As you know, I like to see the positive side of things, even though life right now is not like anything any of us could have expected.

My silver lining:

More time at home. If you read my blog two weeks ago about my Essential work now, I have been working in shifts, 2 days one week, three days the next (not working more than 2 days in a row). For me, this means more time at home with my family. More time to puzzle, read, bake, walk (which I talked about last week) and after the long weekend we just had, it also leads me to:

Organizing time! Since we had a reno last year, we had to still get some things sorted and organized. Our house had been so small before, we really didn’t have proper places for all of my husbands tools and supplies. Being a carpenter, this is important. He feels like he needs at least 10 tools to do one little job, so it was so frustrating trying to find these in the various places he had stashed them before the reno. He now has a shed in the back yard that is designated just for this and I am maybe just as excited as he is! It freed up an insulated shed on our deck, perfect for the camping and Christmas bins! Which means I don’t have Christmas stuff in 3 different places around the house (wherever I could fit them in).

I have realized that when things have a place and is tidy, it is more important to me than I realized. It gives me peace of mind if the house is in order. We used to tease my older sister that she reminded us of the character Monica, from the show ‘Friends.’ Now i have time to find my inner Monica and keep things clean and put away and it feels amazing. There was a time, that I envisioned what I could do with my days if I weren’t working. I wrote it out in a schedule. How many hours in the day I would allot to certain activities. This included a variety of things that I would want to accomplish. All of which I am doing on these days away from work, listed above, as well as art, writing and gardening time.

Have you read how much the environment is benefiting? Less pollution on the planet. I think Mother Nature is rejoicing for this.

Yes, this is a weird time, and we won’t experience anything quite like this again, but it is offering a lot of reflection. We have all seen the discussion going around about life getting back to normal. The question being do we want to go back to the ‘normal’ we had before. Or do we want to slow down in general and enjoy the silver linings that we have come to discover. Finding enjoyment and peace in what we have.

I recognize that this has also been a difficult time for a lot of people. I am fortunate in so many ways. I hope you have lots of silver linings as well.

Sending Love,

Devon