Member-only story
How Do We Cope When There Is Not Enough Time To Recover
I burned the steaks I had to take a second mortgage out to buy last week. Our rental doesn’t have an air vent so I open the windows to ventilate. The house starts filling up with smoke from Canada. It’s a weird day.
My daughter texts to say she is at the gym and the news headlines say, “Wildfire smoke blots out the sun and NYC vending machines are offering drug paraphernalia.” Mom, is this the end? If it is I’m ordering a pizza and eating a box of Twinkies. Screw the diet.
While it’s an interesting combination of events for a headline we agree that post-COVID it’s like okay so there is some smoke. I’m not on fire. I don’t live in NYC. Too bad they have a drug problem, but I got enough going on in my own life.
I end our conversation by telling her about my self-disgust over my lack of motivation and energy to get more involved in the issues of the day, but waking up and getting through what I got going on seems insurmountable.
In some vague memory from the past everything was manageable. The evenings were enough time to recover from the day and the weekends enough time to recover from the week, but that time is over. There is no amount of time that is enough to recover from anything.
“Throughout life we adapt as our windows of…
