Public service announcement: Stress eating is a coping mechanism. It is not morally bad. It does not mean you are “out of control” or weak-willed. It does not make you a bad or lazy or sloppy person. We all need coping mechanisms over the next while, and stress eating is just one of them.
Coping mechanisms can be more or less effective and have different pros and cons. If stress eating isn’t helping you feel calmer or has cons you don’t like (like giving you indigestion) then expand your coping mechanism toolbox—try dancing, a vigorous workout, journaling, tv, venting to a loved one, etc etc. (There are lots of suggestions circulating online right now.) But if you still want to stress eat that is fine.
Remember that you are not a bad person if you eat more (or less) than you usually would during this time. Or any time. The amount you eat has nothing to do with your worth as a human being. I hope everyone can let go of any shame they feel about needing coping mechanisms and creature comforts right now (and always). We are human beings and humans need these things. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Megan Dean is the Chauncey Truax Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Hamilton College, in central New York. Her current research focuses on ethical issues related to eating. She usually enjoys eating and considers that an achievement.
This post is late. Because I’m on coronavirus time.
This is a time zone that seems to hover above clock time, first-day-of-spring time, days of the week. My body is inhabiting some zone where my energy is fed and sapped by a kind of invisible anxiety — I have food, no one in my personal life is sick, I always work at home, so this shouldn’t be “that different.” But, everything IS different because we don’t know what to expect from moment to moment. And that is showing up for me as powerful, irresistible fatigue.
I’ve been coaching people throughout this week about how they’re navigating this time, and everyone is in a surreal space, in a tango between anxiety, loss of control, fear of scarcity, and knowing they have resources but having a hard time using them.
I’m the same — I have all the resources, for working at home, working out at home, connecting with people I care about, feeding the sense of community in the building I live in, friends close enough I can walk with and sustain social distancing norms. I have cats to cuddle. But I’m having a hard time *doing* anything. I haven’t touched Yoga with Adriene. I haven’t run since Wednesday and I had to force myself out. My art-making supplies are sitting out, untouched. Even though I’m usually pretty tidy, my vacuum has been in the middle of my living room for a week, there are little piles of laundry everywhere, my dishes fill my counter, and a new hallway rug sits rolled up on a bare floor. I am pretty good at “being with” what is happening — I can name it, I can navigate my scarcity fears — but I can’t seem to DO anything.
How are you managing? What’s making this surreal time manageable for you?
One thing that’s helping is making time dates to do things. I did a personal training session with the amazing Alex on Thursday, which helped. I have met a couple of friends for walks, touching elbows through our coats. I’m about to do one of the Amazing Alex’s online classes, and then meet Kim for a hike. Getting out of the inside of my head.
What about you? What is giving shape to your days? How are you finding grounding?
Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede, who is living in a kind of feral way in Toronto.
Hello, folks, and welcome to the latest in our lighter-side series from the Fit is a Feminist Issue archives. Today we explore the question, “why is there no hot yoga on Saturday nights?” Maybe there will be Zoom saturday evening yoga classes starting up soon. If so, you can say you heard it here first, from Samantha! Enjoy…
Almost 20 years ago, I attended a workshop on self-care for front line workers. It was not long after 9/11, an event in which I spent a lot of time helping people stay calm in the face of great uncertainty.
The workshop leader gave us all a great piece of advice. She said, remember the airplane directions: always put your own mask on first before helping others.
In these days of great social change, when upheaval is the new currency, when the lack of a routine or the imposition of a new one with working from home or coping with job loss seems like a burden you cannot attempt to carry, or when the social distance required for public safety has started to unravel the threads in your personal safety net, it can be really easy to forget your own needs.
I have struggled with making physical fitness a priority in the past. I found making a schedule, committing to training, and blocking out the time as fixed were strategies that helped me make it happen.
Part of that was fear that I couldn’t keep up, that I was too unfit or incapable of actually doing the moves required. Part of it was also the expendability of women’s time when there are already so many demands from other sources: child and/or pet care, home care, elder care, work priorities, community responsibilities etc.
