I used to need certainty on things, big and small, as small as my lunch meeting set in my calendar a week earlier. Either I get certainty or I get anxious. 3 years into the pandemic, I realized that I live perfectly fine with uncertainty now. It’s less than 4 weeks before our relocation, we still don’t know if we will get Sofia’s visa on time, we still don’t have import and export permit for Cookie, and I am not stressing about it. What a change!!!
Other than the circumstances we had to live through, the pandemic, the change of job location, I think I learned to cope with it by embracing the changes, prepare for the worst scenario (can I live if the worst scenario happens? what would we do then?), and focus on the silver lining of the events.
I had lunch with a friend and she shared that his husband lived his life in a linear one, no change of house for 40 years, no change of job, no major events. Thus, if anything happens not according to plan, he gets stressed out. I can understand that. In that sense, I am glad that we are living through some interesting time with my girls, witnessing and living through the chaos, coming out more resilient and better prepared for the life surprises.
I am doing last minutes planning before my trip to Germany:
- scheduling get together with friends
- Sofia’s advanced birthday part with a small group of friends
- writing down girls activities so daddy and helper know where to take them
- writing down dinner plans and groceries list
- writing down my packing list to Germany, which is so much colder!!! I realized I don’t have any winter cloth, so I am asking to borrow from a friend
- buying 100 bottles of eye drops as I won’t have access to it in Jakarta, that will last me a year
- buying OTC medicines to take as buying medicine in a foreign country with non-english labels is so hard (i tried during my last trip)
- I planned another trip to Jakarta the week before our move. For work purpose and for inspect our condo before our move in
- doing the paper work for the car sell
- so much more…. my to-do list is so long this week and I’m trying to cross off few per day.
Our New Journey 
I don’t think I’m the world’s greatest at living with large amounts of uncertainty, but it’s true that the pandemic forced us to all become at least a bit more comfortable (or at least tolerate) it more. I have lived in the same state my whole life, and have been working for the same company for over 16 years now! (though in a different role, at least.) I can’t say I have a lot of desire to move all around and have so much change, but I can also see how that would be exciting. I guess I wish I could have multiple lives, so maybe in my NEXT one I could try that. hahaha! Good luck getting everything organized for Germany. There’s always so much to do in general before travel, but adding on the marathon + needing to leave instructions, etc. puts even more on your plate.
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I do NOT handle uncertainty well; I honestly think I’ve gotten worse about this as I get older. Maybe because there is just so much more to be uncertain about?! But I’ve also had a lot of big changes in the last decade so maybe I’m just burned out regarding uncertainty?!
You seem to juggle things so well with a great mindset. Gold stars!
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I also am not great at dealing with uncertainty/predictability. I am such a control freak but I will say having kids has made me more comfortable with not having control over things. And the pandemic definitely gave us all a lot of practice in dealing with uncertainty!
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