New & improved...!

Or just Different. And insisting it's in a glass-half-full kinda way...

I read this thing online about how people's personalities have changed since the beginning of the pandemic. This dude was saying that people basically just became MORE of whatever they were already.

It's one of those statements that you can stretch to fit any example you want to offer. For me? Well, I'm pretty much doing about as much yoga as I was before all of this started, anyway...

I met someone, a stranger that I just happened to talk to in a park last summer. It was awkward and I realized that it'd been a long time since I'd introduced myself to someone new, face-to-face. It was like walking in shoes that didn't fit, messing up my stride.

Do you feel like you might have become more of YOU than you realize? That's hard to say, if you've found yourself on your own more than you used to be.

Life's been restricted in so many ways, but it seems like the external restrictions are fading and shifting again. Maybe I'm wrong, but it'll happen sooner or later.

I wonder more about the internal restrictions, the gap between being tolerant or averse to risk, being skeptical of or reliant on authority figures, being isolated versus connecting with others.

Those are "felt" differences and they won't be settled cleanly. Negotiation will be messy.

I imagine some of this will feel like a world full of awkward kids, going back to to a crowded junior high after summer's over. They have to figure out the new pecking order. They're just starting to get self-conscious again about their braces, pimples, maybe the odd fit of the clothes their mothers bought them.

I don't think I navigated that kind of thing so well as a kid. But then, hopefully we've all grown up a bit...

Hope you're staying warm & getting at least a little bit of the light this winter.

Chris