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My Experience:
As I have been able to talk to some of you and other friends around Florence a bit, I have found that we all have a lot in common that we all have good days and bad days! Each of our situations may be different depending on our family dynamics and work situations, but this is a situation that has really stretched us in ways that we never have been stretched before.
In my personal situation, both my husband and I are self-employed and have taken a pretty hard financial hit. I work in tourism and like everyone else that does here, my entire year was cancelled in a matter of 2 weeks. I was also in the process of launching my new YouTube Channel that was designed to promote my “Business” which doesn’t exist at the moment. Because I couldn’t do anything else, I have gone forward with it but in a different direction than I had planned.
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I changed up my strategy and have been doing updates for the Coronavirus and for the moment trying to build up my subscribers for when I am able to promote my business in the ways that I had originally planned. I have 5 kids at home through this and 4 of them are busy around the clock with online classes and homework. So every device in the house is in full use and I get very little time to “work” anyways.
My husband is in a tough situation because he left towards the end of February to close on 2 new contracts. As a result, he didn’t get the new contracts and all possible future clients are now freezing up new projects during the crisis. In addition, he is now stuck in the US and at this point, we do not know when he will be back. By the looks of it, it might take a couple months for Italy to get back up and running. But the US is behind us in their schedule, and I don’t imagine they would let him come back to Italy from the US until it is cleared up on that end. We are very grateful for a generous family that offered their second home to stay temporarily. Because of the situation, he had no options of a place to stay. Both family and close friends were not options because of health issues or other reasons.
So overall, I have days when I feel good about things and I get up to conquer the day, and other that I experience every emotion possible and can’t function. I do my best to take it a day at a time and try to not be hard on myself with I have these moments and also understanding of each of my kids when they need this too. If we need a time-out, we take it. If we don’t get dressed that day, sleep in, eat junk food, don’t work out, we let it go and try again the next day.
And we do have good days! That is the best part.
Silver Lining
What I have learned to appreciate the very most next to my family and loved ones is: The wonderful tool of Technology. I have never felt so close to those that are so far away and who I don’t usually have time to talk to or connect with!
I am definitely rethinking how I want my life to go forward from here after this is over. I am sending a link to “Heather’s Covid Challenge” that I presented in my last YouTube video. Even though some of the events are a bit out of date for some of us locally, you might share some of my same opinions. Please subscribe to my channel and start the challenge starting now. We could still be in this position for a while so it’s not too late to start.
Phase 3 Update
Sometimes the most simple things mean the most.
One of my favorite things is gardening and Flowers.
I left behind many huge gardens in the US so my small little piece of gardening is on my little balcony.
It’s a little thing that I do for myself and I always look forward to going to the plant festival every 6 months to get a variety of flowers to arrange each season.
During quarantine, it was the closest I would get to nature and early on, I noticed 2 of my round pots had little petunia volunteers were coming up.
So I very carefully thinned them out among all of my pots and fortunately had some leftover fertilizer from last fall. And can you believe that all of this came from those 2 little pots??? This was a miracle for me.
It has made me so happy! Just a little moment of my day and even with a lot of hard days, this little gift has made me smile.
I know that God knows what is important to me, even the little things, and each time I walk out on my balcony I feel a reminder that God knows my trials AND that he is watching over me and all of us.
Everyone might have a different perspective on this, but for me, it’s a little thing that has given me a little push each day.
Phase II for me is a transition of having my husband home again. After 3 months of being blocked in the US, he finally returned home on the 30th.
It’s great to have him back but definitely a transition that it is while the rest of us are getting used to the changes of getting out of the house and trying to do normal things again.
The quarantine has definitely pushed my creativity and forced me to stretch out of my comfort zone. In the past, I have always tried to be very resourceful to find people to help out in areas where I am weak.
After all, 3 of my interns left and I had no money to hire help, I started my YouTube Channel anyway.
Everything I have done to produce my videos I have had to learn and figure out myself. I never thought I could edit a video on my own!! 🙂