This Is Not A Vacation

It has been a few months of what feels like an accidental vacation. First off, I cringe at and fully acknowledge the privilege dripping off those words, so let’s just let that be. As we all hunkered into COVID-19 lockdown mode, I was harboring personal opinions, along the lines of “this is overkill.” I honestly thought the whole thing, especially in Montana, would blow over in a week or two. Almost three full months later, I can see how my initial attitude set me up for where I am today.

 

For the last three years, I’ve been building a long note full of audacious, moonshot dreams as I imagine my life in the future, according to my values and my desires. One such dream is to work from home full time and be trusted with the autonomy that comes with it. But settling into lockdown after the first few weeks of excitement and novelty, I let all the discipline, the alarms, the systems and habits, all fall one by one by the wayside. I slowly and sleepily descended into the accidental vacation. I had grand visions of the corana age being a time for personal reinvention, but alas, it may have been in the wrong direction.

 

But it’s time to take extreme ownership (thanks, Jocko) of what I’ve let slip and slide. It’s time for me to get off the couch, turn off the TV, set down the popcorn, and return to life. Maybe not the life that was considered normal before all this, but the life that I want to craft and have wanted to craft from the beginning. I’m done being sorry for myself and disappointed in the ways I don’t live up to my own standards. I want a life much like this as a dream goal, so I need to start working and playing like it’s a dream and refuse to drift into the version where it becomes a nightmare. Old systems are coming back, new systems are joining the team. This is not happening to me, I’m happening to this. This is not a drill.

 

This is not a vacation.