“We’re all walking around with some mild cognitive impairment”
March 10, 2021 11:13 AM Subscribe
Late-stage pandemic is messing with your brain by Ellen Cushing in the Atlantic.
A couple more quotes:
I’ve started keeping a list of questions, remnants of a past life that I now need a beat or two to remember, if I can remember at all: What time do parties end? How tall is my boss? What does a bar smell like? Are babies heavy? Does my dentist have a mustache? On what street was the good sandwich place near work, the one that toasted its bread? How much does a movie popcorn cost? What do people talk about when they don’t have a global disaster to talk about all the time? You have to wear high heels the whole night? It’s more baffling than distressing, most of the time.
A couple more quotes:
The pandemic is still too young to have yielded rigorous, peer-reviewed studies about its effects on cognitive function. But the brain scientists I spoke with told me they can extrapolate based on earlier work about trauma, boredom, stress, and inactivity, all of which do a host of very bad things to a mammal’s brain.
“We’re all walking around with some mild cognitive impairment,” said Mike Yassa, a neuroscientist at UC Irvine. “Based on everything we know about the brain, two of the things that are really good for it are physical activity and novelty. A thing that’s very bad for it is chronic and perpetual stress.” ...
Some Saturday not too long from now, I will go to a party or a bar or even a wedding. Maybe I’ll hold a baby, and maybe it will be heavy. Inevitably, I will kick my shoes off at some point. I won’t have to wonder about what I do on weekends, because I’ll be doing it. I’ll kiss my friends and try their drinks and marvel at how everyone is still the same, but a little different, after the year we all had. My brain won’t be smooth anymore, but being wrinkly won’t feel so bad. My synapses will be made plastic by the complicated, strange, utterly novel experience of being alive again, human again. I can’t wait.
well that's today's ugly cry handled then
posted by Space Kitty at 11:35 AM on March 10, 2021 [23 favorites]
posted by Space Kitty at 11:35 AM on March 10, 2021 [23 favorites]
My synapses will be made plastic by the complicated, strange, utterly novel experience of being alive again, human again.
I remember certainty. I had to look up the word “certainty” because I am not certain about this kind of certainty. Anymore.
posted by sageleaf at 11:42 AM on March 10, 2021 [6 favorites]
I remember certainty. I had to look up the word “certainty” because I am not certain about this kind of certainty. Anymore.
posted by sageleaf at 11:42 AM on March 10, 2021 [6 favorites]
Another way to phrase this is, what social norms did we constantly reinforce in the before times, that ultimately didn’t matter? What should our new ones be? I think there’s a way to see this as an opportunity for positivity and growth as we relearn each other and decide who these new people we want to be are.
posted by mhoye at 11:48 AM on March 10, 2021 [61 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 11:48 AM on March 10, 2021 [61 favorites]
Thank you. This makes me feel a bit better* about (a) forgetting my wallet; (b) losing my wallet; and/or (c) misplacing my wallet, thinking I lost it, then turning the house upside down and worrying about it for 3 days, every f’ing time I leave the house.
(*Not 100% better, because I’m sorry it’s happening to everyone else also.)
posted by anshuman at 11:49 AM on March 10, 2021 [6 favorites]
(*Not 100% better, because I’m sorry it’s happening to everyone else also.)
posted by anshuman at 11:49 AM on March 10, 2021 [6 favorites]
Honestly, I feel cognitively impaired - I'm less good at my work, I make dumb mistakes (or more dumb mistakes than usual anyway), I forget things, I drop and mislay things....and yet I'm pretty sure it's not anything ominous, just stress. The year after my mother died, my brain was in terrible shape, worse than this, and then I had a good year of being on top of things and then the pandemic.
posted by Frowner at 11:49 AM on March 10, 2021 [52 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 11:49 AM on March 10, 2021 [52 favorites]
I could comment from my own experience, which suggests it will take 2-3 years to recover but full recovery is possible (and I hope for myself and others that we help each other find the way, substack coming soon!! :P :)).
But I have to say that more importantly, watching my mid-70s parents/in-laws this situation has been absolutely devastating. My dad is a TBI survivor and without a lot of cognitive inputs, he starts to degrade really quickly, and both my mother and mother-in-law are visibly cognitively worse off. All three would normally be out doing volunteer work or taking classes, shopping, travelling, going to book clubs, etc., and although Zoom has helped some and they have all taken some steps to at least exercise...it's not good! It's really not good. I hope they can make it up but I don't know, at their ages, if that neuroplasticity will actually come back.
And that I have seen very little public discussion about it shows that we have been willing to throw seniors under the bus at every opportunity during this pandemic, particularly in Ontario. It's shameful. We're doing our best here in our family to play games online, do porch visits, etc. but man.
It does make you realize we humans need community activities and connection. All those parasocial relationships keep us growing in small but urgent ways.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:49 AM on March 10, 2021 [39 favorites]
But I have to say that more importantly, watching my mid-70s parents/in-laws this situation has been absolutely devastating. My dad is a TBI survivor and without a lot of cognitive inputs, he starts to degrade really quickly, and both my mother and mother-in-law are visibly cognitively worse off. All three would normally be out doing volunteer work or taking classes, shopping, travelling, going to book clubs, etc., and although Zoom has helped some and they have all taken some steps to at least exercise...it's not good! It's really not good. I hope they can make it up but I don't know, at their ages, if that neuroplasticity will actually come back.
And that I have seen very little public discussion about it shows that we have been willing to throw seniors under the bus at every opportunity during this pandemic, particularly in Ontario. It's shameful. We're doing our best here in our family to play games online, do porch visits, etc. but man.
It does make you realize we humans need community activities and connection. All those parasocial relationships keep us growing in small but urgent ways.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:49 AM on March 10, 2021 [39 favorites]
I’m sorry, Frowner. My mom says that after her mother died she couldn’t do crossword puzzles for a year. We’re not machines. Loss hurts us.
posted by anshuman at 11:51 AM on March 10, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by anshuman at 11:51 AM on March 10, 2021 [10 favorites]
The other thing is that my feelings have sort of died. I no longer miss anything or anyone. I mean, I miss them in theory, I recognize that I will be glad to see them assuming I get vaccinated and don't get covid and die or become disabled. But I don't feel it. Until a few months ago, I really missed things - I could just visualize going to the grocery store or my regular cafe or catching the train and feel intense yearning. Now I don't. I live in my house and every day is the same.
posted by Frowner at 11:52 AM on March 10, 2021 [126 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 11:52 AM on March 10, 2021 [126 favorites]
Frowner, big hugs. As you already know, it can come back. I don't think any of us can start the clock on recovery until we feel safe, and that point is still TBD. But we can be kind to ourselves.
I have said before and will say again, when I have read about people surviving famine, pandemics, massive social upheaval, I have never, ever thought "well, they should have also organized their drawers!" It's been more "wow, humans are amazing to survive so much." I'm the worst at doing this myself, but I think we ideally should all treat ourselves that way.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:56 AM on March 10, 2021 [25 favorites]
I have said before and will say again, when I have read about people surviving famine, pandemics, massive social upheaval, I have never, ever thought "well, they should have also organized their drawers!" It's been more "wow, humans are amazing to survive so much." I'm the worst at doing this myself, but I think we ideally should all treat ourselves that way.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:56 AM on March 10, 2021 [25 favorites]
It's been really unsettling how easily I forget things. Family stuff, work stuff, it all just sorta goes in one ear and out the other. The stress isn't helping but I really blame the monotony. There are no events to hang my memories off of anymore and the vividness of my day-to-day is extremely low. The past year, and especially this past winter, has felt like one long fuzzy Tuesday that sorta feels like a Monday.
posted by TurnKey at 11:56 AM on March 10, 2021 [19 favorites]
posted by TurnKey at 11:56 AM on March 10, 2021 [19 favorites]
This morning I couldn't remember if I had taken my meds, so I took them, and since then I've felt weird and bad, so I probably hadn't forgotten to take them after all, oops. Then I had three straight hours of Zoom meetings and was able to concentrate on just enough of it to give the impression that I was paying any attention at all. Tonight I will probably watch whatever the youtube algorithm puts in front of me because I don't have enough energy to follow a narrative and after that I'll go to bed at 9:30. So I don't know what this article is talking about, I'm fine
posted by theodolite at 12:00 PM on March 10, 2021 [42 favorites]
posted by theodolite at 12:00 PM on March 10, 2021 [42 favorites]
I am not necessarily thankful, but I am ... aware of how most people's pandemic life is nearly identical to my life in poverty, as a lesbian in the south, without a car (I've had a car for about 8 months now, thank goodness).
Going to work, going home, and doing nothing and having nothing to do and nothing to eat and no one to talk to and nowhere to go for weeks on end was "normal" for me. I understand going to work is at least getting out of the house, and many people today can't. But for people who didn't grow up isolated and poor, this is what my life has been for years. Its a bit comforting to be validated that this way of living destroys you, because I have felt like i've been trying to hold myself together for a very long time.
The other thing is that my feelings have sort of died. I no longer miss anything or anyone. I mean, I miss them in theory,
I already have trouble with object constancy in relationships due to ADHD, but it's gotten exponentially worse. I started dating someone in December and then eventually broke it off because reminding myself of the outside world, with her in it, became more work than not. When I close my eyes at night I forget which house I'm in. I have to actively think about what it looks like outside my door. 3 days takes the same amount of time as 15. Yesterday I out my mask on to go inside my house. I forget things, I cry randomly, I have a hard time "relaxing" for more than an hour. After getting home, making dinner, and watching an episode or something, I get restless and antsy and want to go to bed, but i lay awake for hours.
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:01 PM on March 10, 2021 [82 favorites]
Going to work, going home, and doing nothing and having nothing to do and nothing to eat and no one to talk to and nowhere to go for weeks on end was "normal" for me. I understand going to work is at least getting out of the house, and many people today can't. But for people who didn't grow up isolated and poor, this is what my life has been for years. Its a bit comforting to be validated that this way of living destroys you, because I have felt like i've been trying to hold myself together for a very long time.
The other thing is that my feelings have sort of died. I no longer miss anything or anyone. I mean, I miss them in theory,
I already have trouble with object constancy in relationships due to ADHD, but it's gotten exponentially worse. I started dating someone in December and then eventually broke it off because reminding myself of the outside world, with her in it, became more work than not. When I close my eyes at night I forget which house I'm in. I have to actively think about what it looks like outside my door. 3 days takes the same amount of time as 15. Yesterday I out my mask on to go inside my house. I forget things, I cry randomly, I have a hard time "relaxing" for more than an hour. After getting home, making dinner, and watching an episode or something, I get restless and antsy and want to go to bed, but i lay awake for hours.
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:01 PM on March 10, 2021 [82 favorites]
The Year of Magical Angry Crying
posted by hototogisu at 12:04 PM on March 10, 2021 [14 favorites]
posted by hototogisu at 12:04 PM on March 10, 2021 [14 favorites]
My sense of time passing is just completely messed up. I'm participating in the TNG rewatch on FanFare, and I remember thinking, "didn't we just have an episode featuring this particular character?", and no, it was three months ago.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:07 PM on March 10, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:07 PM on March 10, 2021 [7 favorites]
Earlier in Covid Times, there were all these stories and posts about people using this freed-up time to bake bread or learn a new language, and I had absolutely no clue how they were managing that in terms of energy or focus.
I am tired all the time. I can't concentrate. My only goals in life are to make it through ever-smaller units of time -- getting to the weekend, getting to the end of this work day, getting to teatime. Beyond that? Who knows? Don't worry about that part. This is just surviving, not living.
posted by Capt. Renault at 12:11 PM on March 10, 2021 [35 favorites]
I am tired all the time. I can't concentrate. My only goals in life are to make it through ever-smaller units of time -- getting to the weekend, getting to the end of this work day, getting to teatime. Beyond that? Who knows? Don't worry about that part. This is just surviving, not living.
posted by Capt. Renault at 12:11 PM on March 10, 2021 [35 favorites]
well that's today's ugly cry handled then
glad we could help with your to-do list
posted by medusa at 12:12 PM on March 10, 2021 [11 favorites]
glad we could help with your to-do list
posted by medusa at 12:12 PM on March 10, 2021 [11 favorites]
But I have to say that more importantly, watching my mid-70s parents/in-laws this situation has been absolutely devastating.
Definitely. My 85-year old Dad and 79-year old Stepmom have deteriorated mentally and physically to an astounding degree this past year. They went from being active church-goers, members of the Elks Lodge, and driving Meals-on-Wheels last February...to now having much more pronounced dementia, being almost completely housebound, with private care nurses and receiving Meals-on-Wheels. It's been a massive shock to them and the whole family.
As for the days blending together, yeah. I keep a workout journal, and I'm shocked to open it up to document my workout to find that it's been ten days since my last workout?? I could have sworn it was two, maybe three days ago! Where the hell did that week go? Etc.
posted by darkstar at 12:12 PM on March 10, 2021 [19 favorites]
Definitely. My 85-year old Dad and 79-year old Stepmom have deteriorated mentally and physically to an astounding degree this past year. They went from being active church-goers, members of the Elks Lodge, and driving Meals-on-Wheels last February...to now having much more pronounced dementia, being almost completely housebound, with private care nurses and receiving Meals-on-Wheels. It's been a massive shock to them and the whole family.
As for the days blending together, yeah. I keep a workout journal, and I'm shocked to open it up to document my workout to find that it's been ten days since my last workout?? I could have sworn it was two, maybe three days ago! Where the hell did that week go? Etc.
posted by darkstar at 12:12 PM on March 10, 2021 [19 favorites]
What is it about some journalism that points at social media for evidence of societal trends and the posts in question have like <100 upvotes/likes?
posted by coolname at 12:13 PM on March 10, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by coolname at 12:13 PM on March 10, 2021 [9 favorites]
I read this a few days ago (and I guess figured someone had already shared here?) and it's a little reassuring to read that I'm not just uniquely becoming stupider by the day. Not, like, encouraging, but it gives me something to combat the constant drip of negative self-talk. It's really easy to feel, when my husband is the only person I talk to in real life and Zoom calls with my coworkers are 95% of the rest of my human interaction, that I am personally just dumb and forgetful and apathetic and dead inside, and terrible for it. But no! We're ALL dumb and forgetful and apathetic and dead inside, and it's totally normal! ....yaaaaay?
(I have been working way above my capacity and to the point of exhaustion on an important piece of what became the American Rescue Plan for the past 10 months and I watched the bill pass the House today and felt nothing when the Speaker gaveled on the vote, so I've really been mulling the mental impact of being a year into this shit today in particular.)
posted by bowtiesarecool at 12:14 PM on March 10, 2021 [67 favorites]
(I have been working way above my capacity and to the point of exhaustion on an important piece of what became the American Rescue Plan for the past 10 months and I watched the bill pass the House today and felt nothing when the Speaker gaveled on the vote, so I've really been mulling the mental impact of being a year into this shit today in particular.)
posted by bowtiesarecool at 12:14 PM on March 10, 2021 [67 favorites]
Smoooooooth smooth brain
posted by sixswitch at 12:17 PM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by sixswitch at 12:17 PM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
I think the last day I can specifically remember feeling anything was November 7, the Saturday when they called the election, and there was just a massive spontaneous upwelling of celebration in my neighborhood in Chicago, hundreds of people walking around in a daze, a guy in the square playing patriotic music on a saxophone, someone else playing an electric guitar on their balcony, every car rolling past with the windows down blasting FDT, just sunshine and joy and peoples' eyes smiling above their masks. It felt like how the end of the pandemic should feel, but of course we'll never get that one spectacular day, just months and months of things slowly thawing out and everyone getting mad at each other for going too fast or too slow.
posted by theodolite at 12:21 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
posted by theodolite at 12:21 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
Now I don't. I live in my house and every day is the same.
I remember hearing an interview with an American in Spain on Reply All in late March. We had just entered lockdown and he was in month three or so. I was struck when he said something like, "At first it's so weird and upsetting but then the sad thing is it becomes normal. You stop expecting more." I really felt how much I was in the first part of that sentence, I couldn't imagine this becoming normal. I couldn't imagine it going on for even three months. (As a house we bet on how long things would be upside down and it was all April-May unsurprisingly.)
posted by little onion at 12:26 PM on March 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
I remember hearing an interview with an American in Spain on Reply All in late March. We had just entered lockdown and he was in month three or so. I was struck when he said something like, "At first it's so weird and upsetting but then the sad thing is it becomes normal. You stop expecting more." I really felt how much I was in the first part of that sentence, I couldn't imagine this becoming normal. I couldn't imagine it going on for even three months. (As a house we bet on how long things would be upside down and it was all April-May unsurprisingly.)
posted by little onion at 12:26 PM on March 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
I’ve had a series of dumb medical problems this year caused by stress. I don’t feel stressed. I’m isolating with my partner, but I’m not overly distressed by activities like going to the grocery store. I’m exercising regularly, getting plenty of sleep, eating reasonably well, money’s fine, etc. Yet I went to the dentist with a toothache, and he told me I’m grinding my teeth. “We’re seeing it a lot,” he said. I had atopic dermatitis on my face for the first time. My neck went out for no apparent reason, and I spent the better part of a week laid up in bed with cold packs and dosed with muscle relaxers. What a time.
posted by chrchr at 12:26 PM on March 10, 2021 [11 favorites]
posted by chrchr at 12:26 PM on March 10, 2021 [11 favorites]
Yeah, I think that I'm not that stressed any more because I don't feel stressed the way I did in the beginning, but then today I randomly burst into tears because my floorboards creek.
