Well, now that we’re a few days into the lockdown, I can really feel the sense of novelty wearing off.
And it makes me think that every time there’s a change, every time something new comes in, there’s always a period of novelty, and we kind of expect that to continue in a way.
We have a change, something new happens, and then we think “Wow, here’s the new thing.” So we start to get used to this new thing.
But then, always at some point not too long after the change, there’s that point where the newness of the thing wears off, and then our impression of what’s going on changes again.
It seems like I keep getting caught in this same kind of pattern over and over.
And it happened to me very strongly yesterday with regards to the lockdown.
So at first it was like “Wow, look at this new thing.
We’re in this new world.
You know, at least it’s interesting.
It definitely seems inconvenient but at least it’s something very interesting, something so unprecedented, something so unique.
Here’s this new situation that we’re in.” But by yesterday, it just became OK, so I’m looking at the possible projections, nobody has any idea, but maybe best-case scenario is a month of lockdown, and worst case as many, many months, over a year.
So that’s a long time, and it no longer feels quite as intriguing, interesting, novel.
It just already seems kind of boring.
I mean, it seems like are we really shutting everything down and cutting off human contact for all this time? It really kind of reminds me how much I want some human contact, and not just this electronically mediated contact, but actually meeting people in the real world.
So there’s really that feeling of the novelty disappearing, and now it’s just settling into OK, this is a time when people are going to be isolated and looking at screens all the time, kind of like what they’ve been doing a lot of already, but just accelerating in that direction.
And it’s not so fun anymore.
But this seems to be the way it goes when novelty wears off.
There’s always that time.
So when we have something new we get this new feeling maybe a bit of excitement, interest, novelty, curiosity.
There’s something new going on, and we sort of project that into the future, sort of imagining “OK, this is the new feeling This is the way things are now.
This is great.
This is interesting.” But then always, at some point not too long after, that novelty drops off, and suddenly that original feeling is gone.
And now it sort of settles into the new situation, that had once been this new change, now becomes the ordinary situation.
And now it’s just back to baseline again.
So this seems to be what happens when we have something like some kind of new change, some kind of new step and self-development, like getting that burst of motivation when we start doing something new.
Maybe start exercising, you know, start meditating, start to break a bad habit, and really get this feeling of “Wow, this is great.
I’m living life in a new, exciting way.” And so there’s that that wave of novelty.
But then, inevitably, at some point after that, the novelty is gone, that initial burst of motivation is gone, and it’s just like “Yeah, I’m exercising, I’m meditating, I’m not doing the bad habit, but it doesn’t feel like anything to me now.
Now it’s simply the baseline.” So we have to always be ready for that change.
We can’t be always jumping from novelty to novelty.
Although I can understand that feeling of yeah, I love that novel feeling.
That’s exciting.
That’s new.
Curiosity.
Intrigue.
Something new’s happening.
This is amazing.
And of course, there will always be some kind of small changes at least, so there’s- everything, there’s always a little bit of newness going on.
Even in the most repetitive thing, there’s always something a little bit different.
But we have to be able to see past that wave of novelty and expect that every time something changes, it’s always going to settle down into becoming a new baseline.
And so it feels like that’s what’s happened now for me with the lockdown.
Now lockdown is a baseline, and this strange new world is now the normal world of the moment.
So I’m curious to see how you’re reacting to this and well, what’s going to happen next.
#novelty #nolongernew #getsoldfast