What will you remember most from this time?

[Iwonder777]

Me, the surreal shut down and not getting to kiss my old mum goodbye.

You?

Walking through the same small patch of woodland every day, and seeing all the plants, trees and flowers changing all the time.

Today I stood very still at the entrance to the wood, and a squirrel came down the path, right across the wood towards me, stopping only a few feet away, and gave me a long inspection. He or she was really curious. I shall always remember that.

The speed with which things fall apart.

Being eternally grateful for my family home sale going through prior to this so that I'm spending lockdown in a scenic part of Ireland in a beautiful old farmhouse and not across the wall from him

Both myself & dc and dog get to spend hours outdoors exploring which wouldn't have been an option in our previous house

That some of my colleagues are selfish.

That some of my colleagues are selfless.

How much things can change in the space of a few short weeks.

How lonely life can be

Fear. Terrified of catching this virus, terrified of my family catching it, my parents etc. I can't relax or enjoy any of the peace, family time, etc because of it.

I wish I could, we'll hopefully never have this sort of downtime again and we should be able to take positives from it, but I can't.

The half hour spent cuddling the kids every morning which is normally not possible as everyone is in a rush to get to school or work.

How nicely my kids get along most of the time and how lucky I am to have them.

How much more relaxed we all are without the commute.

How material things are mostly not very important.

Real life:
The birdsong has been good. The 1955 levels of road traffic.
How cheerful & friendly almost everyone is when I see them out & about.

Sunny midday bike rides with the family almost every day.
Working to very loud music.
How every scientist and her sister thought they could stick their oar in.
A lot of bad science being publicised.
Journalists emailing me for opinions (especially hope to forget that one)

Online:
Misinformation, hysteria, vigilanti-ism (sp?), judgementalism, dogmatic positions, blinkered thinking.

In my head:
Getting addicted to the adrenaline.
Feeling overwhelmed & confused by loss of structure & wondering if any pathway could have been better than any other. Would 350k deaths have been better than 2 yrs of this & all the social damage? Surely not... but...?

Missing my friends. Missing going to work. Really struggling to work from home. But enjoying my one year old being off nursery. And wishing my five year old was still at school as she's bored to death.

I really really don't like people. After this, I'm done with society really.

I totally disagree with the ‘showed us how to live with less’ message: I’ve never been so grateful to have huge amounts of craft material, books, learning resources etc as now, especially as it has made it possible to pull a stand-in primary school out of thin air. I’m never Kondoing again!

The time I'm spending with my family. We've been too busy and not connected enough prior to this (teens hiding in bedrooms) but now we are stuck together we are eating together more, talking more, playing games more. It's been quite nice.

I'm also learning that my huge to do list is going to have to be very much a long-game! It's taken the total shutdown of society for me to have time to get stuff done in the time normally expect I will get it done when I have work etc etc. I clearly need to give myself a break

350,000 premature and horrid deaths means 5 times as many are directly affected and disrupted. We wouldn’t wish that in our country would we?

That I didn’t truly appreciate all that I had.
Also that I had the time to appreciate a lot of things I have always taken for granted.

Spending time with my family and realising I’m a better mum than I thought, when a lot of the outside stresses and rushing around are taken away. And how much better my mental health has been.

I hope I remember it as the time I used to make changes going forward, and learned a lot about what really hurts me and what harms me.

Hopefully I’ll also remember it as the time we finally sorted the house out 😳

I’ll also not be forgetting how unwell I felt in a hurry! Not sure it was CV obviously but whatever I had a few weeks ago was horrific and I’ll probably be anxious about getting that unwell again. Which is a shame really as I’d just started moving past that after years of being sick with ME/fibromyalgia.

I’ll also remember the loneliness in some ways - I’ve felt quite alone at times, like I’ve lost connections, and yet connected with new and unexpected people in others, which I hope will stick out more in my memory as it’s been an amazing plus.

How quickly things can turn to shit.

And...

I totally disagree with the ‘showed us how to live with less’ message: I’ve never been so grateful to have huge amounts of craft material, books, learning resources etc as now, especially as it has made it possible to pull a stand-in primary school out of thin air. I’m never Kondoing again!

I agree with this! I’m so grateful my children were bought a ridiculous amount of craft sets for birthdays and Christmas that we haven’t had chance to use until now. And glad we’ve had the money to be able to buy more!

Also, how wonderful DH Lawrence is
Hadn’t touched him in years 😂

@Rockbird I agree, fear for me too

Some really lovely family times. Being grateful for so much.
Didnt expect to feel like this, have also had moments of anxiety of course.

Being scared.

@minkowskisbutterfly no, not same company. Spent years giving that place my all....not anymore. Will definitely not be being as helpful as I was.

How material things don't really matter. Also how a crisis brings out both the best and worst in people. Kindness sometimes comes from unexpected places

What I will remember is that just because I don't want to believe something bad will happen doesn't mean it can't happen and I will remember that humans will always believe in what they know and hope to be true, even in the face of facts and physical evidence.

That we did OK.

I was worried I'd got the start of pnd with the twisn, thankfully started to feel better a few weeks before this kicked off. DH is wfh. The 4 yo, used to school and a 121, had to compete with 4 month old twins. But we're doing ok. I see so many people struggling with the reality of their relationship under this pressure but we're doing OK.