Every Wednesday, my Your Teen colleague and friend Jen Proe and I have a live coffee chat on Facebook. Never mind that we rarely drink coffee and are just as likely to have tea. In any event, we gather with our viewers to chat and commiserate and laugh. (We’d love to have you. It’s every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m Eastern at Facebook and the more, the merrier for taking a little break together.)
Last week, we just had to ask: Is there anything we want to keep about this awful year and take into 2021?? Not necessarily anything big—little things are enough, too. I’d asked the question a few days earlier on my Twitter account, and I’d found the answers surprisingly heartening. I won’t spoil everything we chatted about, but my own three initial answers were: 1) more walks; 2) my husband cooking more; and 3) finally learning to deposit checks via my phone.
Once I started reading responses, I couldn’t help but get a boost, and we thought you might, too. Here are some of our favorite responses for things that we hope will outlive the pandemic:
Pandemic Positives
- Working remotely
- Being home with family more
- Zoom chats with faraway friends and relatives
- Masks and good hygiene
- Delivery service for groceries, etc.
- Spending more time outside
- Cooking and baking more
- Leaning into a houseplant hobby
- Library curbside pick-up
- More reading
- Wearing sweatpants
- Connecting with neighbors over group text
- Getting a dog
- More reflection and journaling
We love to hear your ideas. Once we heard all these, we keep thinking of more and more, which is the kind of positivity we need right now. We won’t go so far as to call these “silver linings” for 2020—because, really, there’s been so much suffering—and yet we can’t argue with the fact that taking stock of what’s changed for the better this year might help all us going forward.
