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A New Normal

 What if I don't really want to go back to "normal?"  As the pandemic wanes, our daily lives are slowly returning to a schedule that resembles the "before times."  Birthday party invites are showing up again, sports schedules are continuing to increase, and summer camps are open for business.  As excited as I am to go to rock shows again, attend sporting events, and eat inside amazing restaurants weekly - there are some things that I have truly lost my taste for.  It is time for me to think about how I want the new normal to look.

In all honesty, I'm simply not sure I want to go back to the way everything was before the pandemic. Spending time with people I hardly know, having conversations about things we hardly care about is no longer the way I want to spend my time. Not that I spent a lot of my pre-pandemic time doing this - it is just that now I have grown more accustomed to more deliberate conversations in smaller groups.  So, yeah - I would like to have more quality conversations with people that I'm closer to, one on one and in situations that feel more real - more honest. 

The pandemic has acted as a great reset.  It is not that the pandemic made our world any different, it is that the pandemic made us different. And I am now realizing that it made me different - or at least drew my attention to what I most want things to look like for me.

And things look different already for our family.  Avery has wrapped up travel soccer this year (an likely for the determined future), and Noah is running track for the high school now.  Our schedules look different now, and our weekends are more free again.  And I find that I am so excited to have time for all of us to find Saturday adventures again.  

Our recent trip to Austin has served to illuminate this situation even more clearly.  I really loved Austin, and just enjoyed being in Texas as well.  It brought back memories of Jessica and I choosing to live in Asheville back in 1999.  We had visited several times, and just loved everything about it.  And at some point we just decided that whether or not we had jobs, or if Jessica was (or was not) accepted into grad school - we needed to live in Asheville.  And we just went for it.  Man I am still proud of our younger selves for doing that, and it has been a great adventure for us and our kids. It is high time that we approach our post-pandemic time with that same spirit of intentionality.

I can't wait to get started!


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