Humans are creatures of habit, and those habits have had to change quickly in the past month.
March of 2020 will be always remembered as the month where all of us started out with our regular routines. At some point during that month, our routines were interrupted.
Initially it felt more like how Thanksgiving or Christmas changes your routines (like jammies in the daytime, and wine at lunchtime).
At our house, we are now in our fourth week of lockdown (we got started early), and it now definitely feels like a new set of routines.
For us, it’s been a period of discovery. Currently we are in the Pacific Northwest – a beautiful part of the world, but one in which we have not experienced a March day since 2007. We normally live in Mexico at this time of year, and we are missing the warmer weather and latin music, but that has forced us to rediscover the early spring at this higher latitude.
During the first dizzying round of travel rebooking a few weeks ago, Bob and I decided early that we had to prioritize our personal wellness before we could be of use to any of our clients. For us, this has a few key elements:
- Exercise Daily (no matter how busy it gets).
- Eat ell – we’ve rediscovered how much satisfaction we get from cooking, and how easy it is to eat healthy when we eat at home
- Media Blackout – we turned off broadcast and print media about a month ago. Sorry folks – don’t care what outlets are your favorite – you are being bombarded with sensationalized information that is not conducive to good mental health. We go online and read the daily update from the Chief Medical Officer in our jurisdiction who gives us the relevant facts, and her recommendations. I’m not particularly interested in what anybody else has to say about the situation. We both agree we feel substantially better after making this decision.
- Dreaming – We all know this is going to end, and we want things to look forward to. We were supposed to be in New Orleans this week for the gala reception launching Viking’s Mississippi River product. That event was cancelled, but we’ve decided to book a trip The Big Easy in fall. We’re still hopeful we can attend a special cruise industry meeting for three days at the end of May in San Francisco. If that gets taken away, we will book something in its place for later in the summer. We’ve also decided we need to make Tahiti a priority – we’ve been talking forever about heading down there to experience the over-water bungalows, and a small ship cruise. We’ll get that scheduled before the end of this year.
This whole situation has underscored some incredibly valuable life-lessons for us:
FIRST – it really is very important to do the things you want to do NOW. For us travel has always been a priority (it’s how we ended up in this business). This has affirmed the value we get from travel, and made us want to do more.
SECOND – the satisfaction we get from the little things has been greatly heightened. A good cup of coffee with the sun on my face in the morning; our favorite musicians who we now listen to via FaceBook Live; a great meal with good company; the many incredible people in our lives, who we don’t get to see in person right now, but still remain connected.
This crisis will pass, and we will have the opportunity to resume our old routines. The challenge we’ve set for ourselves is to maintain the more positive aspects of these new temporary routines we’ve learned in the past few weeks, and when we get back to “normal”, that we retain what we’ve learned through all of this, and live better going forward.
Whenever you’re ready to start planning your next trip, we’re here for you.
Click here to get in touch today.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Sue Bradley
Sue Bradley
