Uncertainty Is the Water Flowing in Our Rivers

I fell out of the daily writing practice last week with hurricane-related tech and power difficulties, picked back up on Friday, my 13th of 40 days of writing, and then somehow slid under the time radar over the weekend and woke up Monday morning not having written at all. I've noticed a shifting perception of time during the pandemic. Sometimes I have to remind myself of things that had once been part of my rhythm and flow.

I set an alarm this afternoon to write at 4 p.m. and I missed it, set an alarm for a few other things today and missed them too. I'm starting to wonder if I have some kind of gremlin around here. 

Shifting time perception and mythological creatures are a formula for something interesting and creative. Right?

It's at this point that I feel like giving up. The writing practice, that is. I tell myself I've blown it, unearthed my rough edges, revealed my own lack of perfection. Am I hunting something truthful with this practice, or is it some kind of illusion about myself that I seek?

I'm starting to think that life is not nearly as interesting as it was five months ago. I'm starting to think that I need to do something to shake things up. I remember that, for the most part, I am home with my own thoughts all day. I start to reach for some kind of on-line program to expand myself a little bit. I've got plenty of those in the hopper and nothing feels like it's worth doing.

Could this all be a pandemic slump knocking around my inner landscape? Has the ground of my being caved in and left hollow impressions for me to fall into? And what kind of handholds are there to grab hold of as I climb out?

Why can't I just say, "Hey! I've begged for time like this for years! Where's that list of projects I've always wanted to have time for? Let's do it!"     

It's the allostatic load. I first read about this at the end of April. It's the damage to our bodies when we're constantly exposed to stress. To tell the truth, I've lived with a lot of stress for a long time, but nothing like the stress of the pandemic, added to the stress of the current political climate and social unrest, the stress of the damaged economy, the stress of isolation, the stress of lack of touch, the work stress that has come with all of this. I know I'm not the only one with this - we've all got it, to some extent, and that adds even more to the load for all of us. 

Normalcy lets us know that we're okay. This sustained lack of normalcy, or the new normal, has us wondering if we're ever going to be okay again or if there's going to be something else that is going to collapse around us, adding to the already eroding landscape of our lives. 

There's nothing wrong with me. Or you. Or us. Uncertainty is the water flowing in our rivers right now and what we want is just a little bit of predictability.

Days of Accidental Beauty: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice that invites discovery.