On Beginning Again

As the world prepared to enter into its second winter of lockdown, I knew that I couldn’t continue in the same vein for another year. We’ve coped well, I think, our family unit, from finding an equilibrium between both work and school being at home, to following all of the never-ending guidelines by the provincial government and cocooning in our house, again, in a vicious never-ending circle. This isn’t news. This isn’t even interesting. Collectively, perhaps what’s lost this time around in Covid summer is that “we’re all in it together vibe.” These days I feel like we’re all that annoying childhood moment of being in the backseat of a long car journey whining: “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? How about now? Are we there yet?”

And we are not there yet.

We are still daydreaming of the destination, of where that car might take us–whether that’s to see beloved cousins or explore a city we’d never been to before. The above is a picture of my foot on some literal crossroads. Taken at the top of the West Toronto Railpath, one of my favourite parts of my neighbourhood, I plop my metaphorical foot down each time I get to the top of the trail and make a decision to go left or right or to turn around and go back the way I started. Except the view isn’t ever the same, even if you take the same route home. There are different people to see, different trees to see, and the birds, the birds, the birds.

And yet, there are days when it’s just not enough. The lists, the planning, the constant hum of forced motivation when we’re all stuck in such bad patterns. Way too much screen time. Way too much separate-togetherness. We have huge things happening this year–from work to life and more, those crossroads, again, that we all come to. Big birthdays. Next year my son finished elementary school. We are building a new cottage where my grandparents’ cabin has stood for 70+ years (it’s falling down). We’re finally finishing the backyard. All of these things have been planned for years, and still–that feeling of sitting on the precipice persists. It’s all going to go wrong. We won’t find the rest of the capital we need. My son will ultimately stop succeeding academically. I know these are not rational or even normal thoughts but there seems to be little escape from the pockets of panic that creep into the corners of my mind. And that’s not even to mention the hum of the pandemic that has changed so much of our daily lives.

I had made some New Year’s Revolutions in January. Go outside every day (This one I’ve kept). Practise French and Swedish (I’ve missed two days now in the last six months; not bad). Take a course that’s just for me (Harvard Extension School; it was called Proseminar: Elements of the Writers Craft, and I spent weeks writing an essay on Alice Munro’s “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” and it was glorious). Try to find balance between work and home (have not remotely accomplished this). File our taxes on time (Pending). Read (I do this all day every day, I count work reading). Walk (See above; going outside). Write (I wish I could do more). And so on. Without the structure of these kinds of lists, I fall far into my own head. I fall deep into the abyss of worrying about the disease, about our mental health in this whole experience, of what kind of life we’ll have, of what’s happening to the Earth, of hoping my friends and family stay safe, of missing people and not seeing them, of being relatively bad at keeping in touch . . . and then, and then. And then.

So, I’m beginning again. I’m adding to the list. And some might suggest with everything that’s going on, more isn’t the answer. But if I start here once a week, and say it out loud. That it’s not that bad. That we’ve done a good job surviving so far. That I love to put virtual pen to paper. That I can carve out a bit of space here for just barfing out my feelings, we can make it through the next few months.

It’s not so much blogging as it is maybe journaling. Trying to work out personal essay writing in small chunks so I can practice some narrative nonfiction. I can go left, right, or back the way I came, and each time the sentences will look a little different, which is exactly the point.