Normally, at the start of each new year, I print out a fresh set of calendar pages and populate the days ahead with what’s known. School closures & breaks, gymnastics, appointments, and so on.
This year….we don’t have anything to write down. I spent a lot of the day stewing over where we could go. What if we could go to Hawaii? When would we aim for? Would June be too soon? What if we aimed for next fall break? But that seems so far off. Where could we go in the meantime? Something we could look forward to in the first half of 2021? Our favorite spot in southern California? Maybe, except from what I can tell online that neck of the woods has been acting like “Pandemic huh? whut?” this whole time. Sooooo maybe not there.
What if we aimed to go to rural California, with the idea of hoping to fly but we could drive if need be? Hmmm. While I absolutely loved our last big California trip, I’m not exactly keen on using most of my days off for driving. Okay, are the Rockies any closer? But do we really want to sit around in the wilderness, when we’ve spent so much of our pandemic time so far….lonely & isolated?
After most of a day of daydreaming, I came away with nothing. No scheme. No plans. No destination decided. No timeline. Not even a flight alert or an airbnb stalked.
Every idea I came up with I talked myself out of. What if one of us gets our hours cut, after we’re foolishly locked in to a nonrefundable vacation? What if we time something for spring break…only for that to be the best time to get my mom back home? What if no vaccines have arrived by whatever date we chose, leaving me disappointed and stranded? I’d rather just have nothing (big) yet, I guess, to avoid heartbreak.
But I have to have something. Some thing to look forward to. Some thing to put on my calendar, even if only mentally. I’ve decided to make microgoals to comfort myself. One per month. Ones that are actually achievable. Tiny, little, small things.
First up: January, of course. And for that the plan is to play hooky one day to go play in the snow. Don’t tell the kids! Youngest begged to go play in the snow over winter break, his one and only goal for break. Would be totally doable….except Flagstaff has largely been in the 50s most of break. Plus we decided we’d rather aim for a random weekday anyway, one where we can be assured of smaller crowds, fewer people with the same idea.
So one day in January, we’ll wake up the kids except instead of all of us logging on to school / work, we’ll all call in “sick” and get in the car to head up north to play in the snow for a day. No specific date yet. Gonna get through at least a week of school/work first (scuse me while I cry about that in my pits of despair) and then we’ll pick a day that seems good. I’ll let you know how it goes.