April 2020 |
CORONAVIRUS NEWS | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 17
ISSUE 311 | Qsaltlake.com
ask mr. manners have taken care of myself. Luckily Lucas was experiencing less severe symptoms and took incredible care of me.” The pair, aged 25 and 23, healthy and active, was able to recover in just a few days. “Having now experienced the virus I am more grateful than ever for my good health,” Shutkind said. The two left their building over the next two weeks only when a 5.7 magnitude earthquake hit Salt Lake City. “We just ran into my car,” Horns said. “I live on the third floor of an old brick building so we were pretty freaked. But we didn’t come into contact with anyone.” By the end of their quarantine, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall issued a stay-at-home order and closed restaurants and bars.
Keeping in touch The Ballet West company does a “Zoom barre” weekly to keep in touch and “keep some sort of normalcy in our lives.” “Having class once a week on Zoom allows us to
still feel the connection to our art and the ballet world,” Shutkind said. “The sense of community we regularly experience in the ballet studio can still be felt
through the camera as we all experience the effects of the pandemic together.” The couple is happy to have at least been together during their quarantine. “It was really nice to have each other when we were sick but even nicer to have each other during this quarantine period. Josh makes every day fun,” Horns said. Asked for any silver linings in their experience, they found things to appreciate. “I’m glad we got [COVID-19] over with and haven’t had to stress about getting it since,” Horns said. “I’m also glad for this time to be forced to slow down.” Shutkind said he has a greater appreciation for health, community, and family through the experience.
Moving forward “I really miss dancing, so I hope we get back to work soon,” Horns said. “I think this time has given people a new appreciation for coming together and seeing live performances so hopefully more people will come to the ballet than
ever.” “My hope moving forward is that everyone takes this illness seriously,” Shutkind said. “I know people are anxious to resume normal life and I know that I and my fellow dancers are eager to return to the studios so we can continue to share our art with the Salt Lake community.” Q
The new normal BY ROCK MAGEN
It feels
like every day brings new direction regarding social distancing, and indication of lifting of our current quarantine. As we await direction to “open back up” and move forward, I am sure that we will start to see billions of dollars spent on messaging, advertising, and media content which encourages a return to normal. But what is normal, and how do we survive until we return to life once known? If you are fortunate to work from home during these times, you are acutely aware that it’s all too easy to blur the lines between work time and personal time. For some, it’s unclear when work ends at all. “Protecting your essential personal time comes down to managing your transitions,” writes Elizabeth Grace Saunders for Harvard Business Review. Easier said than done. One way to do this is to set up work start — and end — rituals. Such tasks can be as simple as making coffee or taking a walk. But these are signals that mark the start to finish of your work day. For the rest of us, we search for meaning while awaiting the fates of our careers. Uncertainty can drive us to feel lethargic and encroaching a new dilemma: ‘How to make yourself work when you just don’t want to’. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula to make this work. I realize that the three most popular
strategies — thinking about consequences of failure, ignoring feelings, and engaging in detailed planning — don’t sound as fun as advice like “follow your passion!” or “stay positive!” But will have the decided advantage of being effective — which, as it happens, is exactly what you’ll be if you use them. The renowned artist Chuck Close observed that “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” In a final moment of pondering our new situation, I hope you might consider this: What happened is inexplicably incredible. What the crisis has given us is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see ourselves and our country in the plainest of views. At no other time ever, in many of our lives, have we had to unseemly consider what would happen if the world simply stopped. Now that we are at this point, we will have to make decisions regarding the future. How will we allow the lessons learned from this so-called new normal to influence our return to society? Do we return to our lives and routines which feel so far away, or to keep some of the new habits formed in this time of isolation? Regardless of your decision, be safe, and find ways to take care of each other. At the end of the day we are all in this together, no matter what “normal” looks like. Q
