Week 5 of the #StayAtHomeChallenge: Focusing on Habits and Tweaking Traditions
In last week’s post, I wrote about how nice it was to slow down and put the break back in spring break. I didn’t realize just how much I needed that break until I actually took some time for me and let the kids do the same.
Our spring break week led to a nice weekend. We got a few chores done, including a good bit of cooking for the week. I was also happy to get back into doing a little more art therapy.
It had been a while since I worked with oil pastels, and I was so excited to do a quick drawing. It reminded me that I missed spending time in my sketchbooks and encouraged me to put this back onto my list of weekend goals and priorities.
Reinventing Easter
My family is Christian and celebrates Easter. So, we were wondering how our Easter holiday was going to go this year, you know, since we’re all in quarantine.
When I was little, every holiday was a big event. I grew up in New York, where we had a lot of extended family. We would invite a ton of people to our house and eat a lot of food.
After I got married, I moved away. I lived for a few years in Maryland (right on the Washington, DC border) and then moved to North Carolina, where I have been for almost 20 years. Although my parents moved here about 11 years ago, and my in-laws are all within a 1 and a half to 3-hour drive away, Easter is not a holiday where my immediate family has established a tradition of celebrating with a lot of people.
Our Usual Easter Tradition
Instead, Easter has usually been a holiday that we celebrate in two ways: first, with my immediate family and, second with my church family. In short, it was truly a holiday that we reserved just for us.
Each year, on either the weekend before or the day of, our church has had an Easter Egg hunt for the kids. On Easter Sunday, we will sometimes have a breakfast or brunch and family activities during the Sunday School hour before the Easter service.
Our choir director has the choir and sometimes bell choir play beautiful songs (we were preparing a special program for this year before rehearsals had to stop), and we all sit in the pews wearing our Easter best. Just before the service begins, each person has an opportunity to add a fresh flower to the big cross that sits outside the sanctuary.
Although some folks go away to visit other family members on Easter weekend, there is a group of us regulars who spend the morning at our church. And, my family has always taken a photo in front of that cross with the collage of flowers strung onto it.
After that, we come home and change, and then we have some sort of traditional Easter supper- either a ham or leg of lamb. Some years, we will have family with us, but most years, it’s just the four of us, and it’s a really quiet afternoon.
Changing Up Easter This Year
I know a lot of folks were trying to figure out how to handle their holidays differently this year. Many Jewish friends who normally have community meals with family had their seders over FaceTime or Skype. And, although we feel like we’re usually on our own for Easter, it definite felt more isolating to do everything on our own, church included.
That said, we decided to keep up some traditions, starting with the Easter Egg Hunt. My teenage son hasn’t hunted for eggs in a while (as a church youth, he usually helps the grownup set up the hunt by hiding eggs), so I knew he would not be missing the festivities that much this year.
However, my 5th grade daughter had been looking forward to what is her last year of being young enough to hunt for eggs (next year, she will be a middle school youth and unable to participate in that way). So, I did what I haven’t done in ages: set up an Easter Egg hunt in our house.
These kinds of egg hunts are usually a lot of fun for little kids because they take some time to find all the eggs. But, I knew that a teen and tween would have a much easier time.
Since it was forecast to rain that day, I decided to hide all the eggs in the house. And, because our collection spans several seasons of egg hunts, I had enough multi-colored plastic eggs that I could hide them in plain sight by placing them in areas where they would be camouflaged.
Although it wasn’t over in a few seconds, the kids did manage to find the 45 eggs I’d hidden (each stuffed with candies that we knew they would enjoy), in about 15 minutes. But, they both got such a kick out of discovering the wacky places I had stashed them (under lamp shades, on instrument cases, and inside glass cabinets).
Afterwards, my son and daughter collected their winnings and began opening each egg. My son even decided to open them using one hand, like a chef cracking real eggs.
Was it different from our usual egg hunt experience? Of course! Did they have fun in spite of themselves? Absolutely!
Once we were done with the hunt, I did make the kids dress up for about 20 minutes so I could get some photos of them. Don’t judge me- I’m in charge of making a family photo calendar each year, and I find it easier to do that when I have pictures of the kids dressed in seasonal outfits.
We had a simple but traditional Easter dinner– glazed ham, a light, broth-based potato gratin, and grilled asparagus. The kids were happy, and I had enough leftovers that a weeknight meal was covered. And, we ended the day with FaceTime calls to grandparents and relatives.
I’m glad I took that break last week because this week was anything but restful.
I did a lot of meal prepping over the weekend, as I knew that my week was going to be more stressful, and I was right. I worked until 8 or 9PM some nights and only got to eat with the kids a few nights this week.