I have spent such long periods of time with only my husband that I've sort of forgotten how to make small talk. I ramble too much or I blank on what to say, I can tell I'm rough around the edges now.
Also when I went back to work after my second furlough I got myself all confused and ended up at the bus stop an hour too early, and then was second guessing myself - when do I go normally start work? Was I sure? I had to ring my husband to confirm I was an hour out.
posted by stillnocturnal at 12:27 PM on March 10, 2021 [18 favorites]
I have spent such long periods of time with only my husband that I've sort of forgotten how to make small talk. I ramble too much or I blank on what to say, I can tell I'm rough around the edges now.
Also when I went back to work after my second furlough I got myself all confused and ended up at the bus stop an hour too early, and then was second guessing myself - when do I go normally start work? Was I sure? I had to ring my husband to confirm I was an hour out.
posted by stillnocturnal at 12:27 PM on March 10, 2021 [18 favorites]
I had had a good couple of weeks. Then, last night, I had a primal, Cronenberg-level night terror about a Covid variant that literally turned people into husks of desiccated flesh while they were showering. Like the author of this piece, I have a job that allows me to work from home, a high-functioning immune system, a savings account, wi-fi & hand sanitizer. I think I have a lot of internal and external resources. But my unconscious is not comforted by these. Things have felt... deeply irregular for over a year now.
posted by Bob Regular at 12:28 PM on March 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by Bob Regular at 12:28 PM on March 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
This is just surviving, not living.
My ex said he was watering his succulents one day and had the thought that really, his whole year he had been essentially no different from the succulent. All-but-inert, life functions taking place but without significant external signs, and about once every month or 6 weeks, an infusion of something (porch visit, phone call, zoom happy hour, online class) that felt a bit like getting a taste of water.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:28 PM on March 10, 2021 [48 favorites]
My ex said he was watering his succulents one day and had the thought that really, his whole year he had been essentially no different from the succulent. All-but-inert, life functions taking place but without significant external signs, and about once every month or 6 weeks, an infusion of something (porch visit, phone call, zoom happy hour, online class) that felt a bit like getting a taste of water.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:28 PM on March 10, 2021 [48 favorites]
Another way to phrase this is, what social norms did we constantly reinforce in the before times, that ultimately didn’t matter?
For me, it's school standards.
Out of necessity, things have been a bit more relaxed for online school.
Deadlines are suggestions, tests are open-book-ish. There isn't constant pressure to cram 6 days worth of learning into 5 days.
It has been all but said out loud that the state test are basically a wash, so why bother constantly prepping for them.
Basically treating kids like learners, not pieces that you move from point A to point B.
I'd like to see that attitude continue as physical school returns.
posted by madajb at 12:28 PM on March 10, 2021 [29 favorites]
For me, it's school standards.
Out of necessity, things have been a bit more relaxed for online school.
Deadlines are suggestions, tests are open-book-ish. There isn't constant pressure to cram 6 days worth of learning into 5 days.
It has been all but said out loud that the state test are basically a wash, so why bother constantly prepping for them.
Basically treating kids like learners, not pieces that you move from point A to point B.
I'd like to see that attitude continue as physical school returns.
posted by madajb at 12:28 PM on March 10, 2021 [29 favorites]
I really feel better that this is a relatively universal experience, because holy fuck my brain feels like it is a hamster on a wheel running nowhere but the wheel is also in mud and so every step is bogged down....
I have been starting to worry that I have young onset dementia because of how many times a day I cannot remember words, or the names of places I used to go. It is seriously disturbing. And I also worry about my parents, especially my dad who was showing some signs of cognitive decline prior to the pandemic... and my kids.... I hope their fresh young brains are able to rewire, but my teen has social anxiety and to say this has been detrimental is a huge understatement. Hell I feel super twitchy when I'm around people, like in the grocery store, pretty much the only place I see people anymore. I am both looking forward to having normal human interactions and cognizant of how it will be a real adjustment.
And Frowner, I cannot favourite your comment re the death of feelings enough. Every day is permeated with this vague feeling of heaviness (brain trudging through muck) and I go through the everyday activities of being part of a family, but there is so little stimulation.... and there is really nothing to be excited about... and nothing ever really changes.... and I used to really miss my friends and still do intellectually but then I'll realize that weeks have gone by without me even thinking about them. And I'm not super depressed, like I'm doing okay, it's just this weird feeling like everything is just suspended and time is somehow passing without anything really happening.
posted by DTMFA at 12:31 PM on March 10, 2021 [24 favorites]
I have been starting to worry that I have young onset dementia because of how many times a day I cannot remember words, or the names of places I used to go. It is seriously disturbing. And I also worry about my parents, especially my dad who was showing some signs of cognitive decline prior to the pandemic... and my kids.... I hope their fresh young brains are able to rewire, but my teen has social anxiety and to say this has been detrimental is a huge understatement. Hell I feel super twitchy when I'm around people, like in the grocery store, pretty much the only place I see people anymore. I am both looking forward to having normal human interactions and cognizant of how it will be a real adjustment.
And Frowner, I cannot favourite your comment re the death of feelings enough. Every day is permeated with this vague feeling of heaviness (brain trudging through muck) and I go through the everyday activities of being part of a family, but there is so little stimulation.... and there is really nothing to be excited about... and nothing ever really changes.... and I used to really miss my friends and still do intellectually but then I'll realize that weeks have gone by without me even thinking about them. And I'm not super depressed, like I'm doing okay, it's just this weird feeling like everything is just suspended and time is somehow passing without anything really happening.
posted by DTMFA at 12:31 PM on March 10, 2021 [24 favorites]
I’ve recently started talking to myself in my ‘out loud’ voice a lot, often under my mask, when I’m outside of the house, cause no one can tell, right? I’m having to really pay attention to it to keep it under control. It’s been freaking me out for sure.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 12:32 PM on March 10, 2021 [19 favorites]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 12:32 PM on March 10, 2021 [19 favorites]
It felt like how the end of the pandemic should feel, but of course we'll never get that one spectacular day, just months and months of things slowly thawing out and everyone getting mad at each other for going too fast or too slow.
That's a really good point. We ought to have a national holiday or something to celebrate when it's over. Maybe make it two days, so we can remember those who were lost on the first day, and then celebrate surviving it on the second day.
We need a moment of national...something. Catharsis? Venting? Closure? Something we can all use as collective therapy to set this behind us, at least to the degree that's possible.
posted by darkstar at 12:32 PM on March 10, 2021 [24 favorites]
That's a really good point. We ought to have a national holiday or something to celebrate when it's over. Maybe make it two days, so we can remember those who were lost on the first day, and then celebrate surviving it on the second day.
We need a moment of national...something. Catharsis? Venting? Closure? Something we can all use as collective therapy to set this behind us, at least to the degree that's possible.
posted by darkstar at 12:32 PM on March 10, 2021 [24 favorites]
For me, it's school standards.
I'm teaching a class this year, and one of the kids didn't show up for the presentation of a significant assignment today. I know they've done the work, but today they just didn't show up and didn't give us a heads up why. Any other year, I'd be expecting... something? A doctor's note, heads up, something. This year? When they resurface, I'm not even going to pretend to care why. Let's just catch up, show me what you've got, we'll make it OK.
No fucking way I'm throwing somebody overboard in to this mess, this year. None.
posted by mhoye at 12:34 PM on March 10, 2021 [51 favorites]
I'm teaching a class this year, and one of the kids didn't show up for the presentation of a significant assignment today. I know they've done the work, but today they just didn't show up and didn't give us a heads up why. Any other year, I'd be expecting... something? A doctor's note, heads up, something. This year? When they resurface, I'm not even going to pretend to care why. Let's just catch up, show me what you've got, we'll make it OK.
No fucking way I'm throwing somebody overboard in to this mess, this year. None.
posted by mhoye at 12:34 PM on March 10, 2021 [51 favorites]
We need a moment of national...something. Catharsis? Venting?
Whatever the opposite of Festivus is. Feats of kindness. The airing of communal joys.
posted by mhoye at 12:36 PM on March 10, 2021 [24 favorites]
Whatever the opposite of Festivus is. Feats of kindness. The airing of communal joys.
posted by mhoye at 12:36 PM on March 10, 2021 [24 favorites]
Another thing that's been kind of worrying me is that I don't really see any evidence of people coming together.. if anything, people seem angrier than ever. I don't really do a lot of social media, but I look at the logged-out Reddit frontpage sometimes, and more and more it's filled with all of these subs that are basically based on hatred or public humiliation: NoahGetTheBoat, AwfulEverything, IAmATotalPieceOfShit, PublicFreakouts, Cringetopia, JusticeServed, even the names of these sites kind of gross me out. I'm sure some of the targets are "deserving" but I'm really disturbed at how much of internet pop culture is now just Look At This Fucking Guy.
posted by theodolite at 12:38 PM on March 10, 2021 [27 favorites]
posted by theodolite at 12:38 PM on March 10, 2021 [27 favorites]
theodolite: I'm also in Chicago (seems like there's a ton of MeFites in Chicago) and I remember that day very well. Unseasonably warm and sunny, too. I live in Edgewater, but I was out and about in Andersonville and the excitement was electric. People hanging out of cars, giving thumbs-ups, blasting music, honking horns. Was a nice experience.
I have to say I don't feel horribly affected by the epidemic. My wife's mom passed away at the end of October (wonderful woman, family matriarch, non-Covid related, aged 83) and so that was horrible—and still horrible. And the shadow of grief still walks this home and in the skins of my wife's large family. But other than that? I guess I'm just not that much of a social person. I worked up till Xmas in an "essential business" (a fancy-pants garden center... we're considered essential because in the spring and summer we sell food plants... go figure!). Even with scaled back staff and inventory, 2020 was a banner year for that industry. People didn't spend money on restaurants, bars and travel, so they planted flowers and decorated for the Holidays in record setting amounts.
But I've been off the last couple months. I start up again next week. I'm ready to go back to work. But I've had a fortunate, comfortable winter and cannot complain in the least. I spent more time with my own aging parents, and took time to get to know them better. They won't be here forever, of that I am now very, very certain.
"Mask" has been added to my "Wallet, keys, sunglasses" essentials checklist for leaving the house. But otherwise I've found the Covid Times to be mostly enlightening, if a bit boring. I don't feel any cognitive decline. Unless it's so subtle that I just am not noticing it. I just turned 50 and quit 25 years of horrible alcohol addiction and abuse, so the "social butterfly me" is a mostly an incarnation of the past anyway.
Onward.
posted by SoberHighland at 12:39 PM on March 10, 2021 [15 favorites]
I have to say I don't feel horribly affected by the epidemic. My wife's mom passed away at the end of October (wonderful woman, family matriarch, non-Covid related, aged 83) and so that was horrible—and still horrible. And the shadow of grief still walks this home and in the skins of my wife's large family. But other than that? I guess I'm just not that much of a social person. I worked up till Xmas in an "essential business" (a fancy-pants garden center... we're considered essential because in the spring and summer we sell food plants... go figure!). Even with scaled back staff and inventory, 2020 was a banner year for that industry. People didn't spend money on restaurants, bars and travel, so they planted flowers and decorated for the Holidays in record setting amounts.
But I've been off the last couple months. I start up again next week. I'm ready to go back to work. But I've had a fortunate, comfortable winter and cannot complain in the least. I spent more time with my own aging parents, and took time to get to know them better. They won't be here forever, of that I am now very, very certain.
"Mask" has been added to my "Wallet, keys, sunglasses" essentials checklist for leaving the house. But otherwise I've found the Covid Times to be mostly enlightening, if a bit boring. I don't feel any cognitive decline. Unless it's so subtle that I just am not noticing it. I just turned 50 and quit 25 years of horrible alcohol addiction and abuse, so the "social butterfly me" is a mostly an incarnation of the past anyway.
Onward.
posted by SoberHighland at 12:39 PM on March 10, 2021 [15 favorites]
I'm waiting for the Change Bomb once we start getting out. We've all been in a casual contact null zone for over a year. Instead of seeing small gradual change ("oh a new restaurant", "huh, the front desk receptionist is new") we'll be cognitively impaired from a year of cave living and then also have to deal with everything being very different from our dim memories.
We've only recently found out about co-workers who died a few months ago; in the before times everyone would have heard about it within days.
posted by benzenedream at 12:48 PM on March 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
We've only recently found out about co-workers who died a few months ago; in the before times everyone would have heard about it within days.
posted by benzenedream at 12:48 PM on March 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
I read this yesterday and it resonated with me so much that I considered posting it here (especially the bit about being unable to fathom how they / I used to get up early, shower, get the kid off to school, and commute in to work by 8:30 - how it doesn’t even seem realistic, let alone possible anymore). So I see this post and I think Yes, I really liked this essay, and instead of clicking to read the comments and leave my own, instead I click the article to see what it has to say - because my brain registered that it was the same article that I considered posting here, and simultaneously thought “oh, this sounds really interesting, like that article I liked yesterday.”
And I read it again, and enjoyed it again, and thought, “yeah, I read that yesterday. I really liked it.” Total brain circle. With the added punchline of “you have read 2 Of your 3 free articles” at the bottom.
posted by Mchelly at 12:51 PM on March 10, 2021 [33 favorites]
And I read it again, and enjoyed it again, and thought, “yeah, I read that yesterday. I really liked it.” Total brain circle. With the added punchline of “you have read 2 Of your 3 free articles” at the bottom.
posted by Mchelly at 12:51 PM on March 10, 2021 [33 favorites]
The other thing is that my feelings have sort of died. I no longer miss anything or anyone. I mean, I miss them in theory...
I find that the feelings have just come unmoored from events and ideas and are just their own weird things? Like sad things keep happening, and I still remember (somewhat intrusively) the last crop of Sad Things, but instead of
think about Sad Thing --> cry
it's like
think about sad thing --> feel weird dull thud somewhere in brain --> many hours later, burst into tears while retrieving a swiffer cloth from the cabinet
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:52 PM on March 10, 2021 [50 favorites]
I find that the feelings have just come unmoored from events and ideas and are just their own weird things? Like sad things keep happening, and I still remember (somewhat intrusively) the last crop of Sad Things, but instead of
think about Sad Thing --> cry
it's like
think about sad thing --> feel weird dull thud somewhere in brain --> many hours later, burst into tears while retrieving a swiffer cloth from the cabinet
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:52 PM on March 10, 2021 [50 favorites]
Stress has settled into a place of numbness for me, too. I appreciate everyone sharing their stories, it's a comfort to know that I'm not the only one who feels just... unable to function like I once could. I feel like I am trying to endure until this is done and try not to consider that this could all just happen again. I think that trauma and fear is going to stay with all of us for a long time and even once things open up there will be a lot of residual anxiety and sadness and grief. People use "resilience" as a positive buzzword but it feels more like being a rock way out in the ocean and trying not to let the crashing waves wear you down too quickly. As a single person whose family lives in another state the isolation is the toughest thing for me.
posted by Emily's Fist at 12:53 PM on March 10, 2021 [18 favorites]
posted by Emily's Fist at 12:53 PM on March 10, 2021 [18 favorites]
For me, it's school standards.
Out of necessity, things have been a bit more relaxed for online school.
Wow, I feel the opposite, now that my kids are doing on-line school guided by standards designed by Google, I guess, I really don't know. My kid in 2nd grade went from 3 & 4 sided objects all the way to 12 sided 2D objects and 3D shapes in 5 days, as in naming them for a test, counting sides and vertices, etc. Oh and since everything is on the tiny laptop, she had to really learn to spell, type, and the equivelent of MS Powerpoint all at the same time.
I had to teach my 4th grader multiplication myself, because they only went over 1-12 for like 2-3 weeks.
My kids went from loving learning to dreading all this nonsense and button clicking, and I can't blame them.
I personally can't wait for in-person school to come back. I miss that more than anything else by far.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:56 PM on March 10, 2021 [7 favorites]
Out of necessity, things have been a bit more relaxed for online school.
Wow, I feel the opposite, now that my kids are doing on-line school guided by standards designed by Google, I guess, I really don't know. My kid in 2nd grade went from 3 & 4 sided objects all the way to 12 sided 2D objects and 3D shapes in 5 days, as in naming them for a test, counting sides and vertices, etc. Oh and since everything is on the tiny laptop, she had to really learn to spell, type, and the equivelent of MS Powerpoint all at the same time.
I had to teach my 4th grader multiplication myself, because they only went over 1-12 for like 2-3 weeks.
My kids went from loving learning to dreading all this nonsense and button clicking, and I can't blame them.
I personally can't wait for in-person school to come back. I miss that more than anything else by far.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:56 PM on March 10, 2021 [7 favorites]
Also it’s about a week from the anniversary of the day my dad died and while I know it’s been a year, I don’t feel like I had a chance to mourn, or that it’s been a year at all, just this limbo. Normally we would memorialize the day by gathering at the cemetery to dedicate the headstone, but it’s still not safe to fly there, we’re not all vaccinated yet, and his headstone won’t be ready for at least another couple of months because so many people have died that there was already a waitlist when my mom was ready to make the arrangements. Sometimes it feels like, did it even happen at all?
posted by Mchelly at 12:57 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
posted by Mchelly at 12:57 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
It's also important to remember USians just came out of a 4 year abusive relationship that we could not get out of, with a shit ton of gaslighting thrown in for good measure.
posted by benzenedream at 12:58 PM on March 10, 2021 [83 favorites]
posted by benzenedream at 12:58 PM on March 10, 2021 [83 favorites]
theodolite, yes: ANGRY. My view is that the Republicans have decided -- in a time of world-wide crisis -- to be as shitty as possible, and they're going to reap what they sow. I have very few spoons, and those fuckers are advertising themselves as essentially anti-spoon. So yes: angry.