It came home to me a couple of days ago that the impact of keeping away from people generally and minimizing social contact when carrying out essential errands also required me to focus on maintaining mental fitness.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the news in our communities, or from places around the world where we have family, friends and colleagues also facing similar fears, concerns and challenges. Over the past week, I have talked with friends and colleagues about managing the stress created by meeting the guidelines for protecting ourselves, our loved ones and our community from COVID-19.
We are not alone in this. In case though, you find asking for help challenging, especially when it comes to building up your mental wellness and fitness, I took a look to see what is out there to help.
The WHO has prepared a comprehensive document you can use to develop your own mental fitness plan. It outlines issues and options by category, from health workers on the front line and those in isolation to caregivers of people with dementia and elders. It has a list of guidelines for the general population:
Acknowledge the global scope and be empathetic to those directly affected
Minimize watching, reading or listening to news that causes you to feel anxious or distressed (set a specific time of time day to gather information so you can avoid a constant stream of data;
Seek information only from trusted sources to take practical steps to prepare your plans and protect yourself and loved ones
Protect yourself and be supportive of others. Assisting others in their time of need can benefit the person receiving support as well as the helper.
Find opportunities to amplify positive and hopeful stories and positive images
Acknowledge the role frontline carers play to save lives and keep your loved ones safe.
Separate what is in your control from what is not. There are things you can do, and it’s helpful to focus on those. Wash your hands. Remind others to wash theirs. Take your vitamins. Limit your consumption of news.
Do what helps you feel a sense of safety. This will be different for everyone, and it’s important not to compare yourself to others. Make sure you separate when you are isolating based on potential for sickness versus isolating because it’s part of depression.
Get outside in nature–even if you are avoiding crowds. Take a walk. (My note: Or if you don’t want to go far, sitting outside your door or next to an open window so you can feel the fresh air on your face and see sky, trees etc are always helpful.) Exercise also helps both your physical and mental health.
Challenge yourself to stay in the present. When you find yourself worrying about something that hasn’t happened, gently bring yourself back to the present moment. Notice the sights, sounds, tastes and other sensory experiences in your immediate moment and name them. Engaging in mindfulness activities is one way to help stay grounded when things feel beyond your control.
Stay connected and reach out if you need more support. Talk to trusted friends about what you are feeling. If you are feeling particularly anxious or if you are struggling with your mental health, it’s ok to reach out to a mental health professional for support. You don’t have to be alone with your worry and it can be comforting to share what you are experiencing with those trained to help.
This image offers some great things you can do as a reminder.
Image shows a poster with a number of coping strategies. Created by Carie Stephens Art, TheCounsellingTeacher.com
Some things I am doing now include:
jotting down key accomplishments in my diary (can be whatever it means to you — for some that could be getting washed and dressed; for others, it can be walking their dog; remember you do you)
checking in regularly with my circle of friends
setting aside a chunk of time to do something that makes you happy (I’ve been watching cute baby — human and animal — videos before bedtime)
creating an asset map of things I have in my life
normalizing my routines (some are the same and some are new, like handwashing as soon as I get in the door of my house after a grocery run and wiping down all surfaces)
This website offers a great collection of strategies: from meditations and music to journaling and mindfulness activities. How about you? What are the things that you are doing to look after your mental fitness? Be well, stay well.
— MarthaFitat55 lives in Newfoundland, getting her physical and mental fitness on in multiple ways.
Hi readers– here’s your blast from the (recent) past reading getaway, today courtesy of Natalie (Sat with Nat). She reflects on badass wrestling women of the 80s, the new(ish) Netflix show GLOW, and how we relate to women in sports (even the villains). If for no other reason, check out this post to see Natalie and her friend Shelly rocking early 90s dos!
Today I just did my first (of probably many) Zoom online yoga classes. It was a fundamentals class, lasting an hour. Here’s a list of things I really liked about it.
5. The commute: I left my zoom department meeting at 11:50am in my dining room, walked to the living room and set up my mat, props and laptop in time for noon class.
This is soooo not my house.
