I’ve been saying since the pandemic began that time has become weird. Or perhaps it always has been.
Time, after all, is a human construct.
When we are little time seems to stretch and contract in rather predictable ways. Longed for things, such as birthdays or Christmas or the end of school, seemed to take forever to get here. And dreaded things, such as tests or doctor’s visits or the beginning of school, seemed to rush and get here so very fast.
Those kinds of time contraction or elongation happen as an adult as well.
Waiting for vacation, dreading tax season.
Waiting for the new baby, dreading when that child goes off to kindergarten.
Time. There always seems to be too much or too little of it. It comes too fast or comes too slow.
Its unpredictability is what makes it predictable. Expectable.
And then enter the pandemic.
Time has contracted or expanded in weird ways. Or just appeared out of nowhere. Out of time, as it were.
There was the wait for the vaccine. There was the end of the pandemic celebrations which, in hindsight, were premature. Now it is the wait for the newest variant. And the wait for the end of a pandemic that will probably end with a whimper.
I graduated with my MSN in 2020. That was nearly 3 years ago. I became a nurse in 2001. That was nearly 22 years ago. This year marks 30 years since I graduated from high school.
Why does it all feel like it happened yesterday?
Time, huh, what is it good for?
(apologies to Edwin Starr who wrote the song War)
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 