This week, I’ve been having a little trouble concentrating.

I’ve been going through the familiar rituals of my daily life — the enhanced, extra-hygge version in which I keep things tidy, light candles, and make lovely cups of tea to ward off pandemic-related anxiety or ennui. It helps to an extent, but it feels like I’m back in May, when I would get to the end of the day and wonder where it went and why nothing seemed to get done. What is this? Where did it come from?

And the answer comes back: This is grief.

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Back when I worked six/seven days a week and had no life and no hobbies, I didn’t understand the benefit of taking time off.

I saw only what it would cost me; I didn’t know that, in addition to the obvious pleasures of rest and relaxation, time away would actually make me more effective in my work.

Now, I marvel at how taking an afternoon or a day or a week to completely disconnect from work will result in a surge in productivity, creativity, and satisfaction when I return.

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A friend of mine, who had been abroad when the coronavirus hit globally and was fortunate enough to make it safely home without contracting the virus, clarified his intentions toward the end of the summer.

“I asked myself, ‘When I look back on this time, what would I regret that I didn’t do?’”

Using this guiding question, my friend decided to play more tennis and read more.

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When the lockdown began, I was ready. I was on high-alert mode.

For two months, I worked long hours from my parents’ dining room table and my childhood bedroom, taking breaks to walk along the cold windy beach until the beaches closed, and then down and around the cul-de-sacs of the neighborhood on the days after that. Sometimes, I played a little tennis with my mom — until the tennis courts closed, and then we hit the ball back and forth in the gravel driveway in the afternoons.

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I’ve spent approximately half of my life in Maine and the other half in Georgia. I know both places very well.

In Georgia, the daffodils of spring show up around Valentine’s Day. In Maine, you have to wait until April.

Meanwhile, the sun rises and sets over an hour earlier in Maine than it does in Georgia.

Having grown up in Maine, I was used to all of this. But spending a number of years in Atlanta has distorted my sense of time even more than the coronavirus lockdown. The arrival of blossoms and mild temperatures in Maine now seems agonizingly late. And I wake up with the sun thinking that I’m behind schedule.

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