4. Easy wardrobe change: I was wearing my yoga clothes in my work meeting with a nice-looking (to me) sweater, which I took off for yoga. Presto, change-o!
Unlike me, this person got their work/yoga boundaries confused.
3. Time and money savings on laundry: I wore the same yoga clothes for the zoom class as I had the day before for my video yoga workout. Hey, you’re all doing it too… 🙂
Cartoon in which 4 pairs of pants say to a person, “we love you but we’re concerned. You never wear anything but your yoga pants anymore.”
2. Opportunities for cultivating compassion; in my case, for the yoga teacher whose headset kept falling off, so she gave up and just kind of yelled for the rest of the class. No complaints– it worked.
At least the camera was well-placed to be out of the way of curious cats.
And now, number 1:
At least it wasn’t yoga on the deck of a kayak!
Who else believes this won’t end well?Yep. That didn’t end well.
Hey readers: have you tried any zoom fitness/activity classes? How have you liked them? What haven’t you liked? We’d love to hear from you.
HI everyone– it’s reblog refreshment reading for you all. CW: this post talks about some dietary methods that are absurd and bad, some of which have been (and are maybe still) used. But it mocks them all. And most of them are JUST IN MICE! If you’re in the mood for that, take another look at this post of mine from 2017. -catherine
Image description: A landscape shot of a section of the track. The earth is mostly rocky and is a light brown colour. Steam is coming from geothermal vents on the mountain. In the bottom right corner of the photo is a shadow of the photographer and the ridge she is standing on.
I recently had the opportunity to tramp (that’s what New Zealanders call hiking) the Tongariro Northern Circuit in the Central North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand. The TNC is a four-day, three-night 43.1 km loop that partially overlaps with the world-famous Tongariro Alpine Crossing. The TNC takes place in the shadows and volcanic fields of the mighty active volcanoes Ngāuruhoe (which you may recognise as Mount Doom in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies) and Tongariro. While I had done plenty of day hikes and a handful of overnight trips before, this was my first multi-day trip, and I decided to do it solo. Aotearoa New Zealand has several tramping tracks that are billed as Great Walks, which means they are well-maintained, monitored by rangers, and usually well-equipped as far as huts and campsites go. The TNC is one of those walks, and as such, is well-populated with trampers and rangers alike. That made me feel fine about going solo. I had previously spent a long time wishing I could do something like this, but it wasn’t until I saw these wise words of a kid from the hilarious blog Live From Snack Timethat I decided it was time to go do it: “You can make a wish, but then you have to do the wish. It doesn’t just happen.” I decided it was time to do the wish.
Image description: A 360-degree panorama of a section of the track. It is the very early morning and the sky is still dark. Large rocky formations stretch along the length of the photo and they are backlit by a small patch of sunlight peeking up on the left side of the photo.
Here’s the thing about tramping in Aotearoa New Zealand compared to other places: pretty much nothing here will kill you except the weather. There are no large predators like bears or mountain lions, there are no snakes, there are no particularly venomous spiders. The water is usually clean and plenty of trampers just go ahead and drink it without treatment and are usually fine. (Note: that’s risky. Don’t do it. Or do. But also, don’t.) What puts people at risk in the New Zealand backcountry is when weather closes in quickly—particularly common in alpine environments—and natural disasters like avalanches, earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions. (There are also risks like falling and breaking your leg and being unable to get to shelter.) Those are serious risks, and I don’t mean to be flippant about them. You must prepare for them as much as you are able. Now, admittedly, there’s not a whole lot you can do if a pyroclastic flow is headed your way, but I’m of the mind that life is inherently risky, and if the only thing that ever figured into your decisions was how risky an activity was, you’d never get off the couch. That’s not the life I want, so I’m prepared to accept some calculated risks. I went to an outdoor equipment shop and asked for advice from them and from experienced friends, rented and borrowed the gear that I could, bought what I couldn’t borrow, and set out.
A closeup of small, white flowers growing between stones. Mount Ngāuruhoe, a symmetrical cone-shaped volcano, is visible in the background.
