Where Do We Go From Here?

Monday July 19, 2021 // Well Past Bedtime

I’d like to believe every parent of a toddler has had the same life-fulfilling experience I’ve had over the past 16 months of being at home with my kid all-day, everyday. That’s not reality though. People are begging to get out of the house. Go back to normal. Get back to their old lives. Not this guy though.

My wife and I are some of the few people I know that have both remained working from home full-time during Covid with a toddler at home. I can think of a very small number of friends and coworkers that are even remotely in our situation. Regardless, I can only speak for myself. And I’m left wondering, where do we go from here?

For me, life hasn’t been the same since summer 2019 when my kid was born. It hasn’t been 16 months of life-changing events. It’s been 24+ months. We were just becoming normal-ish humans again — going out to restaurants, sleeping most of the night, minimal spit-up on our clothes — when March 2020 hit. Then our lives, like yours and everyone else’s, were jerked into something entirely unexpected.

At this point, what is “normal”? There isn’t a normal anymore. It’s just life now and we live it and do the best we can.

Shoving us back into our cubes and commutes and coworker happy hours and khakis and baby showers and crowded airplanes doesn’t sound like fun to me. We were so deep into that lifestyle that we never could envision or better yet live an alternative.

Where we go from here is still in flux. Many of us, including myself, at some point will be pressured to return to the old normal. Lots are going to go back. Nothing will change. Everyone has to make their own choice. Walk their own path. But at least we know these paths exist now.

Where we go from here will hopefully be up to us going forward.

– Josh // knocking the rust off the keyboard

A note for my future self if I ever come back and read this… The Nationals just won a game 18-1. You’ll never see the same baseball game twice.