Tag: random

Back to…normal?

I wonder how many times you might have said or heard someone say, “I just want life to get back to normal” over the past year (plus months)?

Perhaps the truest response was, “It won’t. There will be a new normal that will require adjustments.”

Here we are, on the cusp of the new normal, and some things haven’t changed. People are still disagreeing about wearing masks, socializing, and being vaccinated, as well as the optimal dates for going back to work, back to school, and back to travel.

I agree with those who advise that we be nice to ourselves and compassionate toward others as we begin to adjust and find our new normal. I personally know what a challenge that might be because of the surprises–good and bad–I experienced from January 2020 to now. There is no going back to pre-2020. I have uncertainty about what going forward means.

Whether or not you feel you made good use of time during the past months, or feel like you wasted time, at the very least, now can be an opportunity to reset. If you’ve already broken bad habits or formed new and better ones, keep moving forward or building on those.

You can also see this time as an opportunity to make positive changes in your professional and personal life. Did you discover some toxic influences during the pandemic? Did you come up with ideas to make your home or work life better? Did you endure circumstances or events that you never want to endure again? Maybe now is the time to change what you can or to let go of what isn’t nourishing your better self or your environment.

I learned a lot since January of 2020. Some of it was painful. Some of it was sustaining. I genuinely have no idea how it all will impact the future.

I’m grateful that I can think about the future.

Now there is a word for it

I have print news delivered to my email every morning, and yesterday, one of the bits was about “languishing.” I can’t get back to the article (behind a paywall, and I’ve hit my limit for the week), but I found a tongue-in-cheek response to it in The Guardian that you might enjoy or relate to. (Note I left their punctuation as they have it, even though it clashes with my preferences.)

Neither depressed nor flourishing? How languishing defines modern life

If the pandemic has left you devoid of promise, purpose and delight, sociologists have the perfect term to describe it

Name: Languishing.

Age: At least as old as the chaise longue.

Appearance: An existence devoid of promise, purpose and delight.

And then you die. Pretty much.

Well, this has been fun. It’s not supposed to be fun. Languishing is the absence of wellbeing. A recent New York Times article called it “the neglected middle child of mental health”.

I don’t get it, although, paradoxically, I think I might have it. Think of languishing as the vast, meh-coloured desert between flourishing and depression, a general condition of non-thriving.

Otherwise known as life. Welcome aboard, mate. It’s certainly the prevalent malaise of the age, thanks to Covid.

What’s Covid got to do with it? The endless, grinding anxiety associated with the pandemic has left us all some way off peak performance, unable to focus or concentrate.

Isn’t this just a made-up name for people failing to get on with things? Knowing the term – coined in 2002 by the sociologist Corey Keyes – is the first step to battling the condition.

Sounds to me as if there’s nothing wrong with these languishing types that isn’t wrong with the rest of us. That’s the problem – languishing may well be a great undiagnosed epidemic. Long before Covid, Keyes’s studies suggested as much as 12% of the researched population fit the criteria for languishing.

Is it a mental illness, then? No, but while the symptoms may not be clinically significant, languishing is a potential risk factor for future mental illness.

I really don’t feel that bad – just the usual sort of, you know, not good. Languishing may itself cause you to overlook the symptoms of languishing.

In that case, what are we supposed to do about it? According to the NYT article, the secret to combating languishing lies in the pursuit of the “just manageable difficulty”.

The what now? Taking on a small but achievable challenge – a project, a puzzle, a modest goal – that can sharpen your focus and rekindle your enthusiasm for life.

What else did the article recommend? I don’t know. I couldn’t concentrate long enough to read the whole thing.

I understand. As Hamlet said, “What’s the point?” Hamlet did not say that.

I don’t care. I know the feeling.

Good for you. What now? Beats me. I was going to look out the window, but the curtains are closed.

Do say: “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!”

Don’t say: “Have you thought about making some sourdough bread?”


Languishing in 2018 before languishing was cool. I do try to learn from my dogs, and they’re not worried about being languishers. When I hit a day of this, I remind myself it’s okay. When I hear about it from others, I try to remind them it’s okay. I’m ever wary of it becoming the norm, though, and people prone to depression may want to do the same.

I have followed the advice mentioned here of taking on a small but achievable challenge, and I note how others are doing the same: learning to cook something new. Light gardening. Taking up a new hobby like birding in one’s own backyard. Starting a journal with poems of two lines. Collaging. Cataloging and organizing one’s 465 dolls. (Just me?)

We can’t think of all the big challenges and issues all the time. Neither languishing nor the small tasks we undertake are signs of laziness. They are efforts to care for our mental health.

Twilight Zone

I think the only reactions I had to my second vaccine were some soreness in the arm that got the shot and fatigue, but the fatigue could be from my weird sleep patterns of late. I’ve spent a lot of time asleep since the shot on Thursday, except I had labs drawn on Friday (routine; every three months; no big deal). Also, seasonal allergies have kicked in and may also be affecting my sleep. Yay.

I’ve been having a lot of strange dreams while I oversleep, with the usual casts of too many. It’s random nonsense, and when I wake up, I’m usually all, What? before I forget it all.

This is another of the posters I unrolled the other day. It’s from 1989, and I’m completely clueless how or where I got it. I never saw the Twilight Zone movie, though I’ve seen many of the original TV shows in syndication.

Do you sometimes feel like you’re trapped in an episode of “The Twilight Zone?” I read an article in the Atlantic Monthly about how the pandemic has been messing with our brains, making us forget things we used to do or wonder why we’re doing some things now. This is the link, but it could be behind a paywall; sorry if you can’t access it. The good news is, you’re not going crazy, your brain has prioritized what you think about. This is to help you cope with your new realities during the pandemic, and as your life changes–maybe returning to some old normals, or maybe welcoming some new normals–your brain will adapt again.

You’ll be all right; hang on.

A little extra TLC


Although I gave these little friends a moon bath to clear and clean them on the night of the full moon, their home was a dusty mess. Like a Metaphysical Hazel (a reference you won’t get unless you are of a certain age), I decided they were overdue for housekeeping.


First up, got rid of their old cotton mattresses.


I gave their case a good cleaning and put in their new mattresses.


The wands got some cleaning, too.


After a water bath, they’re back in their freshly cleaned home, and some new friends have even moved in.

Good housekeeping makes good energy.

Oh là là

I haven’t been sleeping well the last few days, so I started redoing the Writing Sanctuary–the guest bedroom where I write and color and think and apparently give myself panic attacks for no apparent reason.

So… new bedding, and for some reason, the only thing I could find that I liked is French-themed. Which is fine. France is almost like another character in the Neverending Saga.


Tom said he figures this is a prelude to my saying we have to travel to France to do research. That’s fine, too, except for the flying thing and pandemics and…

Also messed around with the bookcase I face daily while I write so I’d have some new things to look at to inspire me.

That’s it. That’s the whole post. Except it felt like something just bit me on the back. I hope it’s not a scorpion. SEE? Shit like that is what keeps me awake.