It takes a global pandemic to make you see.

There is nothing like a global pandemic to make us realise how realient and adaptable we really are. We have been grounded by this virus, this parent we never even asked for, something not even our own parents could do but here we are, grounded! Like lost little children, crying for the pubs to reopen, but here we are, locked away inside our homes, but it made us realise how much stuff we thought we needed that we don’t. So many of us have been clearing out our personal junk, disconnecting with people we thought we needed and reconnecting with people we haven’t spoken to in months or even years. This pandemic has forced us to simplify ourselves and become more creative in our personally lives, it has forced us to reconnect using social media and talk to family members on zoom. Dinner dates over video chat and if we don’t like the way the date is going, we can turn off.

We don’t have tomorrow to catch up anymore, everyone is using today to call grandma, our bothers over seas and friends we haven’t seen for years.

I’ve got used to the quieter life, no longer rushing from one place to another, I’m liking picking up a book at night, or watching Netflix and catching up with films I never had the time to watch. I’m enjoying the time I’ve been spending in the kitchen, baking and cooking these skills I thought I had lost years ago, getting the sewing machine out, writing again, I’m enjoying the things I never had time to do.

Our way of life has changed, the way we connect with people has changed and its reconnected us in ways we never thought possible, but the technology was there before this pandemic, but it took this to show us, that our jobs, our social life wasn’t what made us live. It took this to show us how to start living again, living a simpler life, no rushing, no taking things for granted, to stop us from believing that we had all the time in the world, because in the end, even without this virus we never had this time, all we have is the here and now.

Yes, I’ve got used to the quieter life, that I don’t want to go back to how things used to be, how things were before weren`t good. We was tired, exhausted, running from jobs, to home cleaning, more jobs and if we was lucky enough to have a social life was our only escape from a world that was bleeding us dry, sucking the life force out of our very being and it’s taken the pandemic to make us realize that none of it ever really mattered. Working 70 hours a week doesn’t matter, working 38 hours keeping home, taking kids to school, running to the pub or getting ready for the clubs, in the end none of it matters. In the end what truly matters is family, communities and your self-worth and state of mind, nothing else should matter, because we can’t change any of it, all we can do is change how we react to it.

I woke up today switched on the news over 14,500 people have now died and the spread of this virus doesn’t seem to be slowing and I was overwhelmed with a sense of gratefulness, I’m still here, I’m still moaning, but I am now quieter and more In-tune with myself. We are so lucky that we can moan about this, that we still have this gift of life to be able to moan about what’s happening in the world. There are 1000s of people who can’t.

I’m ready for change, bring it on, I thrive on this shit.