The track was absolutely incredible and the trip was well worth it. I can’t believe I waited as long as I did to make it happen. The photos don’t capture the scale and vastness of the landscape. They don’t capture that mixed-up feeling of achievement, relief, and “Well, that wasn’t so bad!” that rises up when you arrive at the hut. It’s hard to explain the introspection that goes on when it’s just you, your boots, your pack, and a volcano to keep you company. It was transformative. Really.
Image description: a landscape shot of a part of the track. On the left of the photo is a 29-year-old white woman with short blonde hair. She is wearing grey shorts and a white shirt. In the distance is a cliff and a thin waterfall coming off it.
But a peculiar thing kept happening while I was tramping, and kept happening after I returned and told people about having gone. People seemed very concerned that I, a woman, was doing this tramp solo. At first, I thought it was a bit funny. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that it reflected some weird assumptions people have about women’s ability to manage risk. When I told others about the experience and wondered whether people would have said the same thing about a male soloist, a male friend was quick to tell me that “it wasn’t about gender” (a bold assessment from someone who wasn’t there) and that going solo was “potentially foolhardy.” He’s right, in some sense: the risks of tramping—things like avalanches and volcanic eruptions—aren’t about gender. The volcano does not care about the genders of the trampers walking on it when it erupts. Dehydration and hypothermia don’t care about your gender. Venomous snakes don’t care about your gender. Flash floods don’t care about your gender. I’m totally with him on this one: the risk is not about gender. But if that’s the case, then why were the comments? Why were so many of the comments of the scandalized “A woman, alone?” variety? What is it about being a woman that leads people to assume you can’t look after yourself? (If I sound annoyed, it’s because I am.)
Image description: A photograph of two of the famous Emerald Lakes, one behind the other. The earth in the foreground is golden brown and rocky. The lakes have vivid green water. A slope rises up behind them. The sky is blue with wispy white clouds.
I want to be clear about something: I certainly don’t think I know everything about tramping. I’m still very much a novice and will be for a long time. But I’m a sensible novice: I consulted experts while planning my trip, followed their advice, and did every single thing I possibly could do to mitigate my risk. I left detailed trip and route plans with a trusted contact, and I carried a personal locator beacon, a first aid kit, emergency shelter, all-weather clothing, an extra day’s food, and so on. I also respect the power of nature and know that ultimately, sometimes things go wrong and no amount of preparation can save you from that. Nevertheless, I did what was, by any reasonable metric, a good job of making sure I was going to be okay, barring a volcanic eruption. (And let’s be real, having a buddy isn’t really going to help you much in that situation.) It struck me as odd that my friend immediately concluded that what I was doing was foolhardy, when he knew nothing about the precautions I’d taken, and made no effort to ask.
Image description: A panorama of a volcanic landscape. The earth is reddish-grey. There are two lakes with green water on the left of the photo, and an uphill scree slope to the right. Three distant people are standing at the top of the slope. The sky is blue with a few long white clouds.
A couple of women tramper friends of mine say they’ve had similar experiences. One says she, too, finds that people are either amazed or concerned when they find out she’s tramping alone, and that something about it rubs her the wrong way. How about you, fellow women soloists? Have you had this kind of experience? How does it make you feel?
I’ll finish off with this photo of sunrise on the ascent to the Red Crater of Ngāuruhoe. I left my hut dark and early to catch this special sight, all by myself. It was glorious.
Image description: A panorama of sunrise on the Tongariro Northern Circuit. The sun is peeking up on the left side of the photo. The lower section of the photograph is dark rocky earth, not yet lit by the morning sun. In the distance are two peaks (one is Ngāuruhoe) that are a deep rusty red in the sunlight.
#30daysofbiking is a pledge to ride your bike every day in April and share your adventures online. Registration is now live at our new website: https://t.co/6mvfsvuNCt
Spring riding isn’t always pretty. Sometimes it involves getting wet and lost. See photos below! But I like that it’s not yet about speed or even about distance. Spring riding feels adventurous to me. I just feel happy to be out there.
