Connection-seeking

   This was Friday.
   8:15am listened to Dr. Jody Carrington’s morning live session on Facebook. Have coffee, visit with my cats. Perfectly normal stuff.
   10am listened to Shelly Moore @fivemooreminutes on Instagram live as she is doing a book club on Dr. Jody’s book, Kids These Days. Awesome.
   By 2pm, I’d settled down for several hours to watch the Phantom of the Opera musical streamed from London, courtesy of Andrew Lloyd Webber. (Every Friday, a new musical!)
   Had a quick zoom drink with a colleague, and in the evening, a friend invited me to my first ‘watch party’ where Ryan McMahon, a musician from BC, entertained online for two and a half hours.
   Add in other social media surfing, and I don’t think I’d ever had such a busy day.
   And I still felt totally isolated.
 
   Dr. Jody talks about kids who are attention-seeking, and says that we need to reframe that to say they are connection seeking.
   That works for adults too.
   And I think that’s where I’m at right now. I feel like I’m looking for things to do, things to fill my time, to keep busy….to feel connected.
   I think we underestimate the amount of connections we have at school. The hundreds of students and thousands of interactions. Every. Single. Day. It’s why I often came home and needed a nap!
   Now, without that, I feel an enormous amount of restless energy. Pent up. Like a lid on a pop bottle with a mentos.
   Actually, more like Emperor Palpatine…like fricken lightning bolts are going to come shooting out of my fingers IF I DON’T DO SOMETHING!!!
   And yet, all of the ‘things’ that usually bring me some joy, just aren’t.
   Of the pile of books that I threw into my car on that last day, I have managed to read just one.
   One.
   With the same amount of time in the summer, I would have finished a dozen by now. But I can’t do it. Why read about a dystopian survivalist, when that’s what it feels like I am living?
   Don’t get me wrong. We are not suffering here. In fact, we could not be spending self-isolation in any more privileged position. Reading an article about my mom’s 93 year old cousin in Prince Albert, who walks 2km to see his wife in a nursing home, not just once a day, but two to three times a day EVERYDAY makes me want to take my bag of coronavirus complaints and sit quietly in shame with it for a long, long time.
   But I think it’s important not to discount how each one of us is feeling.
   How each one of us is dealing with this crazy situation.
   What may seem trite to one person, might be the linchpin to someone else’s sanity.
   I came across a quote today by Dr. Mike Goddard that I’m going to try and remember when this starts to feel a bit overwhelming, “Worry is an accelerant to anxiety, anxiousness and health issues. Worry is mostly about things out of our control. Choose to be a Warrior and not a Worrier - controlling that which you control and not allowing worry to control you over the rest.”
   I get that, but I think the missing piece is that we can’t be a warrior on our own. Like every imaginable historical situation, there is strength in numbers.
   There is strength to be drawn from others when our worries overtake us.
   There is strength inside us to be shared with others. (Yes there is, even if your brain wants to argue that point with you!)
   So hang on to the people you have.
   Just hang in there.