Looking towards another "new normal"

To say that the past three weeks have been surreal, unreal and like nothing that many of us have ever experienced before would be putting it mildly.  As we move through each day, with a barrage of bad news, scary headlines and uncertainty facing us, we are also having our daily routines altered by forces that are out of our control.  Although we can all recognize the need for these drastic measures, they don't necessarily sit any easier and aren't always easy to adjust to.  Allowing ourselves to feel all the different feelings and experience the honest thoughts that we are having right now is so important, and to do this without judgement towards ourselves is even more so.  There are no wrong answers when it comes to feelings, and giving ourselves time to make space for the emotions that come, even the uncomfortable or unwelcome ones, is the only way that we can move through them. 
As week three came to a close I started to realize that I have managed to find myself in a new routine that has put a bit of structure and focus to my days and although it is still a bit strange to be doing everything from one place, the feeling of a routine being in place does help to divide up the day a bit.  It is hard to live and work in the same place, as you find yourself not having any breaks in the day...you walk from your bedroom to the kitchen to where ever your home office is and really except for some washroom breaks and perhaps a quick moment or two outside, that is likely how your day is defined.  No wonder so many of us are struggling to adjust and adapt.  We technically never leave our offices now!  To combat this we do need to ensure that there is time in our days where we take breaks and weave in some of the mental and physical separation between work and other aspects of life that we had before this all took place. 
Finally I also started to look at my new routine and wonder how much of it would stay in place once e do go back to life as it was, or close to as it was.  This is interesting as we have all been required to strip out a lot of what we used to do and much of what made up our days.  Once we are given the go ahead to return to a more regular routine, the question that we need to ask ourselves is how much of what we used to do is still important to us, and how much of it do we really want to incorporate back into our lives?  This "break" that we are in right now may be the perfect time to really take inventory of our routines and lives and find some things in there that we really didn't need to be doing or including.  Maybe this time will allow us to all make some healthy shifts as we gain some perspective on what life was like and what it is like now.  Not to say that we are all going to want to keep physically distancing or staying indoors all the time, but maybe there are some things that we have had to let go which we can say goodbye to as we move on to yet another new normal.