And when I can forget about the GOP, I find myself in the slightly stupid torpor of the year after my wife was treated for cancer, when I was working & parenting four kids & shopping & cooking & driving to appointments & taking good notes & doing research & just everything. When I finally came down from the peak of all that I crashed for a long weekend at my parents' lake cabin, but I was still just fried for at least a year.
It's been most of ten years since then, and I still can't watch any media with suspense or risk in it. And I mean none: last weekend I watched the first episode of "All Creatures Great & Small" and -- even though I read the books forty years ago and saw the original series in the 1980s -- I still had to pause the show when the pregnant cow was having trouble delivering her calf. Like, my eyes were welling up with tears and I felt pressure in my chest and near panic.
I too am safe at home, and it feels like it's going to be damn hard to shake off the cobwebs and rejoin the world when my family can get our shots.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:05 PM on March 10, 2021 [23 favorites]
And when I can forget about the GOP, I find myself in the slightly stupid torpor of the year after my wife was treated for cancer, when I was working & parenting four kids & shopping & cooking & driving to appointments & taking good notes & doing research & just everything. When I finally came down from the peak of all that I crashed for a long weekend at my parents' lake cabin, but I was still just fried for at least a year.
It's been most of ten years since then, and I still can't watch any media with suspense or risk in it. And I mean none: last weekend I watched the first episode of "All Creatures Great & Small" and -- even though I read the books forty years ago and saw the original series in the 1980s -- I still had to pause the show when the pregnant cow was having trouble delivering her calf. Like, my eyes were welling up with tears and I felt pressure in my chest and near panic.
I too am safe at home, and it feels like it's going to be damn hard to shake off the cobwebs and rejoin the world when my family can get our shots.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:05 PM on March 10, 2021 [23 favorites]
I produce a lot of online courses, and right now I'm simultaneously editing 4 of them by the same instructor. I've been doing this work for years, but realized that for this particular project, I needed a better system to keep track of the complicated process: peer review, ordering subtitles, proofreading the syllabus, etc.
It took me an entire day just to make the stupid spreadsheet to keep track of all the things. Forced to divide my complex work up into little chunks, my brain rebelled and was like "Oh no, I'm not making this easy for you".
It took me at least an hour to decide on the color coding for the cells. Then I forgot how to insert new rows between existing ones. And so on...
By the end of the day I had this big, glorious, customized spreadsheet, but then I realized it was empty and now I needed to go and fill the values in for the things that had already been completed. Shit.
I stared off into space as my attention turned to the surly pileated woodpecker who lives nearby, it had just swooped in and was digging through the bird feed, tossing all the stuff it doesn't want onto the ground. "I wonder what it's looking for? Peanuts? Mealworms? Whatever it is, those mourning doves pecking through the seed discard sure appreciate it." Mourning doves are ground feeders you know, although sometimes they do fly onto this other feeder I have, and that's funny to watch, because .. uh...
What was I saying?
posted by jeremias at 1:05 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
It took me an entire day just to make the stupid spreadsheet to keep track of all the things. Forced to divide my complex work up into little chunks, my brain rebelled and was like "Oh no, I'm not making this easy for you".
It took me at least an hour to decide on the color coding for the cells. Then I forgot how to insert new rows between existing ones. And so on...
By the end of the day I had this big, glorious, customized spreadsheet, but then I realized it was empty and now I needed to go and fill the values in for the things that had already been completed. Shit.
I stared off into space as my attention turned to the surly pileated woodpecker who lives nearby, it had just swooped in and was digging through the bird feed, tossing all the stuff it doesn't want onto the ground. "I wonder what it's looking for? Peanuts? Mealworms? Whatever it is, those mourning doves pecking through the seed discard sure appreciate it." Mourning doves are ground feeders you know, although sometimes they do fly onto this other feeder I have, and that's funny to watch, because .. uh...
What was I saying?
posted by jeremias at 1:05 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
There will be a few varieties of this: the lucky ones stayed at home like hibernating bears, and don't recognize the world they emerge into. The unlucky one continued working in grocery stores and Amazon warehouses for the WFH bears, and should feel entitled to be jealous/angry about that -- and impatient with the bears. And the truly damned worked in hospitals and nursing homes, taking care of the unlucky and the disbelieving, and re entitled to a lifetime supply of rage and grief.
(Last, there are the dumb assholes who simply refused to believe the science, but I believe they should be lowered into volcanoes to plug up the lava holes.)
So how will the lucky the, unlucky, and the damned face each other? Will there be resentment? Will there be a public reckoning, or will it just fester? How will it be different in America, Asia, Europe, and other places -- and how will those peoples deal with each other?
posted by wenestvedt at 1:14 PM on March 10, 2021 [33 favorites]
(Last, there are the dumb assholes who simply refused to believe the science, but I believe they should be lowered into volcanoes to plug up the lava holes.)
So how will the lucky the, unlucky, and the damned face each other? Will there be resentment? Will there be a public reckoning, or will it just fester? How will it be different in America, Asia, Europe, and other places -- and how will those peoples deal with each other?
posted by wenestvedt at 1:14 PM on March 10, 2021 [33 favorites]
The past year has been a very strange one, I think, even by pandemic standards. I started a new job two weeks before the pandemic—and haven't been on site since. I also started HRT a month into the pandemic, and have spent the last year more undergoing a significant life transition largely in isolation from everyone but my partner and their mother. I genuinely have no idea how things will go once I'm back in the world because in many ways I am not the same person I was before I entered lockdown.
posted by SansPoint at 1:24 PM on March 10, 2021 [23 favorites]
posted by SansPoint at 1:24 PM on March 10, 2021 [23 favorites]
"Also it’s about a week from the anniversary of the day my dad died and while I know it’s been a year, I don’t feel like I had a chance to mourn, or that it’s been a year at all, just this limbo. Normally we would memorialize the day by gathering at the cemetery to dedicate the headstone, but it’s still not safe to fly there, ...
posted by Mchelly at 2:57 PM on March 10"
My father passed away before Christmas 2019 and we had imagined a spring funeral for his cremains - My brother and I are amazed and sad that it's been on pause for a year now.
posted by djseafood at 1:24 PM on March 10, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Mchelly at 2:57 PM on March 10"
My father passed away before Christmas 2019 and we had imagined a spring funeral for his cremains - My brother and I are amazed and sad that it's been on pause for a year now.
posted by djseafood at 1:24 PM on March 10, 2021 [6 favorites]
My niece graduated college early, in December 2019. She still hasn't had any kind of graduation.
So many things will be irrelevant by the time we finally unclog this backup of celebrations and observations!
posted by wenestvedt at 1:36 PM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
So many things will be irrelevant by the time we finally unclog this backup of celebrations and observations!
posted by wenestvedt at 1:36 PM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
This is just surviving, not living.
The year forced me to realize how long I have been doing that. I can't really deal with that now. I've had one period of pretty bad depression this year (counting since last March, not since Jan 1) and I don't want to start up another one ruminating about how many chances I missed in life, you know? I'm still employed, none of my family or friends have gotten seriously ill. Those are good things, very good.
posted by thelonius at 1:38 PM on March 10, 2021 [9 favorites]
The year forced me to realize how long I have been doing that. I can't really deal with that now. I've had one period of pretty bad depression this year (counting since last March, not since Jan 1) and I don't want to start up another one ruminating about how many chances I missed in life, you know? I'm still employed, none of my family or friends have gotten seriously ill. Those are good things, very good.
posted by thelonius at 1:38 PM on March 10, 2021 [9 favorites]
I still can't watch any media with suspense or risk in it
I've done a lot of rereading of big, chewy novels this past year, and while I'd like to believe it's just that my intellect is demanding this stern stuff, I think in considerable part it's because I find it hard to bear to take the risk of opening up a new book. There's the danger-to-protagonists anxiety you mention, but also something more all-encompassing. I don't know what's going to happen in the book, and I can hardly stand it.
Also, I started a new job, and I find work requires a tiring social performance to begin with, but I would have two relatively low-stakes Zoom meetings with new colleagues a day and just collapse at the end.
posted by praemunire at 1:39 PM on March 10, 2021 [14 favorites]
I've done a lot of rereading of big, chewy novels this past year, and while I'd like to believe it's just that my intellect is demanding this stern stuff, I think in considerable part it's because I find it hard to bear to take the risk of opening up a new book. There's the danger-to-protagonists anxiety you mention, but also something more all-encompassing. I don't know what's going to happen in the book, and I can hardly stand it.
Also, I started a new job, and I find work requires a tiring social performance to begin with, but I would have two relatively low-stakes Zoom meetings with new colleagues a day and just collapse at the end.
posted by praemunire at 1:39 PM on March 10, 2021 [14 favorites]
My mother-in-law and father died in Jan/Feb 2020, I broke my leg over the summer, I burned out at my old job and found and started a new one the week of the election - and yeah, that four-year abuse situation we had no control over PLUS menopause.
It's a good day when I can string two sentences together, and I'm probably always going to wonder what each of those individual experiences would have been like on their own.
Last night my husband and I actually bantered and cracked jokes, repeatedly pausing the (yes, generally safe, unviolent, and low-plot) TV we watch from 7-10:30 every night to make the time pass to actually talk to each other, and I have to assume it's vaccine optimism that made for an actual Good Day. Neither of us has a lot of hope it'll happen for another month or two, and we know it won't magically fix everything, but it's a demarcation line that matters.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:41 PM on March 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
It's a good day when I can string two sentences together, and I'm probably always going to wonder what each of those individual experiences would have been like on their own.
Last night my husband and I actually bantered and cracked jokes, repeatedly pausing the (yes, generally safe, unviolent, and low-plot) TV we watch from 7-10:30 every night to make the time pass to actually talk to each other, and I have to assume it's vaccine optimism that made for an actual Good Day. Neither of us has a lot of hope it'll happen for another month or two, and we know it won't magically fix everything, but it's a demarcation line that matters.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:41 PM on March 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
Is anybody else having trouble speaking sensibly? I don’t make sense enough. My brain cuts off words or swaps them out—“in here” for “out there”, for example. Today I called a snail a kitty. My brain just grabs in the word bin and gets the closest one.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:42 PM on March 10, 2021 [49 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 1:42 PM on March 10, 2021 [49 favorites]
Is anybody else having trouble speaking sensibly? I don’t make sense enough.
I can't tell whether I'm ever making sense but I can report that my colleagues, generally an articulate and communicative bunch, are NOT making a ton of sense lately so I assume neither am I.
I was about to say how, in addition to [gestures vaguely], my work really ratcheted up the level of complexity. More concurrent projects, all with nearly identical (BUT NOT IDENTICAL) names, clients, and content. All running on identical schedules, with tons of individual moving parts that must never be dropped or forgotten. In any year this would be an overwhelming task and now, with all of our brains melted, it's impossible. So I've been furious at these assholes for creating this impossible task and giving it to us in this impossible year.
And then just now I realized that the people who made these commitments and schedules made them with their melty plague brains and that is why they make no sense! Holy shit, it really was a revelation.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:50 PM on March 10, 2021 [27 favorites]
My kids went from loving learning to dreading all this nonsense and button clicking, and I can't blame them.
Sure, don't get me wrong, there are many ways in which online school is awful for a lot of kids.
Also, my experience is with older children who are more able to work independently.
But I was thinking more of what I think of as checking boxes for the sake of checking boxes.
For example, homework is now due on Friday, all of it.
So the kids don't spend an hour after school everyday because something is due tomorrow.
They can work at a speed and time that suits them and their household.
Tests are similar. You have an hour. If you're done in 20 minutes, log off or work on something else. If you need the entire hour, you have it.
Basically more emphasis on what work is accomplished instead of when that work is accomplished.
posted by madajb at 1:57 PM on March 10, 2021 [10 favorites]
Sure, don't get me wrong, there are many ways in which online school is awful for a lot of kids.
Also, my experience is with older children who are more able to work independently.
But I was thinking more of what I think of as checking boxes for the sake of checking boxes.
For example, homework is now due on Friday, all of it.
So the kids don't spend an hour after school everyday because something is due tomorrow.
They can work at a speed and time that suits them and their household.
Tests are similar. You have an hour. If you're done in 20 minutes, log off or work on something else. If you need the entire hour, you have it.
Basically more emphasis on what work is accomplished instead of when that work is accomplished.
posted by madajb at 1:57 PM on March 10, 2021 [10 favorites]
Is anybody else having trouble speaking sensibly? I don’t make sense enough.
I've been making so many homophone typos so regularly in the last few months it's like I had a small stroke. It's not like I never make typos, but this specific kind of typo (know instead of no, are instead of our, etc--I've even noticed I've been doing it writing by hand!!) is something I've almost never done in my entire life, even as a small child.
posted by phunniemee at 1:58 PM on March 10, 2021 [30 favorites]
I've been making so many homophone typos so regularly in the last few months it's like I had a small stroke. It's not like I never make typos, but this specific kind of typo (know instead of no, are instead of our, etc--I've even noticed I've been doing it writing by hand!!) is something I've almost never done in my entire life, even as a small child.
posted by phunniemee at 1:58 PM on March 10, 2021 [30 favorites]
I feel like the only reason I'm doing halfway okay is that I made a conscious decision to treat myself like a zoo animal and seek "enrichment" activities. It can be as small as "trying a new food" to something as comparatively big as "book a cabin in the desert and spend a few days there for a change of scenery", but it really has made a difference! Sure, my sense of time is still absolutely fucked and I'm definitely forgetting more things more often, but other than that, I'm okay, I guess.
Anyway, I've kept myself occupied reasonably well with writing fanfiction about superheroes making out, playing video games, and reading books, but I still find myself just listlessly refreshing websites, seeking I don't even know what. Novelty? A sweet hit of dopamine from something, anything, a meme or a gif or a joke?
Good thing I've been writing a lot at least, because comparatively speaking, my verbal skills have definitely kind of deteriorated. Pretty grim to realize that a) the main people I regularly talk to are my parents (because I call them just about every day), my roommate, my roommate's cat, and my boss and b) that this has correspondingly led to something of a decline in my English conversational abilities. Because I talk to my parents in Persian, and I don't talk to my roommate a lot on a day-to-day basis, and the cat does not talk back, so that pretty much just leaves my boss, and it turns out that is not enough novelty. All my other communication is in texts and emails. Really miss being able to just meet up with some friends at a restaurant where we can make idle conversation, because phone calls and Zoom are really not cutting it.
posted by yasaman at 2:09 PM on March 10, 2021 [16 favorites]
Anyway, I've kept myself occupied reasonably well with writing fanfiction about superheroes making out, playing video games, and reading books, but I still find myself just listlessly refreshing websites, seeking I don't even know what. Novelty? A sweet hit of dopamine from something, anything, a meme or a gif or a joke?
Good thing I've been writing a lot at least, because comparatively speaking, my verbal skills have definitely kind of deteriorated. Pretty grim to realize that a) the main people I regularly talk to are my parents (because I call them just about every day), my roommate, my roommate's cat, and my boss and b) that this has correspondingly led to something of a decline in my English conversational abilities. Because I talk to my parents in Persian, and I don't talk to my roommate a lot on a day-to-day basis, and the cat does not talk back, so that pretty much just leaves my boss, and it turns out that is not enough novelty. All my other communication is in texts and emails. Really miss being able to just meet up with some friends at a restaurant where we can make idle conversation, because phone calls and Zoom are really not cutting it.
posted by yasaman at 2:09 PM on March 10, 2021 [16 favorites]
I want to take this time and rave about my team. I can't say what we do, what we did, or anything really about what we've done - but I can say - *this year has been amazing*. They delivered - late, filled with existential dread which piqued everyone's interest *multiple times* throughout the year. But, they delivered. Everything. Something that was requested for years but nobody could do it because constraints were put on people that would make a project like this unpalatable at my company if it were normally visible. It is so foundational, but simultaneously against the general operating model that it needed peace and quiet to get done. It needed leaders looking at other tasks and not doing drive-bys in order to get done. It needed a brief period of floundering for it to find its internal rhythm. And... at the end of the year it was there.
The part that is truly amazing is: All this horror gave my team time to self reflect, learn how to ask for help, learn how to compartmentalize aspects of their code to collaborate and share with teammates. They learned important lessons on all kinds of positioning and framing and how to sell delays in a schedule. And, weirdly, in this year of existential dread - I've turned an introverted push-button style analyst into an organized taskmaster that knows how to question the strategic value of every weird side request imaginable. I turned a very new data engineer into someone that *deeply* knows the end to end structure of our project and knows how to ask hard questions. And I hired in an energetic future leader that I helped lay out a process for success in our remote life, and she turned it into something we could roll out to our whole team. I've been fortunate enough to work with an absolutely insanely good pyspark consultant that has just amplified my team's capabilities and has made my team *better* while still delivering on the future.
So yeah, I can say - for a truly horrible shitty awful year - my team has been a bright spot. And that's with massive leadership changes, a bunch of priority changes circling around us, and just - yeah... holy cow! After I walked them through their accomplishments in their review this year, I asked them: despite the pandemic, are you in a better spot now than you were last March - and *every single one of them* were able to see that they'd done some amazing things.
