Nothing says early onset cabin fever like a day pacing around the house every hour to hit your stand goal.

We’re not even half a day into a 6-county wide lockdown here in the Bay Area where you’re only allowed to leave home for essential errands like food and medicine. You wouldn’t know those things were still to be accessible by the empty shelves and eyes-down of everyone in the store pillaging for toilet paper, rice and beans (thank GOODNESS I joined a bean club a few months back that has me well stocked with about 10 bags of dried beans that I half-regretted until last week). I’d share but, you know, quarantine.

It’s chaos. And I’m a part of the herd mentality. The hour I received news that there would be a lockdown, I too ran to the store to get who knows what. With a very vague and pretty normal shopping list, I got a lot of my usuals and not so usuals just to, what? Feel prepared? Feel like I was doing everything I could to better this situation? I’m well stocked on puzzles, books and wine, so at least there’s that.

Not wanting to go to the germ-infested gym (though I totally did yesterday, and the day before that, and…) but also wanting so badly to sleep in after a late night watching Book Smart with the new roomie (see it, worth it), I decided instead to go for a ‘Rona-free rainy run through the park which I have a feeling I will be doing a lot more of these days. In efforts to avoid the occasional puddle here and there, I’m pretty sure people just thought I was practicing social distancing so I’d say that was a win win. Dry shoes, socially distanced.

In all seriousness, I’ve read the articles about social distancing and moderate to extreme isolation and the benefits it has on slowing the spread of this pandemic. I don’t do idle well and my career and life thrives on being around people at closer distances than 6 feet away. This is going to be a struggle for a lot of us and I’m willing to step out of the first world mentality and step into doing my part to slow things down. It’s temporary. And we have to keep coming back to that. This whole situation is a gratitude, meditation, mindfulness and internal practice. An exercise in self-care, rest, perspective, patience, letting-go, surrendering and finding calm, peace and loving each other and ourselves more than ever.

Plus, it will make sipping wine with large groups of people crammed on a single sofa coughing all over one another (okay, kidding) that much more enjoyable again.