Flying again. Today, I’m returning from my first business trip since the first week of March. To be clear, prior to the Spring of 2020, I traveled quite extensively.
It’s a different experience. In fact, beyond your home, the airport may be the safest place to spend time.
It’s eerie and unfamiliar to walk through security all alone, no line. None. It’s strange to visit the Delta lounge (the carrier I use most frequently) and see a handful of people there, when in March we struggled to find two seats together in the same space.
It’s also disorienting to pack again. I have systems and processes for all of it, and in less than three months it seems foreign to organize myself in the ways I used to navigate so easily. How quickly habitual behavior relaxes and fades.
The same is true of strength training.
We’re back in the gym and though I’ve kept active, it’s not the same. What used to be fluid and flexible seems foreign and challenging. They’ve told me the return will happen more quickly than the original journey to regaining my fitness level from prior months.
It sure doesn’t feel like it. The lesson may be to remain aware of what aligns with life now, not as it was and not as it’s had to be. Returning to prior practices and choosing how they fit or don’t fit is required to live life by design. I must choose wisely.