But yeah - we also all have those existential dread days. And yes, I've told people to take those - that its a thing and its ok... and if they don't deal with the dread, then they aren't going to deal with the code... and amazingly... owning our anxieties has... had surreal results.
posted by Nanukthedog at 2:26 PM on March 10, 2021 [18 favorites]
The part that is truly amazing is: All this horror gave my team time to self reflect, learn how to ask for help, learn how to compartmentalize aspects of their code to collaborate and share with teammates. They learned important lessons on all kinds of positioning and framing and how to sell delays in a schedule. And, weirdly, in this year of existential dread - I've turned an introverted push-button style analyst into an organized taskmaster that knows how to question the strategic value of every weird side request imaginable. I turned a very new data engineer into someone that *deeply* knows the end to end structure of our project and knows how to ask hard questions. And I hired in an energetic future leader that I helped lay out a process for success in our remote life, and she turned it into something we could roll out to our whole team. I've been fortunate enough to work with an absolutely insanely good pyspark consultant that has just amplified my team's capabilities and has made my team *better* while still delivering on the future.
So yeah, I can say - for a truly horrible shitty awful year - my team has been a bright spot. And that's with massive leadership changes, a bunch of priority changes circling around us, and just - yeah... holy cow! After I walked them through their accomplishments in their review this year, I asked them: despite the pandemic, are you in a better spot now than you were last March - and *every single one of them* were able to see that they'd done some amazing things.
But yeah - we also all have those existential dread days. And yes, I've told people to take those - that its a thing and its ok... and if they don't deal with the dread, then they aren't going to deal with the code... and amazingly... owning our anxieties has... had surreal results.
posted by Nanukthedog at 2:26 PM on March 10, 2021 [18 favorites]
We're all experiencing tremendous levels of ambiguous loss.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 2:30 PM on March 10, 2021 [39 favorites]
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 2:30 PM on March 10, 2021 [39 favorites]
This is just surviving, not living.
The weirdest thing for me is that so little has changed, emotionally. With my chronic depression, even heavily medicated, just getting from one hour to the next, from one day to the next, constantly trying to find the tiniest crumb of purpose or meaning or pleasure to just have a reason to keep going a bit longer, the constant crushing grind of three times more work than can be fitted in the time available, the ever-present exhaustion, the thoughts of imminent disaster always lurking round the next corner - that's been my reality for so many years now, all this *waves hands vaguely* just feels, well, just a slight change of scenery.
I felt a small sense of relief that my parents, my wife and recently myself have all now received the first dose of vaccine, but even that didn't really move the needle. Because if it's not the Kent variant, it'll be the South African or Brazilian or something new that gets us, and my kids are still doomed by climate change. Admittedly, I do work in a school, so apart from the deepest lockdowns, the only thing that's really changed in my working life is having to wear a mask. And having to pull off even more miracles than usual in no time with even less money. I wasn't exactly a social butterfly in the before times, so nothing new there.
Just... numbness, and trying to stay functional enough with no hope that it's going to ever improve was *already* my normal. Surviving, not living is exactly right. I almost resent that others expect to escape it, eventually. Believe me, you can endure this state for a LOT longer than a year. Whether you're still sane at the end of it... well, I'm not really in a great position to tell I'm afraid.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 2:33 PM on March 10, 2021 [20 favorites]
The weirdest thing for me is that so little has changed, emotionally. With my chronic depression, even heavily medicated, just getting from one hour to the next, from one day to the next, constantly trying to find the tiniest crumb of purpose or meaning or pleasure to just have a reason to keep going a bit longer, the constant crushing grind of three times more work than can be fitted in the time available, the ever-present exhaustion, the thoughts of imminent disaster always lurking round the next corner - that's been my reality for so many years now, all this *waves hands vaguely* just feels, well, just a slight change of scenery.
I felt a small sense of relief that my parents, my wife and recently myself have all now received the first dose of vaccine, but even that didn't really move the needle. Because if it's not the Kent variant, it'll be the South African or Brazilian or something new that gets us, and my kids are still doomed by climate change. Admittedly, I do work in a school, so apart from the deepest lockdowns, the only thing that's really changed in my working life is having to wear a mask. And having to pull off even more miracles than usual in no time with even less money. I wasn't exactly a social butterfly in the before times, so nothing new there.
Just... numbness, and trying to stay functional enough with no hope that it's going to ever improve was *already* my normal. Surviving, not living is exactly right. I almost resent that others expect to escape it, eventually. Believe me, you can endure this state for a LOT longer than a year. Whether you're still sane at the end of it... well, I'm not really in a great position to tell I'm afraid.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 2:33 PM on March 10, 2021 [20 favorites]
The weird thing is having to call in to meetings and act like I'm normal and coping when I'm absolutely not. It seems like my work colleagues are still just... gettin' stuff done...? at a pace that I can't even imagine maintaining. My attention is spread so thin.
Honestly I'm thinking about just quitting my job so I can stop pretending. It seems like a terrible idea to quit a secure and high paying job in a pandemic but I just feel like all the tricks I used to employ to trick myself into getting work done haven't worked in a year and maybe I just need time away from paying work to wrap my head around my priorities and figure out what I want from life anymore. I think we're going to see a lot of people leave alienating, unfulfilling jobs in the next few months as things start to open up - especially working parents, who have had to do sooo much faking it many of us don't even remember how not to.
posted by potrzebie at 2:36 PM on March 10, 2021 [29 favorites]
Honestly I'm thinking about just quitting my job so I can stop pretending. It seems like a terrible idea to quit a secure and high paying job in a pandemic but I just feel like all the tricks I used to employ to trick myself into getting work done haven't worked in a year and maybe I just need time away from paying work to wrap my head around my priorities and figure out what I want from life anymore. I think we're going to see a lot of people leave alienating, unfulfilling jobs in the next few months as things start to open up - especially working parents, who have had to do sooo much faking it many of us don't even remember how not to.
posted by potrzebie at 2:36 PM on March 10, 2021 [29 favorites]
darkstar: We ought to have a national holiday or something to celebrate when it's over.
National? Why so limited? We really are all in this together.
The problem is that there's not really going to be a moment when it's over. The world will never go back to being the way it was.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:41 PM on March 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
National? Why so limited? We really are all in this together.
The problem is that there's not really going to be a moment when it's over. The world will never go back to being the way it was.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:41 PM on March 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
Meanwhile I'm really dreading all the "back to normal" pushes, as someone with severe social anxiety I've been loving the ability to stay home and manage social interactions. Being forced back into the office, in particular, is going to be a nightmare.
[Obviously I want the pandemic itself to end, and I'm not "happy" about a virus killing millions of people. But the social permission to not go into work, not go out, etc has been incredibly welcome, and I wish that aspect could stay, but it's clear it won't]
posted by thefoxgod at 2:45 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
[Obviously I want the pandemic itself to end, and I'm not "happy" about a virus killing millions of people. But the social permission to not go into work, not go out, etc has been incredibly welcome, and I wish that aspect could stay, but it's clear it won't]
posted by thefoxgod at 2:45 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
Also I just spent a full two minutes walking around my house swearing looking for a box cutter that was in my hand so there's that.
posted by phunniemee at 2:54 PM on March 10, 2021 [25 favorites]
posted by phunniemee at 2:54 PM on March 10, 2021 [25 favorites]
I try to send follow-up emails (articles for my advisees etc) while I'm in the Zoom meeting (and tell people this since it's very obvious that I'm typing and not talking), because once I end the meeting, it's like the conversation vanishes from my brain.
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:58 PM on March 10, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:58 PM on March 10, 2021 [10 favorites]
I did not RTFA I just came to driveby scream at The Atlantic that this is not late-stage pandemic, you foooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooools it only just started JFC way to drive me even more crazy than I already am okay sorry please delete me I clearly resemble the topic of the very article that enrages me
posted by Don Pepino at 3:11 PM on March 10, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by Don Pepino at 3:11 PM on March 10, 2021 [10 favorites]
> once I end the meeting, it's like the conversation vanishes from my brain
Oh god, this, so much this.
I have a terrible memory for movies; they're like dreams to me. I'm immersed while they're happening, but after a few hours they just... evaporate.
The same thing happens with zoom meetings. I feel like I'm losing my mind.
posted by Westringia F. at 3:22 PM on March 10, 2021 [8 favorites]
Oh god, this, so much this.
I have a terrible memory for movies; they're like dreams to me. I'm immersed while they're happening, but after a few hours they just... evaporate.
The same thing happens with zoom meetings. I feel like I'm losing my mind.
posted by Westringia F. at 3:22 PM on March 10, 2021 [8 favorites]
the lucky ones stayed at home like hibernating bears, and don't recognize the world they emerge into
I'm apparently one of the ones you consider "lucky" and at this point I'm having anxiety attacks that make me wonder "is this what a heart attack feels like?" whenever I leave my apartment. Recently my husband and I went for a walk (in our quiet residential neighborhood, with the intention of visiting the corner Buddhist shrine we used to stop by on a daily basis) but didn't manage to walk the two blocks to the shrine before I had to sit down on a ledge and clutch my husband's hand as I hyperventilated for several minutes until it no longer felt like I was going to burst into tears.
At a year in, I don't think anyone is "lucky", regardless of how their situation may appear from the outside.
The weird thing is having to call in to meetings and act like I'm normal and coping when I'm absolutely not. It seems like my work colleagues are still just... gettin' stuff done...? at a pace that I can't even imagine maintaining. My attention is spread so thin.
We recently went through the performance evaluation process at work and I actually wound up writing things in the self-evaluation like "accomplishments: set up comfortable and functional home workspace" and "under current circumstances it's hard to think about goals beyond trying to stay functional". My manager signed off on them, so...
posted by Lexica at 3:25 PM on March 10, 2021 [26 favorites]
I'm apparently one of the ones you consider "lucky" and at this point I'm having anxiety attacks that make me wonder "is this what a heart attack feels like?" whenever I leave my apartment. Recently my husband and I went for a walk (in our quiet residential neighborhood, with the intention of visiting the corner Buddhist shrine we used to stop by on a daily basis) but didn't manage to walk the two blocks to the shrine before I had to sit down on a ledge and clutch my husband's hand as I hyperventilated for several minutes until it no longer felt like I was going to burst into tears.
At a year in, I don't think anyone is "lucky", regardless of how their situation may appear from the outside.
The weird thing is having to call in to meetings and act like I'm normal and coping when I'm absolutely not. It seems like my work colleagues are still just... gettin' stuff done...? at a pace that I can't even imagine maintaining. My attention is spread so thin.
We recently went through the performance evaluation process at work and I actually wound up writing things in the self-evaluation like "accomplishments: set up comfortable and functional home workspace" and "under current circumstances it's hard to think about goals beyond trying to stay functional". My manager signed off on them, so...
posted by Lexica at 3:25 PM on March 10, 2021 [26 favorites]
Oh, Lexica, don't feel bad -- I am in that group, too. And we are only "lucky" inasmuch as we didn't have to work in public. But everybody is having a shitty time, everybody is having trouble.
I am with you! If I can't watch a fictitious cow, and a 22-minute tv show taxes my attention, I know I am not my old self. High five, you're doing the best you can, and I'm certainly not bagging on you for that.
posted by wenestvedt at 3:29 PM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
I am with you! If I can't watch a fictitious cow, and a 22-minute tv show taxes my attention, I know I am not my old self. High five, you're doing the best you can, and I'm certainly not bagging on you for that.
posted by wenestvedt at 3:29 PM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
Wading through molasses is the phrase I settled on last week.
posted by bq at 3:41 PM on March 10, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by bq at 3:41 PM on March 10, 2021 [6 favorites]
I keep trying to have this conversation with people, and I really want them to say "you're right, fuck all this" but they are afraid to. I end up feeling like the weirdo weakling who keeps asking "why can't we just rest a while???" and everyone else shrugs and keeps working.
So this helps.
I'm just so tired.
posted by emjaybee at 3:41 PM on March 10, 2021 [32 favorites]
So this helps.
I'm just so tired.
posted by emjaybee at 3:41 PM on March 10, 2021 [32 favorites]
thanks for this post and thread. i'm one of the lucky bears, except that my one and only "hobby" (playing in a band and touring) has been completely snatched away. I am really lucky. i have a full time job that easily transitioned to fully remote and i'm really thankful for that. however i am usually on tour with my band 3 or 4 months out of the year (working from the road / taking unpaid leave as neccessary) and having that grind to an immediate, indefinite halt a year ago (right before we were gonna start this biggest tour we've ever done) was really tough. playing shows is....the only thing i REALLY LOVE to do. and i haven't really been able to find anything else enjoyable that i am able to stick with.
playing music alone is not the same. i guess i didn't realize how much i depend on the energy / give and take / etc that comes from playing music in the same room with other humans. but now i'm worried that i've forgotten how to do it. i suck at doing stuff all by myself.
for a lot of this year i just felt like i had nothing to look forward to. now it's gotten to the point that i can't even imagine looking forward to something.
posted by capnsue at 3:46 PM on March 10, 2021 [12 favorites]
playing music alone is not the same. i guess i didn't realize how much i depend on the energy / give and take / etc that comes from playing music in the same room with other humans. but now i'm worried that i've forgotten how to do it. i suck at doing stuff all by myself.
for a lot of this year i just felt like i had nothing to look forward to. now it's gotten to the point that i can't even imagine looking forward to something.
posted by capnsue at 3:46 PM on March 10, 2021 [12 favorites]
playing shows is....the only thing i REALLY LOVE to do. and i haven't really been able to find anything else enjoyable that i am able to stick with
UGH yes. I only had two hobbies, they're both indefinitely inaccessible to me, and I literally just can't find anything else I like doing! People are shocked that I don't like their homebody hobby shit but I'm like, none of y'all like anything I like to do either? If I fucking liked knitting I would already be doing it, friends, it's not like I haven't had people suggest it to me 400000000 times before.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 4:07 PM on March 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
UGH yes. I only had two hobbies, they're both indefinitely inaccessible to me, and I literally just can't find anything else I like doing! People are shocked that I don't like their homebody hobby shit but I'm like, none of y'all like anything I like to do either? If I fucking liked knitting I would already be doing it, friends, it's not like I haven't had people suggest it to me 400000000 times before.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 4:07 PM on March 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences. Self-compassion has been tough lately so it helps a lot to hear that others are experiencing similar fatigue and being kind to themselves. It's been particularly difficult to find that self-compassion around exercise- i quit a month or two into quarantine, and that was one of my really important pillars of self-care before all this. I really hope I can enjoy exercise again soon, I'm tearing up just typing this because I've been living with my parents for this whole year and they're so unbelievably toxic. I finally graduated from college and got a job and I'm technically financially independent but that means absolutely nothing right now because I'm still under their thumb. I have to have what's essentially a professional face on all the time- if they see that I'm having feelings, they'll just make everything worse. I'm 26. I've been waiting since I left for college to finally, truly live on my own terms and I feel so pathetic and like I've regressed into being sixteen except this time its so much worse because I know how bad it is. When is my life going to start? When can I be myself? My last year of college felt very similar to quarantine because my friends had graduated and I was just holding out till I was done. Now I'm holding out...indefinitely. When can we stop just holding out and actually doing things and growing? When can I stop being trapped with my only community being people who constantly think the worst of me? When does it end? And when can I stop feeling like a failure about it?
I'm sorry for being harsh on myself. This was very cathartic to type and I haven't had a space to be compassionate to myself for a long time. I hope this doesn't trigger anyone else.
posted by scruffy-looking nerfherder at 4:07 PM on March 10, 2021 [47 favorites]
I'm sorry for being harsh on myself. This was very cathartic to type and I haven't had a space to be compassionate to myself for a long time. I hope this doesn't trigger anyone else.
posted by scruffy-looking nerfherder at 4:07 PM on March 10, 2021 [47 favorites]
I can't tell you folks what a relief it is to hear so many stories of other people who feel like their brains just aren't working right these days. My attention span is shot, and I find myself just making a lot of silly autopilot mistakes.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:09 PM on March 10, 2021 [18 favorites]
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:09 PM on March 10, 2021 [18 favorites]
I've done "essential" work the whole damn time and am just so tired of it all. Masking all day, sweating and trying to breathe and finding a way to drink enough water to replenish and offering "excellent service" to the unmasked idiots and avoiding the breakroom and eating lunch in my vehicle for safety and I am just tired.
I could get the vaccination if I was able to spend all day waiting to pounce on whatever time slot is narrowly available but I don't have time or even seem able to care.
My patience is nil. It seems everything is breaking in my house and I cannot fix it. I changed the batteries in my automatic soap dispenser and it no longer works; I took it apart and it still doesn't work; I wasted over an hour trying to fix something that now is another frustration in life because I just cannot tolerate one more thing, and then another thing and another thing come along.
Our brains have no refuge from it all. There is no break from the worry and stress. This is my pandemic brain.
posted by mightshould at 4:11 PM on March 10, 2021 [30 favorites]
I could get the vaccination if I was able to spend all day waiting to pounce on whatever time slot is narrowly available but I don't have time or even seem able to care.
My patience is nil. It seems everything is breaking in my house and I cannot fix it. I changed the batteries in my automatic soap dispenser and it no longer works; I took it apart and it still doesn't work; I wasted over an hour trying to fix something that now is another frustration in life because I just cannot tolerate one more thing, and then another thing and another thing come along.
Our brains have no refuge from it all. There is no break from the worry and stress. This is my pandemic brain.
posted by mightshould at 4:11 PM on March 10, 2021 [30 favorites]
> Earlier in Covid Times, there were all these stories and posts about people using this freed-up time to bake bread or learn a new language, and I had absolutely no clue how they were managing that in terms of energy or focus.
