The days after I got back from a ski trip to Switzerland last week, I was feeling “sick” with a runny nose, a persistent cough and some headache. No worse than a run of the mill cold (not that I have a lot of colds… ). I was able to work, but quit a couple hours early each day that week.

I had a PCR test last Wednesday during an acute illness visit for the Novavax study I’m in. I’d reported feeling sick in my nightly app check-in, and they called me in for the visit. I honestly wouldn’t in a million years have thought it was Covid. But there you are. The rapid test I took today (where the “test” line was brighter than the “control” line confirms it, and does its part to keep me on the quarantining straight and narrow.

I feel fine. Weird. But OK weird.

This is lingering longer than a “typical” cold, but it’s not so terrible, especially with no kids at home to take care of. But I do feel subtle differences. I’m learning (fresh! Though of course the information has been out there) it’s typical Covid.
I’m unfocused, unhinged, almost disembodied. Things that seemed urgent even two weeks ago no longer have that hold on me. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s more that I am picking and choosing more carefully what to care about. I have to conserve the energy I have.

My silo feels fragile.

The empty-nest lifestyle means I don’t have anyone to talk with about my decisions, my ideas, my day-to-day thoughts. Self-quarantining makes it worse. Brain fog exacerbates it even more. It’s hard to tease out exactly why, but I find myself second guessing my decisions – big and small – more in the past week with Covid than in the last year (or the past decade) without: maybe I shouldn’t have returned the iPad I got for my trip and then didn’t use? Maybe I should wait another year to move to Maine? Am I feeding the snake the right rats??

I’m tired, but my mind is on overdrive, not in hibernation.
Thoughts flit into and out of my mind like frenetic fireflies at sunset. Then they disappear like wispy bits of smoke in a gust of wind or even a gentle breeze.

My thoughts come and go and change in a femtosecond.

Yes, it’s that quick. This past week I find I have so many new thoughts – thoughts that form, evolve and flit away before I can capture them properly. I’ve come to realize it’s OK not to capture them all. I don’t need to commit them to paper (or Google docs) with ink and effort and definitely don’t need to act on them. I cannot manage them all. The good ones will resurface and the chaff will fall away. Being freed from acting on all these thoughts frees me to enjoy just having them and feeling my brains working.

I feel at peace in my Covid body, which is weird

I am totally OK not taking any action on some things (mostly Big Picture world stuff, which I can’t do much about anyway and don’t have energy right now to even try) but I’m laser-focused on others (like making sure to connect in-person with the small handful of people who add value to my life). I’ve made more phone calls this week than in a usual month and I have plans to make more. I’m almost done crafting a 75-page photo book of my vacation. I’m chipping away again at a series of letters I’ve been writing for a year.

I am doing what I need to feel better myself, and not worrying as much about healing the world. It’s truly OK, because I can’t do both right now. I wonder how long this will last? Or if it’s permanent?

Strangely, I am OK with this

I feel so peaceful in this semi-tired, semi-spacey Covid positive state. Like I am on good drugs. Like I wouldn’t mind if it lasted. I was talking with a friend I ran into at Wegman’s today who said she thought this was part of the pandemic. She suggested that the reflection, the grand resignation, the national thoughtfulness is part of Covid – a feature not a bug.

I wonder if that’s true. And then I let that thought go so I have time and energy to ponder the next thought.

When I am feeling better, I will get around to worrying about the world.