Zoom school has been a very new alternate universe for many of us. If you are like me you quickly realized the lifestyle you had set up with your family dynamic didn’t actually work with the new demands of helping facilitate school while working whether from home or in an office like me.
But I had a problem.... COVID had required longer work hours plus more time focusing on my children’s schooling and on top of that everything takes longer (waiting in lines at stores and waiting til end of day so I didn’t have to drag my kids with me and expose them). Remember work life balance is important of course, HA, HA, Ha how was I supposed to achieve anything like that when both activities were very essential?
On one hand I had my children, the love of my life needing lots of extra attention and that meant 4-5 hours of running back and forth from school issues to being in the kitchen cooking for my family; talk about causing my own personal ADD (which I can tell you I don’t regularly have but zoom schooling felt like it was coming on).
The other hand I had work, which for me was of course a paycheck but it was so much more during this time as an essential health care worker. While I am not intentionally treating COVID patients I am treating all the unexpected consequences of COVID, such as neck pain, back pain, depression, Adrenal fatigue, Headaches, Insomnia and the list goes on and on and on. I also found that being available for my patients was a way of “standing in the gap” to bring hope when some had none. In fact in many cases, they had not even seen another person in weeks, sometimes months. But like with all things - the emotional pressure as well as the longer hours due to sanitization were tiring.
But Remember work - life balance.....Not really possible for this past year but survival is and how do you/I achieve that with as much grace and health as possible? Here is my list of things I have done to achieve a manageable work/life balance. Will you please share your tricks with me as well since no two lives are lived the same.
Let the house be dirtier but tidy. Keeping a tidy home will actually help your brain relax even if you don’t have time to sweep every corner. This was hard for me but I had to let it go cause my kids’ school was more important.
Buy food that is easy to prepare. This meant buying some pre-done pot stickers and steaming some veggies and calling it a meal.
Quitting some of our extra activities just to keep things sane and focused, this meant even some of my fun things like a women’s class I went to which went online.
Remind yourself that right now your job is school for a while then it is work, don’t try and multi-task, it will exhaust you and make you crazy. This was hard for me since I am used to making homemade meals, keeping a tidy house, doing office paperwork, blogging and other things while at home in the morning or afternoon then rushing off to work.
5. Take Adrenal supportive herbs such as Eleuthero and Ashwagandha, licorice and other herbs to keep you balanced and calm. I have been on an adrenal type support for some time during the pandemic and it helps me survive the workload and keep a good sleep schedule. 6. Get house cleaning, Meal service or some other service that reduces your workload even a little..... We hired our cleaners from our office to do our home every other week and they take great care in sanitization and keeping themselves from contaminating our home. I am much less stressed from this since they have started. So, as we all continue to survive and stressed out our ever growing ADD brain, may you find some rest in the chaos even if it is small. And like that famous kids song that is sung a lot in our home “Let it Go.” from Frozen. For me, it’s the hardest part but I can’t outlast the pandemic, so I must survive for myself and my children. I pray all of you will be healthy and safe in 2021.