In these pandemic times, more people are choosing to ride. Like running it’s one of the things we can do for exercise that is consistent with social distancing. I was sad to see that Spain and Italy banned recreational cycling though it’s still okay to use a bike to get to the grocery store or the doctors.
Here’s some photos of an early spring ride that Sarah and I did a few years ago. We got lost, we ended up taking our good road bikes through some mud. It was a definite adventure.
We’re in the middle of a once-in-a-generation, unprecedented watershed moment in the world. We won’t know the global paradigm shifts this will spawn for a while yet — as my sister said, “the earth seems to be saying ‘if you won’t reduce green house gasses, I’ll do it for you'” — but the vast majority of us are having some pretty massive shifts in our reality and day to day lives already. One of the most immediate is shifting our distributed, active lives to our homes — with a ton of uncertainty and anxiety about making that work for us.
We’ve already covered “working out at home” fairly extensively on the blog, and I expect that will continue to happen as the weeks go on. I’m going to change gears today a little bit and talk about working at home. Even though this isn’t technically about “fitness,” I’m going to describe what I’ve figured out over time that lets me balance productivity and wellness. (This image is my cat Georgia, who spends a lot of time monitoring my computer usage).
I’m in the unusual position where I’ve worked at home the vast majority of my adult life. I’ve been self-employed since 1995, doing various evolutions of consulting work, for the past 12 years focused on strategy development and change leadership in health care and higher education. I also do a lot of teaching and coaching. This means that my work is split between in-person meetings on client sites, facilitating large groups and working in my home office. In that 25 years, I’ve figured out a formula that works for me. I asked people what questions they have that I might be able to offer some insight on, based on my experience.
I want to make a bit of a disclaimer at the front end that I offer this in the spirit of “your mileage may vary” — since my way of doing this differs a fair bit from most of the recommendations out there, which tend to have an overall message of “recreate the illusion that you are doing something completely separate from your homelife.” Most “expert” recommendations include things like: keep a strict schedule to focus solely on work, dress like you’re going to work, create starting and ending rituals, etc. That’s not entirely how I do it — but as you’ll see, there’s some intentionality and meta-structure behind what I do. Now to the questions. Some of my answers will refer to the Non-Pandemic Time, when we could freely go in and out of our houses — I’ve adapted some, and of course, you can adapt as appropriate for your current situation.
Do you keep regular business hours?
This is one of those topics where the “productivity experts” usually recommend structuring your day as though you are going into an external workplace, with clear start/finish hours, keeping to your schedule, dressing for work, etc.
Well, I don’t really do any of that. And my mental picture of the people making the recommendation is either of journalists writing on their laptops in their beds, dipping their hands into bags of doritos and wiping them on their sheets while writing about Meticulous Boundaries, or ladies in pristine corporate offices imagining that this is what they would need if they were to work at home.
Here’s the thing: I know how much time my work takes. I know I need to do my work. So I start at a reasonable hour and finish at a reasonable hour, but my blend of productivity and wellness means that sometimes I do things before I start working, ranging from laundry to calling my mother to going to the gym, and I always conjure up good coffee and a decent breakfast, and usually bring them to my desk to signal the start of my work day.
I have loose start and end times, mostly dictated by a combination of phone and zoom meetings, deadlines and what feels like a reasonable amount of work for one day. I am usually at my desk by 830 or so, earlier if I have something I want to churn something out quickly or an early call, a little later if I go to the gym, and I “finish” most days sometime between 5 and 6. In normal times, the end of my day is often marked by “which fitness class do I want to go to before dinner?” Now it’s “I should get outside before dinner.”
Sometimes — less than once a week, maybe 3x a month — I have something to write that didn’t get done during the day, and I am back at my desk from about 7 to 9 pm. And I have a pretty big job, so on about half of the Sundays, I do a couple of hours of work, mostly to make sure I’m ready for the week to come.
So mostly, I “keep” more or less regular hours — but without being rigid about it. I rely on a combination of bullet journal lists, my calendar, our project manager and my intuitive sense of what’s due, what’s pressing, and what MUST be done today to shift around my priorities throughout the day.