I've been baking a lot of bread and it's been therapeutic. It's something I can control. I can buy a ton of flour, it's cheap, and I know I can use a little bit at a time to make food for myself for awhile. Plus the process itself is relaxing. It forces me to get out of my computer and be in the physical world for a bit. It smells really good. Even homemade bread has a lot of carbs though, so I've since branched out into making my own soy milk and tofu and I'm thinking about pickling stuff.
posted by technodelic at 4:16 PM on March 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
I've been baking a lot of bread and it's been therapeutic. It's something I can control. I can buy a ton of flour, it's cheap, and I know I can use a little bit at a time to make food for myself for awhile. Plus the process itself is relaxing. It forces me to get out of my computer and be in the physical world for a bit. It smells really good. Even homemade bread has a lot of carbs though, so I've since branched out into making my own soy milk and tofu and I'm thinking about pickling stuff.
posted by technodelic at 4:16 PM on March 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
So how will the lucky the, unlucky, and the damned face each other? Will there be resentment? Will there be a public reckoning, or will it just fester? How will it be different in America, Asia, Europe, and other places -- and how will those peoples deal with each other?
We Hate You Now: The Hardest Problem of The Aftertimes (Quinn Norton, Medium.com)
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:24 PM on March 10, 2021 [32 favorites]
We Hate You Now: The Hardest Problem of The Aftertimes (Quinn Norton, Medium.com)
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:24 PM on March 10, 2021 [32 favorites]
I cued in on the line in the article about trying drinks because I saw this a few weeks ago on tumblr
The anniversary of my twin sister's death was a few days ago, and this whole month is always bad for me because we were trying to deal with her estate for about a month and half, so my mind is always more on that than on the pandemic dates, but it's interesting to think about because before she died, I was this hyperorganized, minimalist person with an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and order. Like, I'd make Marie Kondo weep. And then sis died and it was like all my sense of organization and responsibility went with her, and suddenly I was doing vertical filing and there were piles of papers everywhere and I can't make myself do anything and can barely meet deadlines (not good for a freelancer) when I get into these seasonal funks. I'm a procrastinator after a lifetime of being a doer. And everything these days is a funk.
I liked being home, I didn't mind too much living alone and not going out a lot, but having the choices taken from me, not being able to taste my friend's drink when we took our laptops to the bar near my house to write together, not being able to just go somewhere without plans and contingencies and remembering a freaking mask like I'm goddamn Spider-Man is just so mind-numbing. We're living in a Nine-Inch Nails song and every day is exactly the same. My inability to do stuff now, which had taken such a huge hit after my sister's death, feels like the time we were in the last stretch of summiting Mt. Rainier, where I just wanted to be left alone on the route to die of exposure, I was totally fine with that. I know things will get back to something resembling normal (I hope not too normal, because there is so much to fix about our world), but it's a thing I can't envision and I don't even know if I want to.
One half of me wants to get the vaccine and go out and try my friend's drinks again and hang out at Starbucks with my laptop, and the other half would be fine if I just...let the snow pile over me while I looked at the view.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 4:33 PM on March 10, 2021 [38 favorites]
was just Remembering how you’d be out with a friend and you’d each order a different cocktail and you’d ask “what’d you get?” and they’d read the description off the menu and you’d be like “ooh that sounds good” and then they’d say “try it!” and then you’d have a lil sip of their drink and they’d have a lil sip of your drink and you’d decide which one was best and you wouldn’t give each other a life-threatening respiratory infectionand promptly burst into tears and immediately sent it to the friend I most often went out with in the Before Times. I started working from home in something like 2005, but for a job with East Coast hours so I had to start in what is now the middle of my night on the left coast, and went full-time freelance in 2008. Working those few years remotely but with co-workers at least had prepared me for being home all day, but I kept getting increasingly isolated over the freelance years--the deaths of all my family, some friends, other friends moving away or just losing them by attrition...I was already more isolated and lonely than I wanted to be before things got weird here. My world had contracted so much that at first I didn't even really notice the way it shrank with the stay-at-home orders.
The anniversary of my twin sister's death was a few days ago, and this whole month is always bad for me because we were trying to deal with her estate for about a month and half, so my mind is always more on that than on the pandemic dates, but it's interesting to think about because before she died, I was this hyperorganized, minimalist person with an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and order. Like, I'd make Marie Kondo weep. And then sis died and it was like all my sense of organization and responsibility went with her, and suddenly I was doing vertical filing and there were piles of papers everywhere and I can't make myself do anything and can barely meet deadlines (not good for a freelancer) when I get into these seasonal funks. I'm a procrastinator after a lifetime of being a doer. And everything these days is a funk.
I liked being home, I didn't mind too much living alone and not going out a lot, but having the choices taken from me, not being able to taste my friend's drink when we took our laptops to the bar near my house to write together, not being able to just go somewhere without plans and contingencies and remembering a freaking mask like I'm goddamn Spider-Man is just so mind-numbing. We're living in a Nine-Inch Nails song and every day is exactly the same. My inability to do stuff now, which had taken such a huge hit after my sister's death, feels like the time we were in the last stretch of summiting Mt. Rainier, where I just wanted to be left alone on the route to die of exposure, I was totally fine with that. I know things will get back to something resembling normal (I hope not too normal, because there is so much to fix about our world), but it's a thing I can't envision and I don't even know if I want to.
One half of me wants to get the vaccine and go out and try my friend's drinks again and hang out at Starbucks with my laptop, and the other half would be fine if I just...let the snow pile over me while I looked at the view.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 4:33 PM on March 10, 2021 [38 favorites]
Honestly I'm thinking about just quitting my job so I can stop pretending. It seems like a terrible idea to quit a secure and high paying job in a pandemic but I just feel like all the tricks I used to employ to trick myself into getting work done haven't worked in a year and maybe I just need time away from paying work to wrap my head around my priorities and figure out what I want from life anymore.
I did this. Had about five weeks between jobs last summer where I just drank beer and played video games, then I started a new job pretty similar to the one I quit. It didn't help that much, but it was a nice five weeks.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 4:33 PM on March 10, 2021 [8 favorites]
I did this. Had about five weeks between jobs last summer where I just drank beer and played video games, then I started a new job pretty similar to the one I quit. It didn't help that much, but it was a nice five weeks.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 4:33 PM on March 10, 2021 [8 favorites]
Yeah, I had seriously begun to fret about early onset age-related cognitive decline. Reading all these stories is quite a relief.
posted by treepour at 4:45 PM on March 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by treepour at 4:45 PM on March 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
I have had a lot of loss in the past 5 years with friends and beloved pets dying, and my father declining very very very slowly but steadily with a heartbreaking neurological condition that was never diagnosed. It slowly stole the life of a brilliant, kind, witty man and left him immobile, unable to talk or stand. He died in mid-February 2020 and I felt nothing. It was like I'd taken all the feelings I had about that, and the other deaths, and the abusive presidency, and I had stuffed them down so far so I could continue to function that I couldn't feel them at all.
So I decided to take a week off work in early March 2020 to try to let go and grieve, and that was the week that my employer and city shut down and I spent most of the week working frantically on how I could move my work home, and how we could move an entire university's classes to online with 3 days notice.
And I've worked and worked and worked since then on all manner of crises from my job, and stayed in my house, and tried to do the right thing and I've felt nothing much more for this year than incredibly depressed, scared, terrified, tired, stupid, confused, exhausted, or overwhelmed.
I want a break. I want, like, a year off to remember how to be a person. But now we're getting pushy pushy messaging about how we're Resuming! Normal! Operations! for the fall semester and I'm just so fucking angry. I'm angry because I don't want my work to be in my home anymore and I'm angry because I feel like I'll never have a chance to get well, and I'm angry because honestly, I think I've become an agoraphobe and can't handle the idea of being around a university's worth of people on a daily basis.
And I actually, for real, only have about one year to retirement but I'm considering quitting soon anyway because I just don't know how to pretend everything! is! okay! now! So I recognize myself in many stories here. Thank you for letting me ramble.
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 5:07 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
So I decided to take a week off work in early March 2020 to try to let go and grieve, and that was the week that my employer and city shut down and I spent most of the week working frantically on how I could move my work home, and how we could move an entire university's classes to online with 3 days notice.
And I've worked and worked and worked since then on all manner of crises from my job, and stayed in my house, and tried to do the right thing and I've felt nothing much more for this year than incredibly depressed, scared, terrified, tired, stupid, confused, exhausted, or overwhelmed.
I want a break. I want, like, a year off to remember how to be a person. But now we're getting pushy pushy messaging about how we're Resuming! Normal! Operations! for the fall semester and I'm just so fucking angry. I'm angry because I don't want my work to be in my home anymore and I'm angry because I feel like I'll never have a chance to get well, and I'm angry because honestly, I think I've become an agoraphobe and can't handle the idea of being around a university's worth of people on a daily basis.
And I actually, for real, only have about one year to retirement but I'm considering quitting soon anyway because I just don't know how to pretend everything! is! okay! now! So I recognize myself in many stories here. Thank you for letting me ramble.
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 5:07 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
My output at work is absolute garbage and I feel really dreadful about it. Not only because I hate feeling like a total putz, but also because I would like to leave this job for various reasons and I feel in no shape mentally to be interviewing ("I'm a good work...guy") or starting a new job. My manager has been figuratively absent for months/weeks and I am alternately enraged and semi-understanding.
I have also lashed out twice at strangers during the past year (once for mask non-compliance and once for public littering) and god it's so embarrassing to have so little self-control. I am also pre-emptively angry at all of the ways the pandemic has given us the time and space to change our behaviour and the way society functions, and the way we will all inevitably backslide into the way things were.
posted by Rora at 5:11 PM on March 10, 2021 [12 favorites]
I have also lashed out twice at strangers during the past year (once for mask non-compliance and once for public littering) and god it's so embarrassing to have so little self-control. I am also pre-emptively angry at all of the ways the pandemic has given us the time and space to change our behaviour and the way society functions, and the way we will all inevitably backslide into the way things were.
posted by Rora at 5:11 PM on March 10, 2021 [12 favorites]
This is comforting, to read that I’m not the only person who feels like I’m underperforming and wanting to sleep most of the time, and looking back at what I’ve written into Slack and saying “that doesn’t make sense, I’m not being clear.” I hope we can get through this and hug each other.
posted by Zephyrial at 5:43 PM on March 10, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by Zephyrial at 5:43 PM on March 10, 2021 [9 favorites]
I'm one of the "lucky" ones in that my job can be done pretty much entirely remotely and I've got some spare space for a tiny office at home, so the only massive change has been the walls I stare at all day and not being able to go out for drinks with my coworkers.
However--and don't take this the wrong way--I'm glad to hear that everyone else is having a lot of the same problems I am, because I was seriously starting to worry about myself. I can't focus on anything for longer than a few minutes, and forget about trying to get into a serious drama or a book more complex than a junk-food police procedural or something. (I'm currently twenty-something books into the Harry Bosch series. It's too late for me. Save yourselves.) I forget words and names. I transpose letters when typing because my fingers fire in the wrong order. I have no goddamned energy for anything except the XBox, and sometimes not even that.
That's not the worst of it for me, though. See, I wasn't a paragon of physical fitness before all this--I've always been a big man--but I was trying, not least to keep my cardiovascular system healthy-ish. I had a gym membership, and I was going at least twice a week, and it was working. My stamina was better, I was getting stronger, and a lot of the fat was going away.
Then came lockdown and I couldn't do that any more. I now have a walking loop around my neighborhood that's either a half mile or a mile depending on which way I go, but it isn't enough. I feel myself getting slower and less conditioned and heavier and more fragile every day, and I hate every single second of it. My body and I have never been fans of each other, but I can't stand it right now.
My clothes don't really fit it at the moment, and lately it's decided to keep me up at night with some interesting new aches and pains and twinges. It keeps me playing "Muscular ache or heart attack warning sign?" while I'm lying there, and it now likes to sleep wrong on its right knee somehow to the point where it wakes me up.
I just wish someone would just drive up and fucking dart me like a zoo animal with one of the COVID vaccines so I can get back out there and interact with people again so I can get my brain back into some kind of functional state and do something about getting this body back into a shape I don't fucking loathe.
Sorry. That turned into kind of a rant.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 5:48 PM on March 10, 2021 [24 favorites]
However--and don't take this the wrong way--I'm glad to hear that everyone else is having a lot of the same problems I am, because I was seriously starting to worry about myself. I can't focus on anything for longer than a few minutes, and forget about trying to get into a serious drama or a book more complex than a junk-food police procedural or something. (I'm currently twenty-something books into the Harry Bosch series. It's too late for me. Save yourselves.) I forget words and names. I transpose letters when typing because my fingers fire in the wrong order. I have no goddamned energy for anything except the XBox, and sometimes not even that.
That's not the worst of it for me, though. See, I wasn't a paragon of physical fitness before all this--I've always been a big man--but I was trying, not least to keep my cardiovascular system healthy-ish. I had a gym membership, and I was going at least twice a week, and it was working. My stamina was better, I was getting stronger, and a lot of the fat was going away.
Then came lockdown and I couldn't do that any more. I now have a walking loop around my neighborhood that's either a half mile or a mile depending on which way I go, but it isn't enough. I feel myself getting slower and less conditioned and heavier and more fragile every day, and I hate every single second of it. My body and I have never been fans of each other, but I can't stand it right now.
My clothes don't really fit it at the moment, and lately it's decided to keep me up at night with some interesting new aches and pains and twinges. It keeps me playing "Muscular ache or heart attack warning sign?" while I'm lying there, and it now likes to sleep wrong on its right knee somehow to the point where it wakes me up.
I just wish someone would just drive up and fucking dart me like a zoo animal with one of the COVID vaccines so I can get back out there and interact with people again so I can get my brain back into some kind of functional state and do something about getting this body back into a shape I don't fucking loathe.
Sorry. That turned into kind of a rant.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 5:48 PM on March 10, 2021 [24 favorites]
So how will the lucky the, unlucky, and the damned face each other? Will there be resentment? Will there be a public reckoning, or will it just fester? How will it be different in America, Asia, Europe, and other places -- and how will those peoples deal with each other?
Maybe it will be a milder version of the liberation of France during World War II, collaborators dragged from their apartments, people claiming to be heroes, and the shaving of heads in the streets. Maybe the last part would work, since we all need haircuts.
posted by etaoin at 5:55 PM on March 10, 2021 [7 favorites]
Maybe it will be a milder version of the liberation of France during World War II, collaborators dragged from their apartments, people claiming to be heroes, and the shaving of heads in the streets. Maybe the last part would work, since we all need haircuts.
posted by etaoin at 5:55 PM on March 10, 2021 [7 favorites]
Yes, thank you, thank you, for this post and the space to reassure each other.
Today my home internet inexplicably broke for several hours and I literally had a toddler-style meltdown and had to lie down and pet the dog. The swiftness of mild setback to dumpster fire/all my shits lost was epic. And I woke up feeling "fine".
posted by nakedmolerats at 5:58 PM on March 10, 2021 [12 favorites]
Today my home internet inexplicably broke for several hours and I literally had a toddler-style meltdown and had to lie down and pet the dog. The swiftness of mild setback to dumpster fire/all my shits lost was epic. And I woke up feeling "fine".
posted by nakedmolerats at 5:58 PM on March 10, 2021 [12 favorites]
Spring is returning and the days are getting longer here and it is fucking with my head big time. I don't know that it's a particular grief around the one year 'covidversary' but it is like...the plants and the trees and the sun are returning and we are generally supposed to feel happy to go do things again and I just feel like that Allie Brosh comic where she's trying to act at conveying An Emotion but nothing is coming out.
posted by nakedmolerats at 6:03 PM on March 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by nakedmolerats at 6:03 PM on March 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
Mr. Bad Example, I have a lot of the same feelings and experiences. The excercise coach I had been working with for over a decade opened their gym up well before the lockdown allowed it.
I walked away from my remaining workouts. I kept myself safe by never going there again, but the pounds all came back, and I opened up the box of clothes I hoped to never need again and I just feel like a big clumsy mess.
I want everyone - including me - to get the shots so I can start to get this mess under control again.
*fist bump of solidarity*
posted by FallibleHuman at 6:05 PM on March 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
I walked away from my remaining workouts. I kept myself safe by never going there again, but the pounds all came back, and I opened up the box of clothes I hoped to never need again and I just feel like a big clumsy mess.
I want everyone - including me - to get the shots so I can start to get this mess under control again.
*fist bump of solidarity*
posted by FallibleHuman at 6:05 PM on March 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
Also I'm trying to dip my toe into some combination of take some reskilling classes and/or get serious about looking for new jobs and like... how am I supposed to feel like I am capable of taking on a new challenge? How am I supposed to convince an employer I have excelled in any way in the past year?
posted by nakedmolerats at 6:06 PM on March 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by nakedmolerats at 6:06 PM on March 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'll be sharing the original post with a friend of mine who's felt like he's losing his mind, so thank you. I've been sending him every story I see about the psychological and physiological effects of prolonged confinement and stress, so he knows it's not just him.
We Hate You Now
There’s going to be a point where this is over, and we’re all going to be in person again. If you didn’t mask, went to crowded spaces, visited friends and family, any of those things, best hide that from me. Because what’s happening right now is your fault: the sickness, exhaustion, deaths, loneliness, isolation, it’s the fault of people who can’t just stay home and mask long enough to let this horrible thing burn itself out. I’m not talking about the people who have to keep working to keep us fed and safe and communicating, the people who have had to keep society working through all this. It’s the people who want to have a drink, to dance and party and eat out, go to church in person, fly around the world and skip out on quarantine, and of course, just not wear a goddamned mask. It’s the risky behavior that you didn’t have to do, which you knew was risky because you can read, and you did anyway, because your short-term happiness was more important than the whole damn world. Literally, the whole damn world.
