Future Tripping*

It’s been eight weeks and I find myself in need of some readjustments. I can’t say that I’m excited to adapt to isolation or to recognize how much I already have, but all the same I find myself unsettled and in need of some change. 

When things were chaotic and everything was unknown I found life easier. Counterintuitive I know but my job was straight forward hunker down and take care of myself. I developed routines and coping mechanisms that helped me weather the onslaught of uncertainty. I started doing more yoga, journaling, long walks, new podcasts, limiting my time on FB, rewatching shows, naps and most importantly anytime I thought about the future. I got to tell myself “Now is not the time, there is too much unknown, WAIT”. 

Now my world has found some calm and some rhythm. There is a little less uncertainty and because of that last weekend I opened the door to thinking about the future. It was not pretty. I went down a long path of ‘what ifs’. What if I will always work from home? How can I do that my WIFI hates Zoom? What if I never feel safe enough to go the grocery store or the mall again? How do I find a new job? Who is even hiring? How do I even get trained for a new job working from home? 

I led myself down a path that brought me to a room with a thousand doors with a thousand possible futures. And I froze.

My lovely counselor calmly explained that what I was doing was future tripping. I was living in the ‘what ifs’ as a result of or the cause of anxiety. As soon as she gave me that term and a schema for thinking about what I was doing I got a little obsessed. One calling it future tripping is a great way to describe it, but then I had an uncomfortable feeling that I used to call future tripping – planning? When there was more predictability to the world I would play out all the ‘what if’ scenarios as I planned, was I helping or hindering myself? Where is the line between being prepared/planning and unproductive speculation? But I digress that this is a much better question to talk over with my counselor. 

This line of thinking brought me to WHY was I thinking about the future. Yes things are falling into a more settled pattern and our state has a plan for how to responsibly reopen but nothing is guaranteed. The capacity for testing, treatment options, and vaccines development are still woefully far from being ready. So why am I thinking about the future, things are no more certain now then they were eight weeks ago. Have I acclimated to this increased level of uncertainty enough that I’m ready to plan for the future. Clearly not but I had deluded myself into thinking I was. But the reality is I do need to think about the future. I’m ending one career and need to find another. How do I move forward without future tripping? How do I make a plan amongst the plethora of unknowns? Can I move forward without a plan? 

I usually like to have an answer or even just a positive end to those posts but I’m just left with the questions, as I think many of us are. I can only influence the now. So my job remains the same as it was in the beginning- listen and be present. You climb a mountain one step at a time. And if you try to look too far ahead you might fall.

With Love,

Erin

*Original Post Date May 13th 2020