1% Anxious About

 My weekly JJ Heller email popped up last week and the title caught my attention: "What I'm 1% anxious about." And I knew exactly what she was going to say because I have been feeling it too. This going back to some semblance of normal where we've been out of it for over a year. I'll admit when the pandemic hit, it didn't upend my life that much. I didn't have a kid going to school and I wasn't a member of any gym, etc. As a natural introvert it actually alleviated some social expectations for myself. I didn't have to commit to playgroup that left me feeling completely drained because of being stuck inside with 10 rowdy kids and several moms doing small talk. 

What happened instead was doing things that I wanted to do without this feeling of doing 'more.' I'm amazed at the women in my ward who took their kids on all sorts of adventures. I know they did this because it would often be sent out in an email to invite others to come too. Whereas I was just content to do the same old walking the trail or hitting up my favorite park. I know I got too comfortable with my routine but when I saw one of those playgroup emails just the other day to go to another big outing, I instantly started to feel this anxiety that that is what good Moms do. They don't just do the same old thing. 

Funny enough, doing the same old thing is exactly what helped me establish good friendships. I just moved to a new area and for the first time in my life, the people that I'm going to miss the most, the ones who sent us with little gifts or cards and have already reached out through text since we've moved, or whom I will plan to see in the future are those that are not members of my previous ward. In fact all of them are not affiliated with a religion at all. 

COVID forced us to associate with those in proximity to us. Because everything was closed, the Burke Gilman trail was really the only thing open. That's when I met Meera because we were always walking our kids at the same time. I think the natural part was that I didn't feel weird asking for another walk and park. 

And then because we needed to escape our apartment for sanity as much as possible, it was the daily walk to Rhododendron park. That's how we met our neighborhood friends Elnaz, Eilyah, Natalie, Carter, Caitlin and Farrah. It was like this unspoken agreement that we would see each other about every day. 

Brooke in her program talks about the garden proverb in terms of change. The first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, and the third year it leaps. This has also been true for my friendship making. It took not until the 3rd year to make some good friends. 

Now being in a new place, I have that same feeling of anxiety of starting all over but I'm hoping that as we come back to some normal, I'll find some of that for myself but also give myself lots of grace.