8 months of a pandemic. Whew, that’s weird to write. I don’t know if this has happened for anyone else, but I have found the pandemic has really shrunk my circle of people. It makes sense because we go less places, we don’t go to events, and we spent a lot more time at home. The people we do see or talk to are people we work with, our neighbors, or our very close friends and family. For me, there are also seems to be a lower bandwidth for people. I find myself having less energy for certain conversations about certain topics with certain folks. If this talk is going to cost too much energy, I’m not engaging. In fact, not long ago I deleted my Facebook because I couldn’t stand reading the craziness on that damn website.

In the last months, we’ve had our energy spent on so much, it really makes you realize what a finite resource it is. And I need more time to replenish it these days. In the last months, I’ve spent my energy on maintaining awareness of so many issues facing us as a country, facing us as healthcare professionals, and what we have faced in our family. It’s felt like a relentless energy suck. So no, I don’t have the energy to listen to Covid conspiracy theories and fake facts about 5G. And I am not debating Trump. There’s no debate to be had.

Now that we are moving and thinking about saying goodbye to people, we realize there are people we haven’t talked to in quite some time. And they didn’t even know we were moving until we ran into them at Starbucks. Living somewhere for 20 years and then moving in a pandemic has definitely been odd. But I don’t feel too much regret for not being able to see everyone before we go. Sometimes we have to do what we have energy for.

We are down to 9 days until we move. 9 days of constant sunshine left. 9 days of amazing mexican food. 9 days of southern California mountains and chaparral brush. 9 days left to pack!