Two Years of the Covid-19 Pandemic - Friday Focus

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. Happy Friday! I am so happy it is the weekend soon. I am on my lunch break as I edit this post and looking forward to 5 pm now.  This week I was reading through some old posts I wrote back in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic when I realized that two years ago this week, the pandemic started. You can read my early pandemic blog posts here. I spoke about how there was no toilet paper left on shelves and this was the first week of the pandemic. My work place told us to go to a temporary work from home situation while we waited to find out what to do next. All of a sudden things escalated and the cases started rising. I was fearful of this invisible virus that could kill people. I stayed inside and all stores and restaurants and theatres were closed. It was a shock to me. I also was going to get married on May 2nd,2020 and was still hopeful that the situation would be better by then. I was very sad and disappointed when my worst fear came true that we couldn't get married in May like planned. I ended up postponing my wedding four times and then had a wonderful wedding in September 2021. 

In the first post I wrote about the pandemic, I wrote that I hope to go back to the office and have a normal work week. It now feels so normal to work from home. At that time there was so much fear and uncertainty. Now that we are so used to this new normal or way of life, I take all the safety protocols and feel more confident that I can avoid Covid. But at the time I thought you could get it easily in the air or touching a surface at a store. Now that the milder versions of Covid that are more like a cold to those vaccinated, it gives me peace of mind that if I did get it, it wouldn't be so bad and feel like a cold. Even with Omicron surging in mid December, we kept distance from large groups to be safe and the rapid tests were so hard to get our hands on before a large gathering and we felt safer keeping our distance and not furthering the spread.

 We are still not done with this pandemic, and there are cases climbing in China now. So we will have to see if this new variant affects us the same way or spreads this way. This comes at a time when they are lifting the mask requirement indoors in most places in Ontario. I know I will keep wearing mine for some time until I feel more comfortable since we have gotten so used to wearing them now.

We have become more used to this way of life. Wearing a mask, washing hands and sanitizing after touching anything, keeping distance from others. I was so used to going to the office four days each week (I worked from home one day each week) going to the gym each week, seeing friends and family more often, going shopping, seeing movies, attending events and craft fairs and the list goes on. Now life is so different and it is the new normal. I feel that I will take a long time to adjust back to our life that we had previously. I wonder what that will look like. 

Thank you for visiting my blog today and I hope that you have a great day and weekend. Stay safe!