How Quarantine Life Helped Me Step Out of My Comfort Zone

Hi, my name is Jenni and I am a “planner”.

I REALLY like my routines and schedules. I also like to know the details of my day, week, month, and year. As I’ve done every year since I got my first high school planner, when my 2020 planner arrived in late 2019, I joyfully began penciling in all my plans and special dates for 2020. We had visits from family and friends to look forward to, birthdays, church events, date nights, trips to visit family back home, and weekend getaways planned.

January and February started the year off smoothly as we all watched what would later become a global pandemic begin to unfold in China. My in-laws were here visiting in early March when travel restrictions began to tighten. Since I work as a Travel Agent early March was a VERY busy month for me with trip cancellations and clients moving their travel dates back.

In mid-March, I began one-by-one marking things off my calendar, and at first, this was very unsettling for me. Not having any “plans” to put in my calendar and feeling uncertain if upcoming plans would actually be able to happen made me more anxious than the actual pandemic that was going on.

However; after a few weeks I noticed a shift in my attitude and I felt myself finding peace with not having any plans. I noticed a sense of freedom from checking my calendar to see what event I had coming up. I’ve found that I am appreciating more of what each day has to offer, instead of always looking forward to what plans I have in the future. This, for me, has been a time to slow down, to relax and to be more spontaneous with my actions.

While I still enjoy the daily routines that keep us on track with homeschool and help me keep up with housework, it has been refreshing to relax a bit more in the afternoons and evenings and just “be” with my girls and my husband during this time. We have enjoyed countless long walks, completed a few home improvement projects, potty trained our new puppy, made several new recipes, taught one of our girls how to ride a bike, watched lots of movies, read a few new books, and the girls have had LOTS of sleepovers in the playroom.

I think one of the things I’ve learned the most from this time is that I can still be productive with my time without planning every minute of it. Now don’t get me wrong, I am REALLY looking forward to hopefully penciling in beach days, summer events, weekend getaways, and date nights ASAP…but, for now, I will cherish this “unplanned” time and spend it making more memories with my favorite people.

I’d love to hear how you feel that this time has helped you grow or step out of your comfort zone!