Time is beginning to blur together. I did not realize it had been almost a month since my last blog post until I looked at the dates. Tomorrow is Memorial Day, and it seems that holidays and the change in temperature are the only things helping me to keep track of the flow of time. It has been sixty-eight days since I have been in my classroom (at least to teach and not grab something I needed to work from home), and the time we have been in self-isolation feels both way longer and shorter than that.

I’m not writing this to complain, just merely to explore this observation of how strange time has started to feel with doing pretty much the same thing day after day. And the fact of the matter is that we must continue doing this, at least those of us who can do so for our work and/or school. We’ve all lost of lot of time, experiences, and for some of us, people, but we must stay the course to protect ourselves and others from this disease and keep the medical system from exploding.

While we don’t necessarily need to make the most of this time, we do need to find things that will keep us grounded in it. My husband is using weight loss as his way to keep himself grounded by celebrating a weight loss milestone with a celebratory weekend of good food that he is excited to cook on his own. Since that sort of method doesn’t work for me, I have decided to start my master’s degree program a little earlier than I planned, which is through an online university already. With my first week ending today, I hope to see an improvement in my time keeping because week to week, there are things to look forward to and deadlines to meet, which help to make time more defined.

Regardless of whether you feel like time is just whizzing by your or going at a snail’s crawl, just know that you are not alone in this. We are all having to make sacrifices of various types and sizes and will have to continue making sacrifices for awhile longer. Even though we are still closed up in our homes (those of us that can be or know they should be, at least), we are in this together. One day at a time, even though that sometimes that feels hard to distinguish. It’ll be over before we know it, even if that’s just because we have lost all concept of time by that point.