THANKFUL FRIDAY
Cindy Maddera
I am back in the office this week. The new schedule has me in here every other week from 9-5 because we cannot have more than two people in the office or in the microscope rooms at a time. It is a very strange environment. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was surprised to see that my desk was exactly how I left it. My desk calendar is still on the month of March. The stack of slides that I had been working on during my last week in the office were sitting neatly in a corner. I don’t know what to do with these slides now. The Post-doc I was running them for is no longer at the institute. I may have inherited five books of eyeball histology slides.
Before the shut down, I was usually the only one in the office between 7:30 and 8:30 in the morning. I had the place all to myself because no one here is quite the early bird that I seem to be. There were rare occasions when someone would walk in around 8:00 am and it would always throw me off. Once I came in and my boss was already sitting in his office. I stopped dead in my tracks and asked in a panic if I was late, which is silly. No one is either late or early. We just work our hours. Any way, for a whole hour in the mornings, everything would be quiet. I spent that time cleaning microscopes and starting them for the day. I would do a quick run through to make sure the systems were running properly and then I would go get a cup a coffee. That routine has changed a whole lot. For one thing, there’s no going any where to get a cup of coffee any more. I bring a thermos and I’m not supposed to leave my floor unless it is to exit the building or take my viral test. There is also no need to start up all of the microscopes, since there’s only two of us at any given time on a microscope. Now, most of my day looks like my one morning hour in pre-apocalypse time. I am all alone while I set up slides in the slide scanner. There is no one else in the office while I am extracting image files. I have set aside my headphones and just play my music to fill up the empty space with some kind of noise. It is kind of spooky and probably doesn’t help that I am have been reading Station Eleven, which is completely inappropriate reading material for today’s climate.
Even though I don’t have to be at work until 9 am, I’m still awake at 5:30am. So I get up. I do my X-tend Barre class and then I take Josephine for walk. I feed all of the animals when we get back and let the chickens out for the day before I hop into the shower. I have just enough time to drink one cup of coffee while checking my email and getting my morning news update before I head off to work. It is a stark contrast to how I used to start my days where I would just start out running. Shower, dress, feed dog, feed humans, rush out the door hoping you didn’t leave your lunch sitting on the counter. This new routine feels decadent and some times while I’m walking the dog, I stop and ask myself “Do I have time for this?” I have to remind myself that I do actually have the time for a slower morning. I do not have to hit the ground running and I’m really starting to fall in love with this new routine. So much so that I have been working on convincing myself that I could bundle up enough to go on these dog walks during the winter months.
I am always struggling to be flexible in my structured life. Routines are my jam. I need them. I am wrecked every time my routine is disrupted because of my lack of flexibility. Kind of ironic considering my yoga practice and my super bendy body. This year the Universe looked at my resolutions for the year and said '“Nope! This year you going to work on having a less structured life.” My reply to this has been a big ‘FUCK YOU!’ until this week. Some time mid-week, I felt a shift. I was sleeping better at night with less violent dreams. I was no longer waking up with half-moons pressed into my palms from clinching my fists at night. Yes, apparently I have been clinching my fists so tightly during the night that not only have I been leaving nail impressions into my palms, but my fingers are aching. Some of that better night’s sleep may be due to the new air conditioning, but I also think that it has something to do with coming to terms with the idea that my day-to-day does not (cannot) have a structured schedule.
Please keep in mind that this does not mean I have thrown out all structure and routine. The things in my life that I have control over are still very structured. Food, the way I exercise, household chores. These are things I can keep structured. These are the roots of my tree, anchoring me so that the rest of this tree can just sway with the wind.