Over the last week, no fewer than two dozen friends, readers, and followers have sent me messages letting me know that when Shakespeare was quarantined because of the plague, he wrote King Lear and possibly Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.
A handful of friends and readers have also told me that when Issac Newton was forced into quarantine because of the plague, he developed his theory of colors, invented differential and integral calculus, and conceived of the idea of universal gravitation.
Seriously, people? I make an ambitious list of goals, and you throw Shakespeare and Newton at me?
I don’t need that kind of pressure.
All of this was information was provided to me in response to a list of goals I had posted last Monday – seven days ago that now feel like seven moths ago now – back when we were theoretically going to be home for just two weeks.
Never did I think that this social distancing would last just two weeks, but I decided to plan for two weeks, hoping that I would be wrong.
Sadly I was not. Not only will this period of social distancing and quarantine last far longer, but our two week “vacation” almost instantly transformed into at-home learning, so I spent most of the week preparing to teach my students.
My own children started at-home learning on Thursday. We begin today.
I must say:
My school district has done a remarkable job in an infinitesimal amount of time preparing their teachers and curriculum for school this week. I worked more hours last week from home than I have ever worked as a teacher in school.
As a result, my list of goals has changed significantly. The time that I intended to dedicate to accomplishing a long list of goals was quickly given over to planning for my week of at-home school:
Online meetings. Experimenting with various video platforms. Reviewing, expanding, and differentiating curriculum. Contacting families. Establishing schedules. Partnering with colleagues.
One million text messages.
However, even through all of this, I managed to get some of my goals accomplished in my first week.
My plan to write an entire book in just two weeks was instantly doomed. Way too much time has been given over to teaching, but I managed to write three chapters and intend in finishing the book by the time this pandemic has come under control.
We’ve watched six of the Marvel movies so far (including The Avengers, which has an iconic moment that I will be writing about at some point in the future), and we’re enjoying them very much. We’re watching the movies in the proper order except for The Hulk, which is not yet available on the Disney streaming service.
I heard it wasn’t great.
Iron Man 3 wasn’t great either, but the rest were outstanding.
We will most definitely finish my goal of watching all of the movies by the time this pandemic has ended.
I also managed to clean out the garage. The removal of some items is still required, but it looks like a functioning garage again. The job should be completed this week.
We’ve played lots of board games, but we have yet to play every board game we own. Still, it won’t be hard to go through all of them in the time we will be spending at home.
I’ve read or listened to four books so far, already doubling my goal of two. Neil Patrick Harris’s memoir, written in the second person as a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book, was especially entertaining.
We’ve made good progress in washing and folding all of the laundry in the house. The pile of bags of old clothing that were recovered from recent closet cleanings is diminishing fast.
I have yet to do better than a 6 minute plank. A 10 minute plank seems impossible, but I have a lot of time to work on it.
I’ve written 8 of the 25 letters that I originally planned to write.
I started offering free storytelling workshops for kids on Facebook Live and saving those recordings on my YouTube channel, doubling my goal of adding two new videos on my channel.
I haven’t ridden my bike with my kids yet, but unable to workout at the gym, I’ve ridden my own bike about 10-15 miles a day. It’s been a glorious rediscovering of something I loved as a kid.
That’s it. There’s still a lot that hasn’t been accomplished yet, including the following:
- Begin writing a musical with my partner, Kaia.
- Record two Speak Up Storytelling podcasts, bonus content for our Patreon account, plus the final episode of my Twenty-one Truths About Love podcast.
- Explore the possible avenues for producing my storytelling instruction for an online platform.
- Go through the children’s toy bins at night while they are asleep and throw away or donate old toys that they no longer play with or even know exist. Don’t tell them.
- If it’s even close to warm enough, play a round of golf.
All of this is fine, of course. The world is shifting rapidly, so expectations must change as we learn to adjust to this new, temporary way of working and living.
But the overall goal remains the same:
Use this time wisely. Even though I’m teaching again, and it probably means working many more hours now than I normally would, there is still a lot of time to reclaim during these pandemic days:
The time when I would’ve been performing and speaking and consulting and schlepping the kids and more.
I want to be sure that I use the time well. And while I still plan on being productive in the traditional sense of that word, tackling my life and my yearly goals, I’ve discovered something even more important this week:
I want this to be a time that I spend with family. I want to look back at this strange time in our lives and think about all time I spent with Elysha and the kids. All the walking and playing and scootering and wrestling that we did. The hikes we took and the evenings spent snuggled on the couch.
A silver lining in a world filled with suffering.
Family. My most important goal. It only took a week spent solely with my family to realize that this is the best possible goal for me.
