My husband swapped his commute for sourdough bread-making. We ensured we would never be without Tapatio if the supply chain failed and bought a case. Plastic bags became a “thing” again. Often there’s a new dog at our house and an extra bag of food.
For COVID I/we shoved all that on top of the old stuff in our small pantry. Now that I have declared COVID “officially over”* for my family, I excavated the pantry. I took everything out and put it on the table. I swept, organized, and consolidated the heck out of that tiny closet. With great satisfaction, I shut the door after putting it all back. It looked great to me. Everything fit and there were no more onion skins and sprouting potatoes on the floor.
A bit later the satisfaction wore off. I realized if the pantry inspectors or judgmental guests came to my house, it would look like I did nothing. I can’t even tell I cleaned the pantry because I shut the door. From the outside, I did nothing.
Some days when I ask my husband about work, he says he did nothing. I can see him in his COVID office, doing something. He is typing code into his computer. To me, it looks like something. Maybe today he did ‘nothing of note’ but three days later he fixed the bug. He had to seemingly do nothing one whole day to fix the problem.
Sometimes you can not see you have made progress, but you have. Judging if you have made progress isn’t always up to you. Sometimes judging if you have made progress is only up to you.
*Yes, COVID isn’t over officially