Oh good, someone wrote this so I didn't have to string these words together. This is exactly what I was thinking about when I went on a walk outside yesterday for the first time in weeks and came home in debilitating pain after like 45 minutes.
It feels like hyperbole to say this is going to be like the situation after the Holocaust, where years later, people kept discovering the secret crimes of their neighbors and had to decide what to do about it (or at least, that's how I imagine it might have happened, since that scenario comes up so much in fiction). But that's what I keep thinking of and that's how I feel. Don't you dare tell me you partied it up all this time or you don't wear masks like so many people in my neighborhood or you think the precautions I've taken for a year as of tomorrow are silly. If I know you did all that and you didn't, like, have some immunity from getting the virus early on, or you weren't an essential worker, we're not friends anymore.
I like your version, etaoin. Just drag them into the streets, shave their heads, and publicly name their crimes against humanity.
Sure, I've done the occasional thing someone else might find unforgivably frivolous—see also—but on the whole, I've been intensely good, to the point that the inactivity and things like attempting to do laundry at home have damaged my body. I keep a Twitter thread of all the times I've cried since August, if that's cathartic for anyone, heh. I'm keeping it as sort of a historical record, as much as anything.
So when I saw both Amanda Marcotte and Amy Siskind earlier talking about how psyched they are for things to return to normal, and in Marcotte's case, victim-blaming people who are working through our collective trauma, I had a few things to say about that, like this. I unfollowed them both, for my own mental health, but Marcotte lashed out at me after my comments and told me I needed to hurry up and "get better." I had a few things to say, like this. I pulled some punches in this thread I wrote trying to sort out my feelings about it, but yeah, I had to block Marcotte, because her responses to me escalated very quickly in sort of a salvo of bombardment that made it clear she's definitely not past whatever trauma she mentioned. But hey, I guess none of us are, right?
I was trying to be share that my experience of trauma continues to this day and is valid. I'm still seeing tons of people out walking around without masks, and the only reason I'm not crossing the street before I cross paths with every single one anymore, then going home and never coming back out, like I did all winter, is that I'm lucky (?) enough to have chronic illnesses and have gotten my first shot recently.
I just can't take all these calls for a return to normalcy. Things aren't normal yet, and they're never going to return to the normal we had before, and in some ways, as discussed above, that's a good thing. We can't collectively unsee the abuses and inequities we've seen and experienced during the past year.
posted by limeonaire at 6:26 PM on March 10, 2021 [28 favorites]
We Hate You Now
There’s going to be a point where this is over, and we’re all going to be in person again. If you didn’t mask, went to crowded spaces, visited friends and family, any of those things, best hide that from me. Because what’s happening right now is your fault: the sickness, exhaustion, deaths, loneliness, isolation, it’s the fault of people who can’t just stay home and mask long enough to let this horrible thing burn itself out. I’m not talking about the people who have to keep working to keep us fed and safe and communicating, the people who have had to keep society working through all this. It’s the people who want to have a drink, to dance and party and eat out, go to church in person, fly around the world and skip out on quarantine, and of course, just not wear a goddamned mask. It’s the risky behavior that you didn’t have to do, which you knew was risky because you can read, and you did anyway, because your short-term happiness was more important than the whole damn world. Literally, the whole damn world.
Oh good, someone wrote this so I didn't have to string these words together. This is exactly what I was thinking about when I went on a walk outside yesterday for the first time in weeks and came home in debilitating pain after like 45 minutes.
It feels like hyperbole to say this is going to be like the situation after the Holocaust, where years later, people kept discovering the secret crimes of their neighbors and had to decide what to do about it (or at least, that's how I imagine it might have happened, since that scenario comes up so much in fiction). But that's what I keep thinking of and that's how I feel. Don't you dare tell me you partied it up all this time or you don't wear masks like so many people in my neighborhood or you think the precautions I've taken for a year as of tomorrow are silly. If I know you did all that and you didn't, like, have some immunity from getting the virus early on, or you weren't an essential worker, we're not friends anymore.
I like your version, etaoin. Just drag them into the streets, shave their heads, and publicly name their crimes against humanity.
Sure, I've done the occasional thing someone else might find unforgivably frivolous—see also—but on the whole, I've been intensely good, to the point that the inactivity and things like attempting to do laundry at home have damaged my body. I keep a Twitter thread of all the times I've cried since August, if that's cathartic for anyone, heh. I'm keeping it as sort of a historical record, as much as anything.
So when I saw both Amanda Marcotte and Amy Siskind earlier talking about how psyched they are for things to return to normal, and in Marcotte's case, victim-blaming people who are working through our collective trauma, I had a few things to say about that, like this. I unfollowed them both, for my own mental health, but Marcotte lashed out at me after my comments and told me I needed to hurry up and "get better." I had a few things to say, like this. I pulled some punches in this thread I wrote trying to sort out my feelings about it, but yeah, I had to block Marcotte, because her responses to me escalated very quickly in sort of a salvo of bombardment that made it clear she's definitely not past whatever trauma she mentioned. But hey, I guess none of us are, right?
I was trying to be share that my experience of trauma continues to this day and is valid. I'm still seeing tons of people out walking around without masks, and the only reason I'm not crossing the street before I cross paths with every single one anymore, then going home and never coming back out, like I did all winter, is that I'm lucky (?) enough to have chronic illnesses and have gotten my first shot recently.
I just can't take all these calls for a return to normalcy. Things aren't normal yet, and they're never going to return to the normal we had before, and in some ways, as discussed above, that's a good thing. We can't collectively unsee the abuses and inequities we've seen and experienced during the past year.
Writer of a book on trolls: See, people admit they don't want to go back to normal. Maybe they enjoy scolding.I just kinda had to back away slowly from that and subtweet about it, but like...it's gonna be months and years of this, isn't it? All of us traumatized melted-brain people starting at shadows.
Me: Seems like you're scolding people for trauma, which is the opposite of what this article says.
Writer: I've had trauma. You just don't want to get better.
Me: 👀
posted by limeonaire at 6:26 PM on March 10, 2021 [28 favorites]
I'd been having a year much like a lot of you have described, and then a few weeks ago I started having a medical issue and learned I would need surgery. At first I was like "oh no I have to get surgery, and during a pandemic of all times" but then as the assembly line of appointments and doctors started coming at me it started to become almost exciting, like look, something different is happening and it's forcing me to get out of my house and go to all these new places and talk to all these new people and stuff, and oooh I better get things done around the house before my surgery because I'm going to feel sore for a while after my surgery.
I have been more productive in my personal life the last few weeks than I was for much of last year. My surgery is next week and hopefully I won't die.
posted by wondermouse at 6:27 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
I have been more productive in my personal life the last few weeks than I was for much of last year. My surgery is next week and hopefully I won't die.
posted by wondermouse at 6:27 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
Also my work makes all the noises about "everyone is struggling" and "take care of each other" and yet after my toddler meltdown, I made a jokey email about struggling with internet outage all day to explain why Item X was delayed and like... no answer. No reassurance. The warm body did not produce Item X and nobody cares.
posted by nakedmolerats at 6:35 PM on March 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by nakedmolerats at 6:35 PM on March 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
I’m so tired of people, and I haven’t seen any people in he flesh for a year. Except in passing. I enjoy being alone, but the lack of ritual all-but-meaningless interactions is a weight on my heart.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:44 PM on March 10, 2021 [15 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:44 PM on March 10, 2021 [15 favorites]
Reading this thread feels tremendously liberating. Thank you to everyone who has told their stories, short, long, or otherwise. Seeing these things written by real people in a forum that is not built on hate and clicks... It’s marvelous.
Over the last nine years, I lost my father, mother- and father-in-law, two beloved uncles, and my first pod of rabbits, the first of whom passed unexpectedly and shortly after my dad. I don’t talk about that stuff more than necessary at work, and I don’t like to burden friends with it — plus, people simply get tired of hearing about it.
The pandemic — and specifically the cognitive shit — has forced me to confront the fact that I’ve been having similar issues (always following a death) for nearly a decade. To make me realize that it doesn’t matter if colleagues or acquaintances don’t “get it,” but that it matters that I get it. What happened is what happened, and in some cases it’s still happening. The pandemic is still happening, whatever the timeline for return to new normal, and I am not okay.
I will presumably be fine in the long term. I am privileged in so many ways, and I get by. But acknowledging the problem and truly fucked up nature of how things are right now has been tremendously helpful in adjusting my expectations. As Frowner said, my emotions sometimes just go. They do come back, but at times I am clearly out of gas. While ai wait for them to come back, I try to enjoy the things that I know typically make me happy.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:46 PM on March 10, 2021 [7 favorites]
Over the last nine years, I lost my father, mother- and father-in-law, two beloved uncles, and my first pod of rabbits, the first of whom passed unexpectedly and shortly after my dad. I don’t talk about that stuff more than necessary at work, and I don’t like to burden friends with it — plus, people simply get tired of hearing about it.
The pandemic — and specifically the cognitive shit — has forced me to confront the fact that I’ve been having similar issues (always following a death) for nearly a decade. To make me realize that it doesn’t matter if colleagues or acquaintances don’t “get it,” but that it matters that I get it. What happened is what happened, and in some cases it’s still happening. The pandemic is still happening, whatever the timeline for return to new normal, and I am not okay.
I will presumably be fine in the long term. I am privileged in so many ways, and I get by. But acknowledging the problem and truly fucked up nature of how things are right now has been tremendously helpful in adjusting my expectations. As Frowner said, my emotions sometimes just go. They do come back, but at times I am clearly out of gas. While ai wait for them to come back, I try to enjoy the things that I know typically make me happy.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:46 PM on March 10, 2021 [7 favorites]
I started a new job at the start of the year. I feel like I'm doing...OK...but not as well as I would like. I definitely feel like I'm no longer able to communicate as clearly as I used to. My father passed away last summer, not from COVID, but it was COVID-adjacent. He wouldn't seek care for a long-term medical problem because he was always uncomfortable around doctors and didn't want to go to the hospital alone. The new job I started involved a move to a place where we have friends and family. But...I don't know. It's hard not to feel kind of numb about it all.
posted by wintermind at 7:00 PM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by wintermind at 7:00 PM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
Thank you all again. I think this conversation is the most useful experience I've had in weeks. I'm actually feeling some emotions other than desperation which is very nice.
A few more "yes! and" reactions I've had - I've gained a bunch of weight, and I know I should do something like join a weight loss program but I don't have the executive functioning to do all the planning and find the recipes and weigh everything we're cooking and the thought of not having my nice chia pudding for breakfast every day just makes me so unhappy.
Also my department head decided this is a great time for us to do our "self reflections" on the past year and have a "career conversation" and I guess I can't just write:
• Did not just walk out of my house empty-handed and head for the sea.
• Did not yell, over zoom or in email, "Fucking fuck you, you fuck," to any professors or administrators.
• Opened my email every day and tried very very hard to write a coherent answer to all questions
• Goals for upcoming year? I will try not to rage quit!
(In writing this post, I wanted to make that list above, and could not remember the word "bullet" and had to google "list dot" instead.)
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 7:06 PM on March 10, 2021 [38 favorites]
A few more "yes! and" reactions I've had - I've gained a bunch of weight, and I know I should do something like join a weight loss program but I don't have the executive functioning to do all the planning and find the recipes and weigh everything we're cooking and the thought of not having my nice chia pudding for breakfast every day just makes me so unhappy.
Also my department head decided this is a great time for us to do our "self reflections" on the past year and have a "career conversation" and I guess I can't just write:
• Did not just walk out of my house empty-handed and head for the sea.
• Did not yell, over zoom or in email, "Fucking fuck you, you fuck," to any professors or administrators.
• Opened my email every day and tried very very hard to write a coherent answer to all questions
• Goals for upcoming year? I will try not to rage quit!
(In writing this post, I wanted to make that list above, and could not remember the word "bullet" and had to google "list dot" instead.)
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 7:06 PM on March 10, 2021 [38 favorites]
Oh god I love that. My own list dot:
-did not just cackle maniacally when someone asked me to "confirm" info re April 2022, as if anyone has any fucking useful idea
posted by nakedmolerats at 7:44 PM on March 10, 2021 [17 favorites]
-did not just cackle maniacally when someone asked me to "confirm" info re April 2022, as if anyone has any fucking useful idea
posted by nakedmolerats at 7:44 PM on March 10, 2021 [17 favorites]
I know there's a reason I've been thinking of that scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where Dave Bowman watches completely blank-faced a recorded video of his parents wishing him happy birthday.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:30 PM on March 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:30 PM on March 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
Thank you saguaro, "list dot" made me laugh/cackle so loudly that I scared my cat who was sleeping in my lap.
I feel so validated by everyone's painful and vulnerable pandemic stories. We're survivors, all of us, and though it may not have been pretty, we survived.
posted by honey badger at 8:49 PM on March 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
I feel so validated by everyone's painful and vulnerable pandemic stories. We're survivors, all of us, and though it may not have been pretty, we survived.
posted by honey badger at 8:49 PM on March 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
FirstMateKate: I am not necessarily thankful, but I am ... aware of how most people's pandemic life is nearly identical to my life in poverty
This.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 9:12 PM on March 10, 2021 [12 favorites]
This.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 9:12 PM on March 10, 2021 [12 favorites]
In hopes of helping, I will submit that the mental difficulties almost everyone seems to be suffering after this year of weird loss seem to be pretty close to the normal drawbacks of having an ADD/ADHD brain. Executive function suffers, planning becomes a cliff climb, time gets unstuck. Emotional regulation takes more energy. My brain has these deficits in normal circumstances, so I have advice! (This is also a pep talk for myself.)
This is how your brain is for now. It's not your fault it's this way. Things might take three times as long to do. This is not because you're bad or you're bad at things. If it helps, get the stuff you need to do out of your brain and into your physical world. Notes, lists, spreadsheets, timers. Ask yourself how you would get a third-grader to consider the steps of what you want to accomplish, and then you can write it out and execute it like you're the third-grader until it's done. Tiny, tiny steps are okay. Naps are okay.
The big trap is feeling shame over how your brain's working. Your brain is evolved to try and learn and fail and help you get along with other people, and all of that has been stunted for a year. There's no shame in that causing problems with how you operate; it would probably be weird if it didn't. Please don't turn present difficulties inward, because you're really not to blame for them.
Thank you especially, FirstMateKate, for talking about the further kinda slow decompensating occurring for people who already tended toward brain fogginess in the first place. It's been a year. My systems are tending toward entropy, but vaccines are slowly happening and for now that's enough hope to slog through this thick foggy tunnel. I can't see a change yet in the density of the fog and I know there's still an undetermined length to go, but the slog continues. I like you all and thank you for this thread.
posted by lauranesson at 10:23 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
This is how your brain is for now. It's not your fault it's this way. Things might take three times as long to do. This is not because you're bad or you're bad at things. If it helps, get the stuff you need to do out of your brain and into your physical world. Notes, lists, spreadsheets, timers. Ask yourself how you would get a third-grader to consider the steps of what you want to accomplish, and then you can write it out and execute it like you're the third-grader until it's done. Tiny, tiny steps are okay. Naps are okay.
The big trap is feeling shame over how your brain's working. Your brain is evolved to try and learn and fail and help you get along with other people, and all of that has been stunted for a year. There's no shame in that causing problems with how you operate; it would probably be weird if it didn't. Please don't turn present difficulties inward, because you're really not to blame for them.
Thank you especially, FirstMateKate, for talking about the further kinda slow decompensating occurring for people who already tended toward brain fogginess in the first place. It's been a year. My systems are tending toward entropy, but vaccines are slowly happening and for now that's enough hope to slog through this thick foggy tunnel. I can't see a change yet in the density of the fog and I know there's still an undetermined length to go, but the slog continues. I like you all and thank you for this thread.
posted by lauranesson at 10:23 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
^^^^ seconded.... I read through this entire thread kind of giggling to myself, as this is exactly how I would describe my ADHD to anyone... nebulous thought with lack of executive function. If nothing else, my own feelings of imposter syndrome have been alleviated during the pandemic, as everyone else seems to be functioning on my wavelength now (unfortunately!).
Great suggestions above! Chunking tasks down into bitty bitty steps appropriate for litte kids is my #1 of getting things done. Also, I try to allow myself to fully immerse myself/get enthusistic about minutia/novelty/new ideas... new ideas keep me fresh (wikipedia rabbit holes are great for this - makes you feel connected and alive as you chase threads of knowledge).
Adderall for everybody sure would be great.
posted by NorthernAutumn at 10:36 PM on March 10, 2021 [7 favorites]
Great suggestions above! Chunking tasks down into bitty bitty steps appropriate for litte kids is my #1 of getting things done. Also, I try to allow myself to fully immerse myself/get enthusistic about minutia/novelty/new ideas... new ideas keep me fresh (wikipedia rabbit holes are great for this - makes you feel connected and alive as you chase threads of knowledge).
Adderall for everybody sure would be great.
posted by NorthernAutumn at 10:36 PM on March 10, 2021 [7 favorites]
Well, I'm not bursting into sudden sobs all the time like I was for 4 months, so that's an improvement. I am able to juggle my job. I am frequently maddened by my job, but it moved me way up in the shot priority list, which makes the last nine years of hell (and total inability to find anything else at all) worth it for that. I am hoping I'll feel less shitty once I'm fully vaccinated and might have some safe options for doing more stuff. I guess we will see what the CDC says there.
