My new sleeping in is 7:30pm which is about 2 hours later than the usual work week.

I’d normally feel like I was slacking but honestly, it feels good to get a solid 8 hours in each night and still wake up before the day needs to start now that there is no traffic to beat, no commute, no shower even. Okay kidding. But honestly…dry shampoo.

Morning Zoom HIIT class and coffee, duh.

Since everything has been cancelled, I suppose this includes my birthday which will no longer include embarrassing myself as I run into walls to stop my roller-skating feet and will now be a virtual hang with my girls in tiny squares on a screen. Such is the new normal. Though I have to say, I have the best friends who are taking social distancing and quarantine very seriously, something it’s taken me a bit longer to accept. You know something serious is up when your friends advise you not to get back out there in the dating world right now. “You know what, don’t put yourself out there, stay inside, all the cool kids are doing it.”

And it was tough to listen to this 180-degree advice. I had plans to meet up with someone I had a wonderful first date with just last Friday. With my friend living abroad being sent home and the severity of the Corona situation feeling like it amplified in the past 24 hours, I checked in with some friends on how they handled dating in these times. I came to the rough decision that where I could lower any sort of risk, I should — for me, for him, for the community. I hated making that decision as my heart wanted nothing more than to cook dinner with this great man and enjoy a glass of wine, some laughs and let the crazy world go on around us for a bit.

Before burning a new candle and pouring that glass of wine, I took a walk to the top of the Mosaic steps and then to Turtle Hill where everyone had the SAME idea. It’s a sad moment when your past happy places become places of new anxiety, keeping a safe distance between strangers you used to want to meet and strike up conversation with.

In the end, the virtual date felt like the right thing to do in this moment and I genuinely enjoyed getting to know this person more even if only divided by a few miles and two screens. If there’s one thing I can do in these times, it’s get creative and I’m happy he was willing to do the same. This feels like some weird blend of Love Is Blind and Survivor. At the end of this we’re all going to have painted faces on volleyballs huddled around our Amazon TV fireplaces.

Something I’ve come to realize about myself in the face of chaos, uncertainty and anxiety is that I turn to others I trust and look up to for advice on how they are handling the situation. I know there’s a lot of value in turning to each other in times like this but I feel like I missed a very crucial step in tuning-in and checking-in with that intuition piece that tends to leave just as quickly as it arrived. Funny what a mirror times like this are for how we deal with unchartered situations.

I’ve been very aware of this behavior as it pertains to relationship advice. I’ve grown to be okay sitting with the feels, maybe checking in with one person and trying to sort out where my feels really are before being inundated with advice and others’ experience. I’ve realized that though hearing others’ out can be a very crucial part in gaining perspective, I often become disassociated with my true feelings on the matter and that little voice in my head gets lost and I spend however long rationalizing myself back to that same voice who peace’d out when the other voices grew too loud. I’ve done the same in this critical time and perhaps Mother Nature’s shaking an even bigger finger at me to listen in first, then listen out.

We hear a lot in yoga (and I’ve been practicing a lot of yoga these days) to root to rise. It’s one of my favorite expressions and it holds meaning for a lot in my life right now. Gaining my own ground before I can rise up, reach-out and truly grow. All this quarantining has turned me into a tree.