Being a last-minute merchant adds to stress

I’M going on holidays. My first week off since Christmas and I can’t wait. The family running joke is that I always pack 20 minutes before I leave, it is not because I am laid back, it is because I am an idiot. It’s the same reason I am always late, I think I have more time than I do so I start doing something other than get ready, and then, lo and behold, I am late. I do it every time, that’s what makes me an idiot. Especially because it makes me so ridiculously stressed.

It wasn’t intentional but one of the things I seem to have been doing in lockdown is unpacking my less inspired, inspiring and inspirational mental tendencies. Life will land you with stresses, why do I create unnecessary ones? I’m going to call it a result that for this week away in West Cork, although I leave on Saturday, I was packed by Wednesday night. I also had work sorted and all the things I had meant to have done not only done, but with time to spare. The fact that I fretted weirdly about this new lack of stress is a whole other lockdown’s work.

However, I know that part of my anxiety is about leaving my children. My adult children. Since March, I have seen the two of them pretty much every day. Not for years have we spent so much time together, never have we all been in the house so much and seen so few other people. Events are coinciding so I will be largely apart from them for three weeks and although I am looking forward to it, as they are, I feel some anxiety, both of the separation kind and the leaving-the-house kind. There’s a general pandemic-based fear too. But these are all parts of the ever changing new normal. We are endlessly adaptable. One day, I may even stop being late.