What feels so familiar about our current anxiety

I finally realized what has been odd about my higher state of anxiety for the past few months.

Yesterday, the newsroom and I had our regular weekly meeting and discussed the upcoming federal election. Executive Director Anouk Bertner attends the meetings when she can, and she mentioned that most Canadians are probably fearful right now.

Her words made my brain light up. I’m pretty sure I even manifested a light bulb above my head.

I feel like I did in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The five-year anniversary of COVID-19 officially being declared a pandemic was last week, March 11. I remember the day well, as it is my mother’s birthday, and it’s also the day my newsroom officially kicked me and my web team out of the office to work remotely.

I remember how anxious people reached out to me to ask me questions in the first days and months of the pandemic.

I did my best to talk to everyone who reached out. Hundreds of strangers through social media and email. Exes. Friends I hadn’t talked to in 20 years.

My goal was to give out the best information I could, based on the best information we had at the time. People were grateful, and I was grateful to help. Doing so helped me manage my own anxiety.

The driver of those questions was fear—fear of what was to come and a desire to gain some control over it.

How can we apply the lessons we learned during the pandemic as we deal with the bewildering change to our political landscape, and more changes to come?

The biggest lesson I learned during COVID was how important it is to reach out, make a deliberate effort to connect, find support where you can, and take care of your own mental health first.

In Winnipeg, it’s still frosty and the sidewalks are treacherous, but I bundled up yesterday and took a careful walk, dog in tow. (Rather, she went for a walk, me in tow.)

And when we got back, I felt less anxious.