Half of seven weeks is about now - halfway through my sabbatical leave of absence. That hit me this morning as I went through my "what day is it, what week is it?" moment of orientation that has become a pandemic shower-thoughts ritual. To be honest, it's been real nice so far, to have the (planned months prior) closing out of my dev team job coincide with the world being thrown upside-down. Not worrying about those old technical/team/org responsibilities has given me plenty of space to process and reorient, and in a global context where everybody is grappling with similar challenges!
I've heard a few people now say, "I don't want to go back to normal." Not in the "would like to be under lockdown indefinitely" sense, but somehow recognizing the uniqueness of this "great pause", the pulling-together and giving-grace sprinkled into every relationship, maybe even the common-enemy unifying sense (though that seems to be evaporating now). I don't feel that way about the pandemic, but I'll surely admit that I'm not sure what I want the "next normal" to be.
But "normal" is farther out - next up is a potential project. Completing, in a way, my tech-to-human career shift by working in/with HR for maybe 8 weeks. Time to start coalescing the floating fragments of plans, after letting them percolate for a few months.