The Great Resignation

If COVID had a theme song, it may just sound an awful lot like Michael Jackson's "Man In The Mirror". Husky voiced and angry, a bit despondent and feeling all philosophical, alone with his thoughts in his room and wearing a weird outfit.

"I'm starting with the man in the mirror. I'm asking him to change his ways. No message could have been any clearer. If you want to make the word a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change."

Who among us does not know someone who changed jobs, got divorced, got a dog, got engaged, got married, had a baby, moved or did major renovations during the pandemic? Not many people simply stayed inside in their PJ's and shopped/read/played video games and binge-watched Netflix between Zoom calls and waiting 'til they were told it was safe to emerge. People did some thinking. "What do I want my life to be like when I get out again?" "Where do I really want to go when I get to go somewhere?" "Who do I want to spend my time with?" "How do I get there from here?"

The full social reemergence has not even fully happened yet. There are remnants of the sequestering all around us still. Clerks behind plexiglass and wearing a mask. People still working from home who do expect to one day be fully back in an office. Concern over planning big events because of another variant with a new age name and debate over boosters for our boosters when we are only at 65 percent immunization as a country. COVID rates of transmission, hospitalizations and deaths have become a tertiary, or even lesser, reporting category on the news. It depends on what else happened that day like war, the weather, who shot who and where in the all-inclusive 'Sus-Q-Valley'.

For the most part though, we are let loose again. Like bears in search of a good meal after hibernation, we want to experience things -- go places, enjoy life and be happy. We are free, right? Free to choose where and how we live, reevaluating how we pay for it and who gets to share it with us. The long interruption in our routines, the shutdown of all that was sacred from our favorite coffee shop or watering hole to where and how we celebrate milestone events all allowed us to choose what we may resume doing as if nothing ever happened and what things to start doing again . . . not because we always have, but because we WANT to.

Maybe the weekly meeting that was on your calendar for 15 years is not something you want to put back on your schedule because, as the organizational guru Marie Kondo recommends, "If it doesn't bring you joy, out it goes." Possibly you became interested in new things and want to expand upon the curiosity. Having a jam-packed schedule of commitments and obligatory events to attend keeps you busy and distracted and occupied as life flies by. When normal life stopped, some people found it unbearably awful while other people found it quite cathartic.

During or just after the pandemic started to recede, a number of retirements occurred in my segment of the industry . . . people who I never thought I would see go have in fact gone. Icons. Faces that I had known for so long that stilled seemed (to me) too young to 'retire'. I also never considered the concept of actually not working anymore. Our industry as a whole is a bit different in that regard from others in that there are not a magic number of years of service or an attainment of a certain age that says, 'it's time -- you can stop now'. But evidently there is. It is that time when what you are doing with the bulk of your waking hours is no longer being spent doing what it is that you truly WANT to do. That is the magic time to resign yourself to change and grow into a new version of you . . . at any age.

A large number of people have also felt themselves drawn to real estate. Of course, it is the most hip and coolest thing there ever was to do, but people want to be part of something that celebrates change, involves service, and makes people happy. Being a Realtor checks off so many boxes in a revitalized life that it is no wonder. There are also shifts from affiliated professions and trades to the seemingly endless array of roles that one can enjoy under this big umbrella.

This is not just about getting a different job, a replacement spouse, or a puppy to keep us company. It is more than musical chairs. We have all changed -- even if we still live in the same home with the same people and go to the same place for work that we have always gone. Even if we don't recognize it, we are each different. We are all older, living survivors of the plague.

That tends to change a person . . . hopefully for the better.