{"id":125891,"date":"2020-12-03T23:52:15","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T20:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-end-of-urgency-macleans-ca\/"},"modified":"2020-12-03T23:52:15","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T20:52:15","slug":"the-end-of-urgency-macleans-ca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-end-of-urgency-macleans-ca\/","title":{"rendered":"#The end of urgency – Macleans.ca"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#The end of urgency – Macleans.ca<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Scott Gilmore: In 2020, ‘seizing the day’ basically means you got dressed. Maybe you even stepped outside for a bit. Anything over and above that is just a bonus.\n <\/div>\n
\n I filed this column late. Very late. There was no specific reason. I wasn\u2019t travel<\/a>ling. There were no meetings filling up my day. And I haven\u2019t launched a big new project that is consuming all my time.<\/p>\n

No, it was just late because it really didn\u2019t seem very urgent. I mean, look around. There was that election\u2014you couldn\u2019t really expect anything to get done while that was going on. And, of course, there\u2019s the whole pandemic. That has put things in perspective. For example, from my vantage point (staring out my bedroom window), getting my column in on time doesn\u2019t seem that important given that everything else has pretty much come to a standstill.<\/p>\n

Sure there was a deadline. I distinctly remember my editor asked me to send it to him by a specific date. But neither one of us believed he meant it. We both knew he\u2019d be happ<\/a>y if I even did a column, regardless of when it actually showed up.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0Politicians are failing. Canada\u2019s chief medical officers need to step in.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Because, let\u2019s be honest, there\u2019s not a lot getting done these days, and better late than never, right? In 2020, \u201cseizing the day\u201d basically means you got dressed. Maybe you even stepped outside for a bit. Anything over and above that is just a bonus.<\/p>\n

Our expectations, for ourselves and for others, have been lowered dramatically. Consider my children, for example. There are no school sports. They sit at their desks for recess. Every other day is spent at home, staring at a computer screen. Even Halloween was cancelled. Under those circumstances, only a monster would care about their homework or grades. And besides, the school board has decided that \u201cunder the circumstances\u201d everyone is going to get a passing grade anyway. The only thing I care about is that they are not losing their minds.<\/p>\n

My life used to be frenetic. Frequent travel. Hard deadlines. Important calls. I kept a tight schedule\u2014up early, exercise, walk to the office, work, lunch with a colleague, back to work, take the kids somewhere, run errands, pick them up, work a little more, maybe go out to see friends, then late to bed. I was always racing the clock; I could always hear time\u2019s winged chariot hurrying near.<\/p>\n

Not so much anymore. I wake up when I wake up. My commute is about seven steps, 11 if I stop to refill my coffee. I have a few Zoom calls, but those frequently get bumped. No one asks why. We\u2019re all in the same boat\u2014no need to explain. We can talk tomorrow. Sometimes we even do.<\/p>\n

How can anything be urgent when time itself has lost all meaning? There\u2019s no need to look at my watch anymore. I used to schedule myself in 15-minute increments. Now I have \u201cmorning\u201d and \u201cafternoon,\u201d and I\u2019m not entirely sure when one transitions into the other. (Because lunch is now more of a floating concept\u2014sometimes it\u2019s not long after breakfast. Sometimes I forget it. And sometimes it happens more than once.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not even sure what day it is. And, be honest, you had to think about it for a moment, didn\u2019t you? Sundays and Mondays are now indistinguishable. I\u2019m not wearing a tie on one of those days and meeting friends for brunch on the other. Nope. Now it\u2019s a pair of worn-out jeans and maybe a toasted bagel standing by the kitchen counter. Both days. And the rest of the week, too.<\/p>\n

Work has slowed down for everyone. It\u2019s as though the entire world just collectively agreed that nothing was urgent anymore. Except maybe a vaccine\u2014I really, really hope whoever is working on that knows exactly<\/em> what day it is. But for the rest of us, everything else is getting done when it gets done. Expectations are lowered. Schedules are aspirational. All plans are on hold.<\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0Lessons from the pandemic: How much can we handle?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I assume this will all eventually change; that we\u2019ll all eventually find ourselves \u201cback on track,\u201d chugging along like we used to. Maybe when the gates are finally unlocked we\u2019ll come charging out, filling our calendars with dates and meetings and flights and plans.<\/p>\n

But some days (don\u2019t ask me which), I\u2019m not so sure getting and spending will again be the rule. Macbeth said, \u201cIf it were done when \u2019tis done, then \u2019twere well \/ It were done quickly,\u201d but I\u2019ve learned during the pandemic that\u2019s rarely true. Life goes on, at its own pace, regardless of whether I made that Zoom call, or filed that report on time, or filled my days with one task after the next.<\/p>\n

My kids are (mostly) happy. I\u2019m (mostly) healthy. My family and friends are (mostly) safe and well. Those are the important things. The rest is nice, useful even, but not urgent. It took a pandemic to teach me that. I wish it hadn\u2019t. But better late than never, right?<\/p>\n\n

This column appears in print in the December 2020 issue of<\/em> Maclean\u2019s magazine with the headline, \u201cThe end of urgency.\u201d Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here<\/a>.<\/em>
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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#The end of urgency – Macleans.ca” Scott Gilmore: In 2020, ‘seizing the day’ basically means you got dressed. Maybe you even stepped outside for a bit. Anything over and above that is just a bonus. I filed this column late. Very late. There was no specific reason. I wasn\u2019t travelling. There were no meetings filling…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":125892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/URGENCY-GILMORE-NOV27-750x422.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1545,1356,67806],"class_list":["post-125891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-editors-picks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}