Part of why I had so much to do was because our schools finally set up distance learning. Now, I had been looking forward to this since the day we were told the kids would be at home for more than a week. In my mind, I pictured kids sitting at a monitor, engaged in classwork as though they were in school for a full day. I did not realize that the schedules would be very different from what I had envisioned.
I’ll start off by saying that, although I kinda resented being left to create my own homeschool schedule for the kids, we quickly adapted to it, and we got into a pretty good rhythm. We began each day at the dining room table at 7:30 AM and the kids were done by 2:30 PM, leaving me time to work until I had to prepare dinner.
During those first two weeks, we worked side by side and were able to have snacks and lunch together. It was tiring, but it was structured and, more importantly, predictable. As a creature of habit and routine, I got really comfortable with the schedule I had created.
This week, my perfect schedule was tossed out the window. Each child had a different schedule set by their school, and only a small portion of the day would be spent in a virtual classroom.
Because they had more online class time, they each went in their separate directions to have their meetings where it was quiet. And, because their schedules did not match, I felt like I had no way to oversee what they were doing.
My daughter’s schedule was pretty predictable. She started at 9 and was done by 2. My son’s, however, was all over the place. He started at 8:30 AM each day, but the timing of his classes varied from day to day. Some days, it fit the schedule the school sent with the day ending at 1PM followed by homework to be done on his own. Other days, he was on Zoom calls well into the dinner hour.
To complicate matters, my own schedule had been shaken up. I have several deadlines that required me to have meeting with students and clients. Most of my meetings were by videoconference, which meant that I too needed to be in a secluded place to keep things confidential.
The timing of my work did not match up with that of my kids’ schedules, and we all started to feel the impact. My son ended up not finishing all of his work for the week (I’m sure you all are shocked that a teenager would drop the ball when he lacks the accountability of parental supervision), and my daughter grew frustrated that I was unable to spend time with her during the day.
Understanding the role of habits in a time of change
Luckily, I continued with the #Next90Challenge, which focused on habits this week. Dave Hollis gave a great one-hour class on habits and how they can be used to close the gap between the life you envision for yourself and the life you’re living. Again, if you haven’t started but want to try this free course, sign up here. It’s not too late!
I really got into this week’s lesson because, for my book club, I had read one of the books that provided the basis for a lot of the concepts Dave covered in his lecture: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. If you haven’t read it, you should. It not only sheds light on personal habits but helps explain certain social phenomena and the driving force behind some group dynamics.
Of course, Dave Hollis focused his talk on how our individual habits can hinder or help our personal development. And he challenged us to think about which habits we need to keep, which we can tweak to be more beneficial, and which we should strive to replace.
While I initially approached the class with a positive attitude, by midweek I was starting to question the timing of it all. The school days had taken us out of our routine, and I felt like I was floundering with the schedules.
How could I rely on habits when our schedules were so unpredictable?
It took a little coaxing, but I finally accepted the advice the course offered, which is to have good habits that lead me to live out my values. And, that doesn’t mean that things have to happen at the same time every day.
Dave’s class reminded me that a habit is made up of a trigger (or the cue that creates the desire for something), a routine (which is the thing we do when we are triggered) and a reward (which satisfies the desire). This is what Duhigg describes as the “habit loop.” More importantly, the habit doesn’t always have to be triggered by time.
There are other things that can trigger a habit, including:
- Time– we doing something because it is triggered by a certain time of day.
- Location – you always do something in a particular place
- Emotional state – perhaps drinking when you are sad or acting out when you’re angry. For me, I tend to eat when I feel stressed.
- People – you always do something when you’re with someone else.
- Some sort of activity – craving something sweet after dinner. Or, how changing into PJs can lead you to start winding down the day.
One of the nice things about habits, that Dave Hollis pointed out, is that while you cannot change your triggers, you can change your routines. And, as Dave says, you can change your routines so that they better serve your values while continuing to satisfy your need for a reward.
Once I got over the frustration about our changed schedules, I realized that time was not the only trigger for my having certain good habits. Moreover, I took a look at the habits I currently have and found that a number of them are working for me.
So, as I move along in this challenge, I’m going to continue asking myself why am I doing certain things? Are these things falling in line with my values? What routines can I change so that I am doing things that align with my core values?
As always, here’s how the week looked:
Saturday. I made our gluten-free/soy-free take on a Korean bibimbap. After dinner, I went to my art desk, took out my oil pastels, and engaged in some much-needed art therapy. I realized it’s been a while, and although I like what I made, I know it could have been blended the colors better if I had remembered to use some techniques that I learned a while ago.
