Coping

I have been employing ALL my coping mechanisms lately. The healthy (exercise! meditation! setting small goals and meeting them!) and the decidedly less so (wine, junk food, endless social media). Its a very predictable slide from having the best intentions every morning to "f it" by 5 pm. And then waking up again roiling in anxiety and regret.

I am very very anxious right now. There is so much uncertainty. And my MIL (who ramps up my anxiety 100-fold at the best of times) is here. And I'm being pulled in so many directions and failing at many of them. I have NO IDEA what is going on with the kids distance learning today, because I started tele-health at 9 AM this morning and haven't left my bedroom (and won't, until the last patient is done at 3:30). I haven't written a SINGLE WORD of the paper I'm supposed to be working on. I am seriously afraid to check how many bottles of wine we've consumed in the past 3 weeks.

And thats besides the very real underlying fear about how this is going to play out with a lack of competent leadership and no real strategy for mitigating illness and death. Every time I look at the news (which I am limiting to once/day), I feel sick to my stomach at some new atrocity or idiocy.

Taking it day by day helps. Just doing the next thing I have in my planner. Work out. Meditate. See patient 1. Patient 2. Patient 3. Walk dog. Make dinner. Put kids to bed. Accidentally stay up too late watching Ozark, drinking and demolishing cheese puffs. Go to bed. Wake up and do it again.

If I think too far in advance it all falls apart. What is the rest of the year going to look like---if you asked me 2 months ago, I'd have given you a very detailed play by play of our family's entire plan. Literally everything is up in the air right now and I feel completely unmoored.

They are talking as if we will be back in the office seeing patients as usual in June. I registered for a course in June that they still haven't cancelled and I need to get my money back. I don't want to do it virtually, I want to be immersed in it and paying full attention, not half-listening to talks while I break up fights, serve snacks, and fold the laundry which I am 100% sure will happen if I try to do it from home. I was also supposed to take two weeks off in June for a local-fun staycation and then vacation with my family. I had been waiting for this beach trip for 2 years (since our last one). I'm over being sad about missed vacations, but, still. I'm sure all camps will be closed. What about our August camping trip that we've also been planning for 2 years? Will school open in September? Child care?

So yeah. I "to-do-list" my way through the day and numb myself through the night. And the calendar marches on slowly.