Mostly I am just incredibly goddamned bored a lot. I'm apathetic. I don't change clothes for at least a week, sometimes two, because I'm all alone and why bother. I'm wearing three layers of sweats every day from the cold I can't leave. I only shower once a week and eat a lot of garlic because same. I'm bored of my own cooking. I'm not looking forward to my second round of pandemic holidays/birthdays/etc really. I'm sick of my pandemic hair, which was bright pink at the end of December 2019 and I can't get it redyed because I have no clue on hair dyeing and do not want to do it myself. I have six inch roots and in another year of this the roots will be so long that I'm going to be able to hack off the pink. I'm so sick of my natural hair color, which looks limp and dead most of the time.
I was doing online plays but haven't been able to find any to get into lately (and I didn't get notifications from other theaters I performed with when they did new shows, which I'm mad about). A year ago tonight was the last time I saw friends and did karaoke. I may never get to do that last one ever again.
I really miss my friends. Some of them I've still been able to keep online, but I am really, really, really bothered by kinda-losing the ones who just can't or don't want to talk during a pandemic. I can't stop being upset and bothered about losing these people because we can't just go to the theater or hang out in a bar or anything and they can't seem to talk without "in person" groups, or whatever it is, I don't know any more. I don't want to give up hopes on these people but it feels like I have to when they shut me out or can't talk or whatever the fuck it is. I feel bad if I reach out and they don't respond, which is, I dunno, 50% of the time or something. Like, do they hate me now? Did they stop caring? Did I traumatize them by making them feel guilty that I tried to talk to them? Should I take the hint that they're ghosting me? I'm seriously considering writing a letter asking if I should just take the hint and stop trying here. Like I hashed this out with my therapist and everything, except I keep wondering if I'm being an asshole to say "Please at least say hi back to me or let me know if I should give up on you forever."
Life just feels utterly pointless. I'm using all this energy to stay in the house and avoid people in order to survive, and for what? Can't do what I want to do anyway. I'm so sick of "focus on YOU!" talk with regards to the friends issue. I've been focused on me for an extremely long time now and I'm sick of me! I don't know if any of this hell is ever going to end. It might with the vaccines, it might not with the variants, nobody fucking knows anything and I might as well just get drunk every night.
Now I'm crying again.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:06 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
Mostly I am just incredibly goddamned bored a lot. I'm apathetic. I don't change clothes for at least a week, sometimes two, because I'm all alone and why bother. I'm wearing three layers of sweats every day from the cold I can't leave. I only shower once a week and eat a lot of garlic because same. I'm bored of my own cooking. I'm not looking forward to my second round of pandemic holidays/birthdays/etc really. I'm sick of my pandemic hair, which was bright pink at the end of December 2019 and I can't get it redyed because I have no clue on hair dyeing and do not want to do it myself. I have six inch roots and in another year of this the roots will be so long that I'm going to be able to hack off the pink. I'm so sick of my natural hair color, which looks limp and dead most of the time.
I was doing online plays but haven't been able to find any to get into lately (and I didn't get notifications from other theaters I performed with when they did new shows, which I'm mad about). A year ago tonight was the last time I saw friends and did karaoke. I may never get to do that last one ever again.
I really miss my friends. Some of them I've still been able to keep online, but I am really, really, really bothered by kinda-losing the ones who just can't or don't want to talk during a pandemic. I can't stop being upset and bothered about losing these people because we can't just go to the theater or hang out in a bar or anything and they can't seem to talk without "in person" groups, or whatever it is, I don't know any more. I don't want to give up hopes on these people but it feels like I have to when they shut me out or can't talk or whatever the fuck it is. I feel bad if I reach out and they don't respond, which is, I dunno, 50% of the time or something. Like, do they hate me now? Did they stop caring? Did I traumatize them by making them feel guilty that I tried to talk to them? Should I take the hint that they're ghosting me? I'm seriously considering writing a letter asking if I should just take the hint and stop trying here. Like I hashed this out with my therapist and everything, except I keep wondering if I'm being an asshole to say "Please at least say hi back to me or let me know if I should give up on you forever."
Life just feels utterly pointless. I'm using all this energy to stay in the house and avoid people in order to survive, and for what? Can't do what I want to do anyway. I'm so sick of "focus on YOU!" talk with regards to the friends issue. I've been focused on me for an extremely long time now and I'm sick of me! I don't know if any of this hell is ever going to end. It might with the vaccines, it might not with the variants, nobody fucking knows anything and I might as well just get drunk every night.
Now I'm crying again.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:06 PM on March 10, 2021 [31 favorites]
The isolation, the tension, the awful overlay of politics... And the ugly thoughtloops that never stop have now broken my brain.
Never did acclimate to masks and increasingly I’m finding it difficult to function when managing necessary errands. Can’t retain shopping lists or simple plans. My face sweats, glasses fog and I end up sobbing in the car. Being told that “you’ll get used to it” nearly caused me to slap someone recently (and I am an intensely nonviolent person).
Lots of sudden crying fits. Weird emotions with unclear origins. I find myself angry at others without justification. I love people and miss them at the same time that I hate them and don’t care if I ever see them again. Individuals I once enjoyed but whose political views lean right now send me into fits of blind rage.
Someone who saved my life, who did more for me than any other individual, just passed after months of terminal illness during which contact with her was impossible. The funeral is in two days with family members coming from farflung places. I need to go, want to go, but should I? Everyone has a different opinion. Most of the family are vaccinated but I won’t be until next week.
I’ve tried hard to corral my errant brain but the fact is that time is finite, age can’t be revoked and many opportunities, once gone, can never be reclaimed. Every day that passes I hear doors slamming shut and am overwhelmed by the losses and uncertainties.
posted by kinnakeet at 4:30 AM on March 11, 2021 [18 favorites]
Never did acclimate to masks and increasingly I’m finding it difficult to function when managing necessary errands. Can’t retain shopping lists or simple plans. My face sweats, glasses fog and I end up sobbing in the car. Being told that “you’ll get used to it” nearly caused me to slap someone recently (and I am an intensely nonviolent person).
Lots of sudden crying fits. Weird emotions with unclear origins. I find myself angry at others without justification. I love people and miss them at the same time that I hate them and don’t care if I ever see them again. Individuals I once enjoyed but whose political views lean right now send me into fits of blind rage.
Someone who saved my life, who did more for me than any other individual, just passed after months of terminal illness during which contact with her was impossible. The funeral is in two days with family members coming from farflung places. I need to go, want to go, but should I? Everyone has a different opinion. Most of the family are vaccinated but I won’t be until next week.
I’ve tried hard to corral my errant brain but the fact is that time is finite, age can’t be revoked and many opportunities, once gone, can never be reclaimed. Every day that passes I hear doors slamming shut and am overwhelmed by the losses and uncertainties.
posted by kinnakeet at 4:30 AM on March 11, 2021 [18 favorites]
It was a year ago today that my employer sent everyone home and asked us to start working from home indefinitely. Indefinitely changed to several specific dates over the last year, and the most recent one is "after Labor Day."
I'm fortunate to be able to do my job from home easily, even in non-pandemic times, so that transition hasn't been difficult. But after a year of wearing soft pants (my affectionate term for sweatpants) instead of hard pants (anything else), after a year of not needing to commute back and forth, after a year of not needing to worry about the clutter on my desk encroaching on others' workspaces, I've noticed a decline and it's not just mental.
I'm also a working musician, or would be. We managed to play a handful of times last year—more often than I thought we'd get to, given the circumastances—but it's been a struggle not having that creative outlet (and the extra income.)
posted by emelenjr at 4:58 AM on March 11, 2021 [6 favorites]
I'm fortunate to be able to do my job from home easily, even in non-pandemic times, so that transition hasn't been difficult. But after a year of wearing soft pants (my affectionate term for sweatpants) instead of hard pants (anything else), after a year of not needing to commute back and forth, after a year of not needing to worry about the clutter on my desk encroaching on others' workspaces, I've noticed a decline and it's not just mental.
I'm also a working musician, or would be. We managed to play a handful of times last year—more often than I thought we'd get to, given the circumastances—but it's been a struggle not having that creative outlet (and the extra income.)
posted by emelenjr at 4:58 AM on March 11, 2021 [6 favorites]
I feel the need to say that weight gain while under stress can totally be hormonal - cortisol is a hell of a drug and will make you crave things that will most effectively put on pounds. For me, I try to remember that my body interprets "stressed out person" as "famine may be coming" and tries to protect me so that my species will continue.
I have started slurring my words at the end of the day, enough that my husband was checking in about whether I've been drinking. I have been enjoying a scotch or a cider on Friday and Saturday which is two days a week more than I was drinking in the year up to the pandemic, other than maybe a glass of wine at a restaurant, but I think the lack of words is just that after a day of organizing my children, myself, my boss, my staff, my schoolwork, and dealing with my own emotions...I'm done. I hope.
I remember after my daughter died, I felt hopeless, but it was understandable. Then I had my eldest son, and I made it through the baby stage, and then around when he was 3 I had what in other times probably would have been called nervous exhaustion or something. At that time I got pretty suicidal, the most I'd been since my early 20s, and had to white-knuckle a lot of days, especially Sundays, because it was at work that I felt the worst.
Looking back it's so clear to me that it was the rolling impact of stuff, but at the time I took it as a sign of personal failure. I hope everyone can ease up and not go through that in as isolated a way as I did.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:07 AM on March 11, 2021 [18 favorites]
I have started slurring my words at the end of the day, enough that my husband was checking in about whether I've been drinking. I have been enjoying a scotch or a cider on Friday and Saturday which is two days a week more than I was drinking in the year up to the pandemic, other than maybe a glass of wine at a restaurant, but I think the lack of words is just that after a day of organizing my children, myself, my boss, my staff, my schoolwork, and dealing with my own emotions...I'm done. I hope.
I remember after my daughter died, I felt hopeless, but it was understandable. Then I had my eldest son, and I made it through the baby stage, and then around when he was 3 I had what in other times probably would have been called nervous exhaustion or something. At that time I got pretty suicidal, the most I'd been since my early 20s, and had to white-knuckle a lot of days, especially Sundays, because it was at work that I felt the worst.
Looking back it's so clear to me that it was the rolling impact of stuff, but at the time I took it as a sign of personal failure. I hope everyone can ease up and not go through that in as isolated a way as I did.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:07 AM on March 11, 2021 [18 favorites]
I can't explain my year, it's been so weird and packed with waves of panic. One day, maybe in September, I'll go to an office I've never been to and meet my colleagues for the first time. I'll have to not fart all day? because people? And maybe after work I'll go get a drink at the restaurant where the really kind guy I used to date works and I will...hug him?
My head is a mess. I haven't been touched except by my dentist since Nov 22 and it's really getting to me (thankfully stay-at-home has been lifted at last and I can go visit my allowed other-person-that-lives-alone who lives in a different health unit this weekend - unless something changes).
Fuck, life has become so calculated and over-planned, and I'm scared to go back to spontaneity, because won't everything make me panic?
posted by wellred at 6:29 AM on March 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
My head is a mess. I haven't been touched except by my dentist since Nov 22 and it's really getting to me (thankfully stay-at-home has been lifted at last and I can go visit my allowed other-person-that-lives-alone who lives in a different health unit this weekend - unless something changes).
Fuck, life has become so calculated and over-planned, and I'm scared to go back to spontaneity, because won't everything make me panic?
posted by wellred at 6:29 AM on March 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
just 1+ing a lot of ideas in this thread.
* especially during the early days of the pandemic, I felt very calm and focused because all of a sudden, the entire world was behaving in a way that validated my anxiety and depression. Not that those are feelings you want validated, but the layer of "oh god nobody else is perceiving this" was temporarily alleviated and that was... surprisingly nice.
* I was told during my 2020 work review that I needed to "show more leadership." I am so disgusted by this that the only thing I can do when I think of it is laugh like I am dislodging some spiny, rusty, malevolent thing from my gut and throat.
* I was talking to a coworker in India the other day and he mentioned that he was less productive, and he thought he might be the only one. I thought it was wonderful and brave of him to start that conversation, and assured him that though I was on a lot of zoom calls, I was not really "dialed in" to many of them. It's just very hard to care or focus, unless I am being given a specific task (a third grader task, see above). The hard thing is that the company seems to be doubling down on zoom extracurriculars (panels, lectures, virtual workshops, etc) and I simply don't have the budget to participate or care that I look like I'm participating. If the company has do anything, I'd like to be given back some time during the week. Take the pressure off.
posted by snerson at 6:36 AM on March 11, 2021 [12 favorites]
* especially during the early days of the pandemic, I felt very calm and focused because all of a sudden, the entire world was behaving in a way that validated my anxiety and depression. Not that those are feelings you want validated, but the layer of "oh god nobody else is perceiving this" was temporarily alleviated and that was... surprisingly nice.
* I was told during my 2020 work review that I needed to "show more leadership." I am so disgusted by this that the only thing I can do when I think of it is laugh like I am dislodging some spiny, rusty, malevolent thing from my gut and throat.
* I was talking to a coworker in India the other day and he mentioned that he was less productive, and he thought he might be the only one. I thought it was wonderful and brave of him to start that conversation, and assured him that though I was on a lot of zoom calls, I was not really "dialed in" to many of them. It's just very hard to care or focus, unless I am being given a specific task (a third grader task, see above). The hard thing is that the company seems to be doubling down on zoom extracurriculars (panels, lectures, virtual workshops, etc) and I simply don't have the budget to participate or care that I look like I'm participating. If the company has do anything, I'd like to be given back some time during the week. Take the pressure off.
posted by snerson at 6:36 AM on March 11, 2021 [12 favorites]
I remember when 2020 began I was really hoping for a better year. In 2018 I lost my dad and my mom got cancer. In 2019 my best friend died along with another friend and a classmate committed suicide. Then my daughter fell into a deep depression that required a good deal of treatment. On top of all of that my wife was working in a nursing home and had basically no weekends and was forced to pull double shifts on the regular so it became like two ships passing in the night. But then she got hired at my workplace as my assistant and I was really looking forward to having time to spend with her once again and to catch up with friends and to spend more time with the widow of my friend and her family as well as with my mother. Then the effing pandemic hit and we've been mostly in isolation ever since thanks to our jobs in health care.
To make matters worse the widow has trashed talked us a bit because we weren't spending time with her. She's a wingnut, believes COVID is mostly a hoax to tear down her hero (the Orange Game Show Host) and that it can be easily cured with HCQ (and the only reason it's not be used is because doctors are lib'ruls trying to tear down Donnie.) Another widowed friend (her husband was also a dear friend who died last fall after a long illness) has played a similar game with us, asking why we haven't been out to comfort her. She's 1600 miles away and our job literally had quarantine requirements if we left the state--- basically 14 days self-isolation that came out of our own PTO. PTO that we've saved up in case either of us were to get severely ill with COVID.
So... after a few years of perpetually bad news I'm left with this feeling of wondering and waiting when "the next shoe is going to drop." Every phone call, every message, every person who comes to my door I automatically assume is bringing me more unwanted news.
posted by drstrangelove at 6:49 AM on March 11, 2021 [9 favorites]
To make matters worse the widow has trashed talked us a bit because we weren't spending time with her. She's a wingnut, believes COVID is mostly a hoax to tear down her hero (the Orange Game Show Host) and that it can be easily cured with HCQ (and the only reason it's not be used is because doctors are lib'ruls trying to tear down Donnie.) Another widowed friend (her husband was also a dear friend who died last fall after a long illness) has played a similar game with us, asking why we haven't been out to comfort her. She's 1600 miles away and our job literally had quarantine requirements if we left the state--- basically 14 days self-isolation that came out of our own PTO. PTO that we've saved up in case either of us were to get severely ill with COVID.
So... after a few years of perpetually bad news I'm left with this feeling of wondering and waiting when "the next shoe is going to drop." Every phone call, every message, every person who comes to my door I automatically assume is bringing me more unwanted news.
posted by drstrangelove at 6:49 AM on March 11, 2021 [9 favorites]
I am really, really, really bothered by kinda-losing the [friends] who just can't or don't want to talk during a pandemic. I can't stop being upset and bothered about losing these people because we can't just go to the theater or hang out in a bar or anything and they can't seem to talk without "in person" groups, or whatever it is, I don't know any more. I don't want to give up hopes on these people but it feels like I have to when they shut me out or can't talk or whatever the fuck it is.
Oh my god oh my god it's not just me, thank god. I am honestly kind of dreading the first in-person meet up with my friend group because I fear there is some pent-up resentment about the above, plus the wide range of pandemic behaviour that has been displayed by certain people.
posted by Rora at 7:31 AM on March 11, 2021 [11 favorites]
Oh my god oh my god it's not just me, thank god. I am honestly kind of dreading the first in-person meet up with my friend group because I fear there is some pent-up resentment about the above, plus the wide range of pandemic behaviour that has been displayed by certain people.
posted by Rora at 7:31 AM on March 11, 2021 [11 favorites]
My therapist mentioned this article yesterday. Thanks to the OP for posting it.
This all resonated with me, for sure. I also struggle with the cognitive dissonance of people (especially coworkers) who continue to charge full steam ahead, as if everything is fine and isn't it just slightly inconvenient that things are the way they are, and won't it be great "when everything returns to normal." As if our brains are what they were in the pre-covid times, when we all scurried and hurried and so many people already had poor work-life balance. As if survival isn't still the mode we are in. As if the ceaseless drive of capitalism can ever be compassionate. As if so many of us haven't dealt with a year of varying degrees of grief, loss, fear, anxiety, isolation, illness.
