Pandemic Fatigue, Now What?
It’s not just us, our kids are feeling it too. What we can do together and separately to manage pandemic fatigue.
There are so many benefits to staying at home. The obvious is we are safer from the virus when we do. Also not commuting and being with our loved ones, especially our children, is time we never would have had before. But the lack of separation from our home and the school and work environment is blurring a line of when it’s time to dedicated to each. We may find ourselves always working — from the constant snack making to the never ending Zoom calls.
These are the 3 manageable things Kayan, my son and I are doing to keep sane, happy and physically and mentally ready to tackle the school and work week:
We exercise and meditate together, every day.
Before our day starts, Kayan and I find 20 minutes together. We spend 5 minutes of it meditating and because we both love LeBron, we sit together, open up Calm on our phones and listen to a guided meditation featuring LeBron James. We then spend the next 15 minutes either kicking around a soccer ball or stretching but we use that time to also talk about how we are preparing for our day and what we need from each other to make it successful.
We play TV critic
After dinner, Kayan and I will watch a show together and then, we have a Ebert and Roeper moment afterwards, debating what we loved and what we didn’t. Our healthy debates benefit us both. He hones his critical thinking skills, flexes his creative muscles and learns how to respectfully disagree with me. I learn what Gen Z is thinking and feeling and surprising or not, many of the complaints aren’t just about the content itself but how we access it and more so, how can we find more content based on what we love.
One show we can both agree on is Family Karma and it’s coming back for a second season. Watch the Trailer: Family Karma on Bravo
We turn off
And, I mean both ourselves and our devices. Since we use our devices for school and work, it’s not healthy to have them on all night. Even if we are not looking at what’s due or what’s new on email, we are physically interacting with a device that’s truly our workspace. It’d be like staying at the office and not working. You’d probably feel the nag to work and hence not let your mind rejuvenate.
We can’t always turn off at the same time every night but our rule is by 8 pm, all devices and ourselves need to start powering down.
What are you doing to stay sane? We will get through this together, and get back to spending time together in real life. In the meantime, stay safe, and stay healthy.
