It’s been a quiet year settling into this new life of isolation. We manage to stay silly. Hagan started out the school year hating it and now loves his Zoom days- although most days he gets to be on campus for a half day. Sloane is loving her school workbooks but her school was cancelled. She says she doesn’t want to go but she loves playing school so much… I think she’s going to really love it. This quarantine has been great for these two- they are so close. Thank goodness. I struggle with the isolation mostly with the lack of structure- every day seems to melt into the next. I also feel my social skills waning. I will be getting my second vaccine dose this week and look forward to the rest of my tiny quarantine bubble to get it too so we can experience a bit of normalcy together.
I spent a lot of the year waking early to tackle a side project that I’ve been nurturing for some time. It looks to be a success. I built a tiny team across the US consisting of two talented people that have been incredible. We have written a paper based on my concepts, a patent and a grant with additional academics. It looks like the paper will be published within the next couple of months. I don’t know that it would’ve been so easily accepted without the backdrop of a pandemic so perhaps it is a strange fortunate event.
SX has been struggling as a stay at home Dad- he has found a groove to be sure but I also think he wants more in the future and the struggle is trying to figure out what that might be. I do believe time is the answer to allthethings…. but patience has always been hard for me.
My job has been a whole body challenge since the fieldwork, which is the bulk of the work is basically cancelled. All of my clients are the top infectious disease physicians – and they are a bit busy right now. So, the team has had to get creative and I feel like last Fall we were starting to really make some gains but then the second peak found us flailing again this Winter- I am grateful to be part of this work and have learned so much. That said, the challenge continues.