Sunday. Although we were on our own, I think we had a decent Easter. We started the morning with a big breakfast– hash browns, scrambled eggs, and breakfast sausage, which I served with Mexican hot chocolate as a treat. My parents had sent a lovely Easter basket for the kids, and the Easter bunny came out of quarantine to fill their baskets with their favorite candies. We had virtual Sunday School- something we likely would not have attended if we didn’t have a Skype meeting set up, and virtual church. After that, it was the egg hunt, photos, and our Easter dinner. It was low key but it had its moments. Before bed, I set up the kids with their new schedules, which had been emailed just before the weekend.
Monday. With Easter morning leaving me with little time for a workout, I got up extra early to do the workout that I was prescribed by my physical therapist. Virtual school classes began for my kids that day, with each child on a different schedule. I was grateful that I had a therapy appointment that morning, so I could start the week with some encouragement. I was also glad that I had spent the weekend cooking, as I left dinner for the kids and was in meetings until 7 PM that night.
Tuesday. I started to realize that our schedules were not what I thought they would be. My teenage son was in meetings practically all day, while my daughter had her mornings full with more room in the afternoon. That said, I had more work-related meetings, which meant that I was pretty tied up until the evening. After reheating a meal for the kids, I logged into my own virtual classroom to teach the final class of the semester for the law school where I work. While the class ended a little early, I ended up working on some leftover issues for my day job, and didn’t shut down for the day until 8 PM. Fortunately, I decided to get back into a habit that has served me well in the past- pleasure reading. I checked out the e-audiobook I had been working on for my book club, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” by Timothy Tyson. I also started to get into the book I was reading on my own, “Where the Crawdads Sing,” by Delia Owens. They are both beautifully written and haunting in their own way.
Wednesday. I was grateful that my mid-week work day had a mid-morning meeting. One of the drug reentry courts where I volunteer had its first video-meeting, and I got to participate. It was nice to see familiar faces from the court and do some work to help support someone who is in recovery. Although I had a client meeting that lasted a couple of hours that afternoon, I made sure to end my day a little early and managed to go on a walk with my daughter.
Thursday. Much like the day before I had another drug court meeting, and just like that prior day I was so happy to meet with the court family that runs that program. I had my last client meeting and found myself crossing off a lot of my to do list for the week. I ended my day a little early and did my last physical therapy workout, which was helpful given that I’ve been doing a lot more walking since I’ve been working from home.
Friday. Since I had a really full schedule at the beginning of the week, I decided to use up some comp time and make it a half day. But, as any lawyer mom can tell you, when you take time off, it just means you’re cramming all of your work into fewer hours. Because I had to pick up the final papers to grade for my class that afternoon, I planned to go into the office that morning to drop off some things and print out documents I knew my home printer couldn’t handle. I met up with my co-worker and co-professor, Laura, who brought me the most adorable handmade face masks! After retrieving my papers, I went to the podiatrist to pick up my new orthotics. I decided to take an earlier walk and listen to the Rise podcast (which I totally needed after an exhausting week) and made it home in time to see my daughter participate in her school’s virtual talent show.
Lessons learned from this week:
There is no “new normal.” Unless you count unpredictable days and weeks where anything can happen, I’m not sure I can really use the #newnormal when it comes to my current situation. As I learned in the first week of #Next90Challenge, life is a matter of perspective. I am not a fan of change, but I am trying to see the good in this situation, and I will say that I am currently learning to be more flexible when it comes to the schedules we are on and the things we are having to do. As I have mentioned previously in this post, I chose the word “Grace” as my word of the year, and this situation is really giving me the opportunity to practice exercising grace with myself, my family, and our daily lives.
It’s okay to change up “traditions.” While we love to have certain traditions each year that remind us that we are in a certain holiday season, being in quarantine has forced us to rethink our traditions. Life is different now, and just as our days are unpredictable and require flexibility, so do our traditions for holidays like Easter. Although our Easter Sunday was unlike what we’ve done in the past, we managed to do things that reflected some of what we’ve enjoyed in prior years. Our Easter egg hunt was different, but even my big kids had fun with it. We were technically on our own, but we reached out to loved ones through the gift of communication technology that we are fortunate to be able to access. And, we still made positive memories that we can look back on.
Habits are more than scheduled routines. I think I had forgotten all the lessons I learned from that summer when I read The Power of Habit. I love writing out lists and filling in the hourly section of a daily planner. But, when I become too rigid about how I’m spending my time, I find myself becoming upset with any little changes that come my way. This week, I learned (once again, and probably not for the last time) that life is filled with change, and we cannot rely on things to be the same all the time. By shifting my habits to ones that revolve around my values, I am beginning to identify other triggers that set off the habit loops that can either be made up of beneficial or not-so beneficial routines. This is the first step in creating a life filled with activities that lead to healthy and positive choices for me and those around me.
My hope is that everyone is doing well despite all the changes. How are you coping? Any habits that are helping to not just cope but thrive during this time? Did you change up your spring holiday traditions in any way? Leave a comment below.
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