The Weekly Wrap: August 22, 2021

I go back to the office tomorrow. Tomorrow! And, I have intense Sunday scaries about it.

Part of this is due to my overall anxiety/panic attack issues. I am a creature of routine. When that routine gets disrupted I get cranky and anxious. I like my routines. I really like the groove I developed while working from home. I created boundaries between work and life. I got daycare routines nailed down. I managed to get a nice mix of me/work/family time figured out. Heck - I even was able to fit in more exercise than I had in the months before the pandemic. 

Now all of that is being upended.

My fear is not so much about work - I LOVE my job - but about everything else. My anxiety rears its head when I can't control things. In this kind of situation, there is so much that is out of my control. I can make plans, set a new routine, wear a mask, wash hands, and all that... but there is just so little else in my control. I can't control what our office looks like. I can't control the actions of the people around me (although I will most certainly remind them to wear a mask). I can't decide if/when we roll back reopening, change our hours, and handle whatever chaos is coming with our planned remodel. I can't control the emotions of everyone in a year when we all have compounding trauma. 

Plus, there are a ton of unknowns. How many people will visit the library? Will our teaching/reference workload be more online or in-person? Will there be an on-campus outbreak? Will my daycare end up closing? Will? Will? Will?

I hate not knowing. 

What I am doing is taking it one day at the time and giving myself as much time and patience as I am able. Everything is changing - but everything always changes. This is just a bigger change - but it's still just a day-by-day thing like any other.

How are you handling all the recent changes? 

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• The best Young Adult books of all time. [Time]
• Women don't want to have babies in a country that doesn't support them. Who can blame them? [WaPo]
• An inside look at how one journalist drafted a 5000 word piece on the cost of childcare. [Culture Study]
• Read this piece and made a note to give extra thanks, support, and champagne to the wonderful woman who has been the vacation mom on our annual ski trips. [Culture Study]
• I support this quote "...libraries cannot fix fucking everything, and if we’re being asked to fix everything, pay us appropriately." [Culture Study]
• Making your love language work for you in the workplace. [Career Contessa]
• We might want to rethink all that plexiglass. [NYT]
• Reader Submission: Is it satire or just "Oh no! Too real!" sad? [The New Yorker]
  

• Embracing the old school craft of letter writing. [Life Kit]
• When are we finally allowed to say we are not okay? [The Real Question]
• Serial suing for disability rights and access. [The Daily]

• Making teeny tiny pottery! [Produkt.hunter]
• This is either an urban orangery harvest... or a very hungry tractor. [@crk5]
• Since we were in quarantine with the kiddo for most of the week, it didn't feel like the right time to watch anything that required concentration. Thus, we opted to binge watch all of the specials from Top Gear and The Grand Tour. They're comfort shows for us. [Amazon Prime]

• I didn't know what this week would like. Post-vacation/quarantine weeks are always a mixed bag. For meals, we opted to go with some easy items in the rotation. We did go off-recipe one night and had chicken sausage, couscous, and salad. We tried a new flavor of sausage, bacon and pineapple, and found it to be delightful. Will definitely get again. [Aidells]

• I have not been back to the office, aside from three random pop-ins, since March 2020. That is 17 months of working from home. I'm not even sure I remember how to go back to the office. To help get me back on track, I'm creating a page in my bullet journal to act as a living reminder list. I will create a section on what I need to do the night before and what I need to do the morning of. Hopefully, this helps keep me organized until I get used to things again. I'm honestly afraid that I'll forget to put on office appropriate attire.