Readjusting to a Busy Life

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a mile-long list of challenges and reasons why many of us want to just scream “enough” several times a day. But as the world slowly opens back up, I suddenly find myself with another obstacle to overcome.

Readjusting to a busy life outside of my house.

I would never describe the pandemic as a time of my life where I wasn’t busy or stressed or stretched to my limit most days. But I would say that all of those things happened within the walls of my house. For the most part.

No matter how packed my day was between a full-time job and two elementary kids schooling at home, the stressors of keeping my family safe while also struggling with never having a break happened at home.

Gone were the days of rushing out from a full day of work to pick up the kids from school to get them to extracurricular activities. Often this took extreme coordination to partner up with other parents so we could all get this group of kids here and another there. Dinner as a family couldn’t happen every night nor could a home cooked meal.

Then the pandemic hit.

Family dinners happened every night. Most of which were home cooked. We were home, together, with no extracurriculars due to state shut-downs. There was no coordinating schedules because there was nowhere to be.

A year and a half later I find myself struggling to get back into the swing of things.

I used to excel at keeping us on a tight routine, having everything planned out down to each little detail. But as in-person school has now begun for my kids, soccer season is finally allowed again and we threw in swim, gymnastics and math tutoring I am feeling a bit rusty.

While I have prayed for the kids to be back in school, to be able to be with peers and out of the house, I never prayed for my ability to adjust back to it all. I didn’t realize how exhausting and overwhelming it would be.

But ready or not, here we go. We’re once again shifting with our (still weird still pandemic) world and what it throws at us. Mom, just remember you can’t just turn the past year and a half on a dime. It might take you a bit to get the kinks out and that’s ok.