Do you dress for work?
Resoundingly — no. No way, never.
This is one of those places where the “experts” and I differ — although it may be different for YOU, I see no reason whatsoever to act as though I’m heading into an office building when I’m sitting in my home office surrounded by cats. (Not to mention that my work clothes would just end up covered in cat hair).
My cats are ever present prowlers around my desk.
I do get dressed — I don’t usually shower until after I work out, but I get up and change out of jammies into workout gear or sweats. I’m up and dressed, just not dressed “for work.” I’m happier and more creative and more productive when I’m comfortable, and over 25 years of doing this, I’ve figured out how to put my head into my work because my work interests me, or because I have email or slack messages to respond to, or because I have a meeting coming up to prepare for, or a phone call right now.
Designated space is really important
What about managing work time when you don’t live alone? How do you keep others from interrupting you (especially if you do quiet work)?
Having designated work space has turned out to be far far more important to me than any of the other structures. I have a big imac (desktop) that I use only for work (laptops are for streaming tv), and a home office (which is always where I keep my clothes, art supplies and pullout couch). If you don’t have the luxury of a home office with a door (cat infested or not), try to pick a place that is your “work” space, and let anyone else in your environment know that you need to be left alone when you’re in that place. Having a designated space is, for me, a mental signal to focus, and — if like so many people, you are not only working at home unexpectedly, your house is full of others — it can become a signal to leave you alone.
I live alone (apart from the cats, who are masterful intruders), but I’ve toted my work around to a lot of other environments over the past decades, and I know a lot of people who are trying to juggle kids, family members and others in their space. In my experience, the biggest issue is people continually interrupting because it doesn’t look to them like you are “working.” Or they don’t understand that a quick question can destroy your train of thought.
My best advice on this one is to get people together at a time when you’re not actually working and lay it out — “when I’m at my desk/the dining room table/ the kitchen counter, I’m working, even if it looks like I’m looking at facebook or something — I’m thinking. I need to not be interrupted until I stand up.”
Carefully selected noise can also be your friend here. I play CBC radio all day while I’m working, tuning in and out to the words as I shift in and out of thought. For some people, white noise is helpful; for others, it isn’t. If you are managing others in your space, try using headphones, either for white noise, or as a signal not to interrupt you. (Or be creative — “don’t interrupt me when I’m wearing this funny hat”). What I have also learned is to not reward the interrupters — pretend you don’t hear them, or give them something very unsatisfying like a long pause and a confused, what, sorry, I was thinking.
I know this has limited effectiveness with bored children, but keep trying. I feel you.
Do you host meetings at your home office?
Well not right now, for sure, but for the most part, no. I do invite the kinds of colleagues who are also friends over occasionally for a retreat type meeting, and I do a little in-person coaching in my living room, but mostly, hosting clients at home would require me to pay more attention to tidying and professionalizing my space than I want to. (I even use a virtual background some of the time on zoom, implying that my home office has a lot more design flair than the cat-bed strewn, laundry-piled place it really is).
What do you do about breaks? What do you do about meals? How much flexibility do you allow yourself in your schedule?
The person who asked about breaks also said “like obvs. don’t do housework, but do you deliberately take breaks?”
Here’s my dirty little secret: I DO take breaks, and I do all sorts of things in those breaks: housework, yoga, short runs, crossfit, spinning, short errands (I can walk to the pharmacy or food shop). Sometimes I even take NAPS.
For me, the questions about flexibility, breaks, etc. mirror the same need to structure your day around work. My approach to this is to get a feel for how much work I have to fill a day (as though I’m literally weighing it), and then keep mentally weighing that during the day to decide if I have the space to leave my desk for more than 10 minutes or so. (Again, bullet journal lists are helpful here).
Obviously, if I have a major deadline, or a pile of phone meetings, or more to do than I can imagine doing, I’m not swanning off to spinning mid-day. But if I can mentally allocate the time — if I take an hour off for cross-fit at noon that might mean working until 7 to get x and y done, but that’s okay — I do it. And that tends to make me more productive when I am at my desk.
