Covid is on the war-path, wiping out everyone in its wake. I came down with Covid back in early March, 2020 when I was working on a California custody case out in Santa Barbara. I never felt so close to death. Watching the spread and the mounting death toll in the following months was quite sobering.
Fortunately, post vaccines we don’t see the death toll rising so quickly. Those dying are almost exclusively unvaccinated. But for the danger they pose to others, I can’t fault them for their willingness to die for their beliefs. But this time, with Omicron, the exponential rise in its spread is alarming if not frightening. Sick is not nice and certainly not welcome.
So here we go again. Back into potentially a self-imposed lock down, or at least a self-imposed, greatly restricted and guarded way of conducting ourselves.
At the Firm, we have two great events during the year when everyone from the whole firm, all five offices, gather together for training. One is at our annual retreat in August and the other is at our Launch event in January. We just moved our Launch from an all in-person event to exclusively a Zoom event, much like how we conducted all our business much earlier in the pandemic. While I suspect that this Covid wave will wash over us and be largely gone within a month or so, the loss in getting to train personally with all of our great staff is deeply disappointing. Words can’t really describe the loss felt.
But better to feel the loss of togetherness than the actual loss of life or at least rampant illness fostered by coming together at this time.
So, as we enter 2022 with a pandemic once again raging, maybe now is a good time to focus on some self care, some deep self care. We were probably working on that as we worked our way into the second half of 2020, but 2021, to me, seemed all about trying to open back up and get back to normal, no matter how many times the medical community said that this might be our new normal.
I’m frustrated. I’m miffed. I’m over it.
Yeah, now might be a really good time to engage in some serious self care.
Where are you right now? Is your stress meter running the risk of spiking into the red zone with all this provocation? I suspect that is completely normal. I suspect it is where most of us are. If so, it is a really good time to engage in some serious self care.
Get away from it all, in whatever form that looks like for you. Go for a walk. Go camping. Go to the beach. See how close you can come to taking some form of a month-long sabbatical while this thing moves on. Revert to the restrictive activities that kept you alive in 2020 but with the knowledge that you’ve gained over the two years and the power that the vaccines have given you to weather the storm.
Now is probably the perfect opportunity to take stock of where you are and decide if that’s where you want to be. Use this month to head in the direction that works best for you. If your life is headed in a good direction, head more in that direction and perhaps with greater speed and purpose. If your life is going off the wrong way, strike off on a new course. Right your ship.
The vaccinated will weather this storm. I hope that we will experience just how much we create our own destiny, even when others impact the ease or difficulty of achieving that destiny. I am encouraged by the life we could have if we choose it. I am encouraged by what good might yet still come from all of this. I encourage each of us to engage in some deep, self care to find and work toward that good.
May it be so.
-Michael Manely