirely. I felt like I could hear loud clocks ticking around me everywhere constantly. Now…I rarely know what time it is.
