Having neglected my website for awhile, I purused my collection of writings and found this from March. Would like to share this now.
On the year anniversary of the initial COVID “lockdown” I feel as if I have come full circle. Having journeyed through several evolutions, I recently had an “aha” moment that to my surprise, brought me to a solid and stable state. From initially being in denial about the long term effects on my life and my work, I sauntered through enjoying having a summer off (almost) to facing a fall of the same open time and space. It was then I realized I needed to gather my wits about me and make plans on how to seize this opportunity to create something new and lasting or at least, eventually finding myself at a place from which to spring forward when the time came for such actions! In a moment of wide-eyed sleeplessness during the wee hours of the morning, I declared myself on Sabbatical. The next day I rose up jubilantly from my bed and immediately typed up a project list. It soon became the intense focus of my life for awhile, but in between, I continued to forge ahead mentally and emotionally through ever changing mind fields.
As a voice teacher, my usual in person service not only became illegal initially, but life threatening. With the facts in, ie, air transmission being a major spreader of COVID and singing being a big producer of those transmitted infected aerosols, the future suddenly became a rather large void. While I transferred instruction onto zoom, I had few takers and in November, right before the start of the end of the year holiday season, I was finally able to let go of the idea that I still had a studio, a roster of students who were somehow hovering nearby waiting for me to once again open my door to face to face instruction. While this might seem obvious,
my emotional and mental tie to this idea was more fierce than I imagined. Finally acknowledging I needed to scrap the list and build up a new studio from humble numbers, I was able to free up energy that had been relegated to keeping my anxiety alive. Suddenly I had permission to admit I really was loving my life as it was unfolding.
The new year as always, begins with January and February, my two least favorite months for copious reasons, a glimmer of relief offered up only in the fact that the days do indeed get longer, the dark delayed just a bit each day. While continuing to wade through my project list, I also had fun; serving up dinners for one from downloaded NYT recipes, scouring through my scrap fabric to turn into usable creations, formulating a new strategy with every 1000 piece puzzle I dumped on the dining room table, and sorting through the 100 Best Books of 2020 according to the NYT, placing my choices on hold at the library. However, there still existed an undercurrent of angst about whether or not I would be “ready” when the time came for the opening of the gates.
Walking for me is a treat. Fresh air, feeling my body in motion, and yes, communing with nature. It is also an opportunity to visit with neighbors who are also out and importantly, it gave me the space and time to do some thinking. On one of these excursions in early March, walking down a street in my neighborhood, I had a sudden sense of a landing. And not for the first time. In a vision somewhere lurking in my brain, I saw little pieces of “stuff” (thoughts, ideas, emotions?) fluttering down like confetti, settling together into a solid line at the bottom of my screen. Like finally getting off a boat onto a dock, and feeling the body gathering itself, eventually arriving on stable footing. That moment set me on my way. No longer contemplating a return to anything, but an only going forward from here mentality, my motto has become “My life is now”. It is what I choose to do everyday, what I decide to add or get rid of. It is the end of my Sabbatical and the beginning, as they say, of the rest of my life.
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