I haven’t been writing about music as much as I would like to, but these are not ideal working conditions. I’m trying to find that medium between being satisfying productive and not putting the pressure on myself just to get work done because I have more idle time than I normally do.
Time has always been something I’ve wanted more of. More time to myself. More time to work on the blog. More time for my hobbies. More time to do nothing with it.
Now I have lots of time on my hands. A lot of us do. If you were to ask me if I’m being as productive as possible with my time, I would have to tell you that I’m not. It’s one thing to have time. It’s another thing to have the best frame of mind to use it with.
Relatively speaking, I’ve got things pretty good. I have family and friends that I have been in close contact throughout this entire pandemic experience so far. I’m getting by financially. I had a very minimal amount of personal dilemmas and concerns prior to this.
One thing I’ve always enjoyed having is a sense of structure in my life. Schedules, timelines, and plans. Wrestling with uncertainty has never been my strong suit. And right now we’re all fighting well outside of our uncertainty weight class. Most of the news are not good ones and the projections for a return to regularity are distant and few in number.
I’ve been trying to find the balance of staying informed and not getting caught up in the awfulness for too long. In doing so, I’ve had to repurpose a mantra I’ve been living by. My favourite childhood author, Jerry Spinelli, wrote Smiles to Go in 2008. I read a lot of his books in my pre-teen years but I didn’t find this one until a nostalgia trip through the children’s section of the library while I was in university. On the cover reads the line “it’s the not knowing that counts.” I took that line to interpret it as the infinite possibility of whatever may lie ahead, that there could be all sorts of wonderful moments ahead for me and that knowing exactly where I would was heading would only spoil the surprise.
At this current point in timeline, the not knowing counts a lot, but in the opposite way. A cure has yet to be found and we don’t know when and how things will end. But to the individual human experience, right now the knowing, the constants we do have in our lives might even matter more. The loved ones in our lives, the things we can do to stay occupied, the habits we can partake in to maintain our wellbeing and the slightest slivers of normalcy are the things that really count right now. We may not know what tomorrow will be like, but we do know what we have today.
And of course, beautiful music is in high supply. And another Moment of Comfort mix is waiting below for you.