What I’ve learned is that when I’m not interacting with other people real time in calls or slack, I need a rhythm that is a bit ping-pongy. I work in an intense burst, then I take a brief break, then back into the intense burst. Most of the time, if I’m trying to write something, I manage my time with the pomodoro method : a set focused work time, with brief planned breaks. What works for me is that I set a timer for 25 minutes, during which I close my email, windows on my browser, etc, focus hard, then when the timer pings, pop up for 5 minutes to do one small useful non-work activity. Usually this is how I load or empty the dishwasher, throw in a load of laundry, make lunch, take out the recycling, clean the cat boxes, etc. This is also when I do things like cruise through social media or answer texts. Sometimes if I’m really being productive, I reset the timer without getting up, but mostly, this popping up every half an hour to do a useful thing means that I get my work done and leave my desk at the end of the day to a reasonably tidy house.
I include meal prep in these little breaks, but I mostly eat breakfast and lunch at my desk. Again, your mileage may vary on this.
Do you co-work/meet other people to work together?
No. I know this is something a lot of people want and need, for many reasons, but it’s never worked for me. Getting into my productivity mindset means that I can’t switch *interaction* gears mid-day. I can take quick text or social media breaks, but actual human contact for non-work purposes tends to interrupt my train of thought. And even if it felt socially accountable to leave the house right now (which it does not), the only reason I can do all of the things that give me flexibility through my day (an organic approach to housework, errands and working out) is because I don’t add travel time or chit chat time. I know a lot of people who have and need regular work or writing “dates” (even virtual), but for me, I hoard time in a pretty miserly way, and to keep my work days a reasonable length, and to integrate working out, I don’t do anything social during the day, ever. I almost never meet people for breakfast or lunch, but if I need to, I tack it onto a time when I’m already out at a meeting. My major principle is “never add unnecessary commute time.”
What motivates you to get out of bed? How do you handle emotions? I go through boom/bust cycles in the day and get anxious if my routine is interrupted.
This is the crux of the matter, isn’t it? How do we stay grounded when everything we take for granted about our purpose, our routine, our sense of meaning is upended, and strung into a zone of severe uncertainty?
Right now, our anxiety is at its highest — everything has changed, and it keeps changing, and we don’t know when it will stop, and for most of us the things we need to do like social distancing are about protecting others, so it makes it even more surreal. And the initial nervous excitement of “what is going to HAPPEN?” has faded into dull anxiety.
On this one I can only talk about what motivates me to get up. It’s easy, of course, if I have an early meeting. But if I don’t, the first thing I do is call my mother most mornings. Right now, this is even more important, because she’s an at risk person who can’t go to the pool or see her friends, and I want to check in. And then once I’m up, I check in with some of the other important people in my life. I drink my coffee and sit at my desk, and start to remember the things that are important to me. Right now, this is connection. Caring for each other. Supporting each other in our anxiety. Using this time to reflect on what’s most essential.
If I were coaching someone who was experiencing anxiety at the disruption of routine, I’d suggest they explore their greater sense of purpose — beyond the way it’s usually employed in their occupation. Like, if you are a teacher who suddenly can’t teach (true for many of the people in my life), reflect on what you are able to create in your teaching relationships that matter, and how can those values be brought to life right now in a different way? Can you help parents with a little at-home curriculum design?Can you put some purpose into your day by phoning people who are alone and could use a friendly voice, can you be a shoulder, can you write to someone you have been wanting to mend something with, can you participate in “caremongering” and be of service in your community?
Most of my work has been postponed or canceled, because it’s “non-essential” during this time. One of the ways I’m coping with that to offer some pro-bono coaching hours to people who were experiencing disorientation and anxiety. I find that helping people define their values in this time helps me ground myself.
These are really surreal times, and our anxiety and uncertainty is showing up in different ways. And, paradoxically, this time of social distancing can also create opportunities to connect. And keep moving with our work and purpose. We are all in this together.
You got this.
Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede, who lives and works from home in Toronto.
