When we do have to go out to the grocery store to get groceries or pick a prescription, we are following the CDC guidelines to wear a mask. This is something of an anomaly in our part of South Carolina. We are also sending only one member of our household on these trips.
There is so much information that it is hard to process what to take in and what to disregard. And in the midst of everything we are learning and changing, sometimes we simply forget to put a mask on or to move six feet apart from each other.
We are developing a new routine, adjusting the way we have done things that we have done hundreds of times. As we are moving in this new reality, our brains haven’t quite caught up to this new routine. It takes sixty-six days to develop a habit. Many of us are closing in on that time where the way we have been living will be our new routine because we have been in this new normal for almost sixty-six days.
In some ways, it is insufferably long and in other ways, the days have run together making it difficult to decipher one from the other.
If you find yourself balking at the recommendation from the CDC and DHEC, you may just be balking at yet another change after so many changes right in a row. Your brain needs time to adjust, but your brain is also in a state of stress.
New routines are incredibly difficult to establish. Around 82% of New Year’s Resolutions go unrealized. This is hard work. This is important work. This is the work that will keep us safe and those around us safe.