Oh Hockey Puck: Significantly Relevant with Disclaimers

Psst, 2022. Come on, deep down you know it’s true. It will be 2022 before we enter the post Coivd phase. Winter is coming and it’s going to be bad. Wayne Gretzky famously said, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”  Well, here is where we are going. So far we’re at 245,000 Covid deaths in the US and almost 11 million cases. Winter is coming and projections are the total number of Covid deaths will double before the season is over. Significant? During a discussion on Friday, in an attempt to define significant, my colleague in the Netherlands provided an eloquent response. Did it change the way you look at things; did it change your life? I have pondered this over the last three days.

I live in a moderately sized building, 15 stories, 134 condos and 5 businesses on street level. Since March, there has been a disputable murder, was the victim killed on that spot, or did he just happen to die from stab wounds in front of the building. There was a smash the SUV window and grab the computer at lunch time in front of one the restaurant; however, when customers jumped up to stop it, guns were drawn. This week, at 6:20 am, a man destroyed a sidewalk eating area and managed to tip over and destroy a huge planter in front of the lobby entrance. Were these events impactful? Yes, significant? No.

The building elevators are cleaned daily yet, I look on the floor before I step in. There are two kinds of puddles I navigate. The big puddle where dogs have relieved themselves or the more subtle and more common splatters of the incontinent dogs. This has definitely changed the way I look at things and I struggle not to go totally compulsive and take a wet mop to the surfaces. Significant. Political correctness, social media streams and just a general state of affairs can leave me somewhat out of touch my feelings. Is this something disturbing, impactful or significant and how do I express the differences?

Realistically, we have another year to go before the post COVID phase. We will experience the disturbing, the impactful and the significant. How you manage will be how you spend your time. The average person spends 8 hours a day streaming and 15 minutes reading. But do we really know what our personal averages are? I had no idea so I used the time tracker (Life Cycle) for a month. It takes me more than 8 hours of prep to teach a weekly online yoga class; 10 hours to write a weekly blog post; I spend 2 hours a day reading and so on. This periodic check allows me to understand and evaluate how I spend my time and to make adjustments if desired. We’re 6 weeks away from 2021 and a year away from a post COVID era. What changes the way you look at things? What changes your life? This week, consider, what is significant to you and how you want to spend your next year. What’s going to be your shot for 2021?