I started my current corporate nonprofit job on March 16, 2020 and have never met all but four of my (hundreds of) colleagues. The idea of sitting in a cubicle, under fluorescent lights, nowhere near a window, in a badly ventilated building, around other people all day does not excite me. I'd never wanted to work full-time remote but now that I've adjusted to it and have a good space at home to do it, I want to keep doing it. I want to continue being able to lie down when I feel exhausted, making faces when people say shitty things, to eat and fart and use a non-gendered bathroom without it impacting others (or being remarkable in any way).
Tl;dr: thank you to everyone who acknowledges this collective trauma of living through the pandemic. It makes getting through a bit easier.
posted by wicked_sassy at 7:33 AM on March 11, 2021 [14 favorites]
This all resonated with me, for sure. I also struggle with the cognitive dissonance of people (especially coworkers) who continue to charge full steam ahead, as if everything is fine and isn't it just slightly inconvenient that things are the way they are, and won't it be great "when everything returns to normal." As if our brains are what they were in the pre-covid times, when we all scurried and hurried and so many people already had poor work-life balance. As if survival isn't still the mode we are in. As if the ceaseless drive of capitalism can ever be compassionate. As if so many of us haven't dealt with a year of varying degrees of grief, loss, fear, anxiety, isolation, illness.
I started my current corporate nonprofit job on March 16, 2020 and have never met all but four of my (hundreds of) colleagues. The idea of sitting in a cubicle, under fluorescent lights, nowhere near a window, in a badly ventilated building, around other people all day does not excite me. I'd never wanted to work full-time remote but now that I've adjusted to it and have a good space at home to do it, I want to keep doing it. I want to continue being able to lie down when I feel exhausted, making faces when people say shitty things, to eat and fart and use a non-gendered bathroom without it impacting others (or being remarkable in any way).
Tl;dr: thank you to everyone who acknowledges this collective trauma of living through the pandemic. It makes getting through a bit easier.
posted by wicked_sassy at 7:33 AM on March 11, 2021 [14 favorites]
I just... I love y'all. You all are so many amazing people, and I'm grateful for everyone's stories. They help so much!
I'm scared I've become agoraphobic in all of this -- I was already leaning that way before, and my grandmother never learned to drive because she literally WOULD NOT leave the house without another person making her. I don't want that to be my inevitable future.
I broke my leg 7 months before the pandemic started, the day after my birthday. I spent 3 months with it propped up on a pillow in my bedroom, then 6 weeks learning to walk again. I started kickboxing again at my gym, and managed to go out 3 whole times to see friends and attend one wedding before the Last Day Out on March 11, 2020, one year ago today. Hey, I got to see Robyn in concert too! But it was such a short taste of sweet freedom.
Haven't had dinner out in a restaurant since Memorial Day 2019. My 10-year wedding anniversary trip to Europe? Canceled. My nieces and nephews are growing up in other places, and I'm missing out. I'm becoming a stranger to the children in my family. No more "let's go out to the secret hideout behind Grandaddy's (my dad's house) to slay dragons!" My heart hurts for those lost moments that just can't happen over FaceTime. A friend of mine's dying of stage 4 cancer, and I'm counting down the days until I'm fully vaccinated and can just go sit with her without posing yet another danger. Hopefully, it won't be too late.
I feel like a ghost that's haunting a copy of my old life, and all I want in the world is to feel like that vibrant, loud, smart middle-aged woman I was so proud of before... well, just, before.
I know we can't turn the clock backwards. But I just want to feel a little less like a hermit crab that's living inside the shell of my old personality and more like a human being again.
Good things: My friends and I have kept a couple of near-daily group texts going, and it's been a real lifeline. We're closer than we've ever been, and one friend I never see IRL checks in with me daily. We feel closer than we were back in high school! We've attended "virtual" concerts, I bought patio furniture and chopped wood for an outdoor fireplace, and my husband and I now own something like 40 different board games we've thoroughly mastered to avoid becoming 100% enslaved to our screens.
Still, I long for the day when I can see the dentist or get new glasses without having a panic attack. That day will be a Very Good Day, indeed.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 7:47 AM on March 11, 2021 [18 favorites]
I'm scared I've become agoraphobic in all of this -- I was already leaning that way before, and my grandmother never learned to drive because she literally WOULD NOT leave the house without another person making her. I don't want that to be my inevitable future.
I broke my leg 7 months before the pandemic started, the day after my birthday. I spent 3 months with it propped up on a pillow in my bedroom, then 6 weeks learning to walk again. I started kickboxing again at my gym, and managed to go out 3 whole times to see friends and attend one wedding before the Last Day Out on March 11, 2020, one year ago today. Hey, I got to see Robyn in concert too! But it was such a short taste of sweet freedom.
Haven't had dinner out in a restaurant since Memorial Day 2019. My 10-year wedding anniversary trip to Europe? Canceled. My nieces and nephews are growing up in other places, and I'm missing out. I'm becoming a stranger to the children in my family. No more "let's go out to the secret hideout behind Grandaddy's (my dad's house) to slay dragons!" My heart hurts for those lost moments that just can't happen over FaceTime. A friend of mine's dying of stage 4 cancer, and I'm counting down the days until I'm fully vaccinated and can just go sit with her without posing yet another danger. Hopefully, it won't be too late.
I feel like a ghost that's haunting a copy of my old life, and all I want in the world is to feel like that vibrant, loud, smart middle-aged woman I was so proud of before... well, just, before.
I know we can't turn the clock backwards. But I just want to feel a little less like a hermit crab that's living inside the shell of my old personality and more like a human being again.
Good things: My friends and I have kept a couple of near-daily group texts going, and it's been a real lifeline. We're closer than we've ever been, and one friend I never see IRL checks in with me daily. We feel closer than we were back in high school! We've attended "virtual" concerts, I bought patio furniture and chopped wood for an outdoor fireplace, and my husband and I now own something like 40 different board games we've thoroughly mastered to avoid becoming 100% enslaved to our screens.
Still, I long for the day when I can see the dentist or get new glasses without having a panic attack. That day will be a Very Good Day, indeed.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 7:47 AM on March 11, 2021 [18 favorites]
I feel like a ghost that's haunting a copy of my old life
Oh wow. THIS. At the start of all this I was pretty sure that I was just going to get the dang virus and die, and I was so extremely okay with that. I got all my affairs bundled up and sorted out and plunked myself down like "very well then, I'll wait here!" And then it didn't happen and it felt like that John Travolta gif where he's got his coat and he's just gesturing around a void?
And then I watched some show (for pandemic definitions of "watched," in that I only retained one or two impressions of it and don't remember what it's called!) in which the characters were dead and their existences as dead people were allllllmost the same as their lives--But just without any variation or interest. They were comfortable and provided for but could not affect any lasting changes in their circumstances; they couldn't choose their foods freely, or change houses, or travel beyond a certain point, or really do anything beyond House Based Hobbies.
And I had the thought of, "holy shit, I've been sitting here waiting to die but I am already dead."
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:01 AM on March 11, 2021 [23 favorites]
Oh wow. THIS. At the start of all this I was pretty sure that I was just going to get the dang virus and die, and I was so extremely okay with that. I got all my affairs bundled up and sorted out and plunked myself down like "very well then, I'll wait here!" And then it didn't happen and it felt like that John Travolta gif where he's got his coat and he's just gesturing around a void?
And then I watched some show (for pandemic definitions of "watched," in that I only retained one or two impressions of it and don't remember what it's called!) in which the characters were dead and their existences as dead people were allllllmost the same as their lives--But just without any variation or interest. They were comfortable and provided for but could not affect any lasting changes in their circumstances; they couldn't choose their foods freely, or change houses, or travel beyond a certain point, or really do anything beyond House Based Hobbies.
And I had the thought of, "holy shit, I've been sitting here waiting to die but I am already dead."
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:01 AM on March 11, 2021 [23 favorites]
It's been like my PTSD, GAD and OCD grew legs and stalked out to remake the world in my image.
Sorry about that.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:10 AM on March 11, 2021 [16 favorites]
Sorry about that.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:10 AM on March 11, 2021 [16 favorites]
I am really, really, really bothered by kinda-losing the [friends] who just can't or don't want to talk during a pandemic.
Hi. I'm one of the people who's vanished completely. I have one friend left, and we text every week or two, and talk on the phone every couple of months. The last time I was touched by a human being was when my back went out in July and I had to be hospitalized.
Isolation is my coping method. I've never been able to depend on social support structures, so when things go wrong I like to keep to myself and deal with everything on my own. When the pandemic came around people were actively dangerous to be around, and that was like an engraved invitation to isolation. Plus I'm immunocompromised, and was pretty isolated anyway, so I put systems in place early on in the pandemic that meant I wasn't in contact with people.
Ever.
I was going to go into a rant about what this has done to me, but honestly I have no idea. I've lost all perspective on myself.
posted by MrVisible at 8:17 AM on March 11, 2021 [23 favorites]
Hi. I'm one of the people who's vanished completely. I have one friend left, and we text every week or two, and talk on the phone every couple of months. The last time I was touched by a human being was when my back went out in July and I had to be hospitalized.
Isolation is my coping method. I've never been able to depend on social support structures, so when things go wrong I like to keep to myself and deal with everything on my own. When the pandemic came around people were actively dangerous to be around, and that was like an engraved invitation to isolation. Plus I'm immunocompromised, and was pretty isolated anyway, so I put systems in place early on in the pandemic that meant I wasn't in contact with people.
Ever.
I was going to go into a rant about what this has done to me, but honestly I have no idea. I've lost all perspective on myself.
posted by MrVisible at 8:17 AM on March 11, 2021 [23 favorites]
I keep fumbling for words, all the time. I was trying to remember when I last felt this bone tired, and this foggy-brained, and it finally occurred to me it was when I was nursing a newborn 13 times a day at the age of 38 with a pre-existing 5-year-old and 7-year-old. I feel like I was going to say something really insightful about this, but no, the only thing I have to say is that late quarantine brain is basically exactly the same as the first 6 weeks of parenting a newborn, except I have no idea when the exhaustion will stop.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:27 AM on March 11, 2021 [16 favorites]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:27 AM on March 11, 2021 [16 favorites]
Yeah, MrVisible, I'm also a bit of an isolater and I do hope that the few close friends I counted before the pandemic don't give up on me. I know I'm a shitty friend at the best of times. People just don't feel really real to me consistently when I don't see them regularly, and I'm the flakiest flake, so I'm definitely that person who will friend hard on a long weekend trip with someone or one of those afternoon one-on-one get-togethers that bleeds into dinner and then walking around the neighborhood all evening, and then just not talk at all for months until the next deeply intense get-together. It's just that there's been literally no opportunity to do that for a year, and most days after hours and hours and hours of camera-on, perfect-lipstick, professional-behavior Zoom meetings I just can't stomach the idea of a Zoom happy hour or whatever, so I don't talk to anyone, at all, really.
And I text back immediately or never, and I send lots of mail to everyone I love, except when I don't. I hate the phone, and I've never been able to do long-distance relationships (because, again, people don't seem real to me if they're not physically there because I am broken), so I'm deeply grateful I'm already married or I probably would have killed myself or at minimum lost my job in the past year because I get absolutely feral-level depressed without other people around to provide structure. I've accepted I'll never be anyone's best friend, because I'm just not a good enough friend consistently to anyone to merit it. But for all the other normal people, please don't take your shitty flaky friends' behavior personally - we know we are shitty flaky rude people, and we're sorry, and we will probably hyperfocus on you and refuse to leave as soon as we're allowed to see you again. But probably will still be really bad about returning your calls.
posted by bowtiesarecool at 9:24 AM on March 11, 2021 [29 favorites]
And I text back immediately or never, and I send lots of mail to everyone I love, except when I don't. I hate the phone, and I've never been able to do long-distance relationships (because, again, people don't seem real to me if they're not physically there because I am broken), so I'm deeply grateful I'm already married or I probably would have killed myself or at minimum lost my job in the past year because I get absolutely feral-level depressed without other people around to provide structure. I've accepted I'll never be anyone's best friend, because I'm just not a good enough friend consistently to anyone to merit it. But for all the other normal people, please don't take your shitty flaky friends' behavior personally - we know we are shitty flaky rude people, and we're sorry, and we will probably hyperfocus on you and refuse to leave as soon as we're allowed to see you again. But probably will still be really bad about returning your calls.
posted by bowtiesarecool at 9:24 AM on March 11, 2021 [29 favorites]
It’s been the weirdest of years for me, sad in so many ways, and yet I’ve felt compelled to be positive about outcomes.
A year ago Feb 24th, I was laid off. At the time, I just considered it ‘retiring early’, since I’d planned on retiring in about mid-May, and I got a nice severance. Then, pandemic. Husband and I adjusted pretty well to it, and took isolation *very* seriously.
On or about May 11th, I got a diagnosis of inflammatory breast cancer. The time since then I’ve spent mostly maintaining that positive attitude alluded to above. At first the diagnosis was really scary, but I’ve come to learn that it can be treated, and my prognosis might not be Certain Death Immediately.
Mid-summer one of our cats got very sick and had to be helped over the rainbow bridge. Later in the summer our 13 year-old dog died in the night next to my husband’s bed. Then at the end of August I damn near died from an extreme reaction to immunotherapy. 8 days in the hospital left me completely dependent on others for nearly all my ADLs (Activities of Daily Living). I’m out from under that, and can walk up to a mile (with stops to catch my breath), but I have a scar where my left breast was. I just finished radiation therapy, so my skin on the left side of my chest/underarm is seriously pissed off and burned.
Both husband and I have gotten our two vaccine shots, and spring is sorta here. I’m trying to learn Italian and have an 88-day streak going in Duo Lingo. I’m about to go back on oral chemo, and the drug doesn’t allow one to be on their feet much, if at all - so there goes another summer!
My community (near and far) has kept me buoyed throughout this with messages, Zoom calls (weekly), flowers, food, and healing thoughts. If you ever wonder what to say, or if a card makes a difference to someone like me - yes it makes a difference, and don’t worry about what to say.
BUT - I’m alive dammit, and when this is treatment shit is over, and it’s safe to gather again, I’m gonna pull my closest friends together and drink a big bottle of champagne!
The stories others have shared really help - I haven’t allowed myself to be sad in the last year, and I know at some point that will come, but I’m just letting it happen as it may. Thanks for listening..
posted by dbmcd at 10:28 AM on March 11, 2021 [26 favorites]
A year ago Feb 24th, I was laid off. At the time, I just considered it ‘retiring early’, since I’d planned on retiring in about mid-May, and I got a nice severance. Then, pandemic. Husband and I adjusted pretty well to it, and took isolation *very* seriously.
On or about May 11th, I got a diagnosis of inflammatory breast cancer. The time since then I’ve spent mostly maintaining that positive attitude alluded to above. At first the diagnosis was really scary, but I’ve come to learn that it can be treated, and my prognosis might not be Certain Death Immediately.
Mid-summer one of our cats got very sick and had to be helped over the rainbow bridge. Later in the summer our 13 year-old dog died in the night next to my husband’s bed. Then at the end of August I damn near died from an extreme reaction to immunotherapy. 8 days in the hospital left me completely dependent on others for nearly all my ADLs (Activities of Daily Living). I’m out from under that, and can walk up to a mile (with stops to catch my breath), but I have a scar where my left breast was. I just finished radiation therapy, so my skin on the left side of my chest/underarm is seriously pissed off and burned.
Both husband and I have gotten our two vaccine shots, and spring is sorta here. I’m trying to learn Italian and have an 88-day streak going in Duo Lingo. I’m about to go back on oral chemo, and the drug doesn’t allow one to be on their feet much, if at all - so there goes another summer!
My community (near and far) has kept me buoyed throughout this with messages, Zoom calls (weekly), flowers, food, and healing thoughts. If you ever wonder what to say, or if a card makes a difference to someone like me - yes it makes a difference, and don’t worry about what to say.
BUT - I’m alive dammit, and when this is treatment shit is over, and it’s safe to gather again, I’m gonna pull my closest friends together and drink a big bottle of champagne!
The stories others have shared really help - I haven’t allowed myself to be sad in the last year, and I know at some point that will come, but I’m just letting it happen as it may. Thanks for listening..
posted by dbmcd at 10:28 AM on March 11, 2021 [26 favorites]
Maybe we need to have "Trying to Get Over Agoraphobia Club" at some point around here for those of us who went full bore shut in and freak out about going outside, once vaccination becomes more of a thing. I'm going to need to work on it myself, but I suspect being officially "in the clear" will help that?
I really wanted a group text, but most people ignored me or turned it down and it just wasn't working with the two who originally said yes to it (both of which are lovely people but only intermittently chatty on text, sigh), so I gave up on it early on. Though I did just hear from one of my mostly-lost people last night/today ("I wish I had hugged you harder") and she is going to try to get the first shot today, so here's to hoping.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:29 AM on March 11, 2021 [7 favorites]
I really wanted a group text, but most people ignored me or turned it down and it just wasn't working with the two who originally said yes to it (both of which are lovely people but only intermittently chatty on text, sigh), so I gave up on it early on. Though I did just hear from one of my mostly-lost people last night/today ("I wish I had hugged you harder") and she is going to try to get the first shot today, so here's to hoping.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:29 AM on March 11, 2021 [7 favorites]
I absolutely dread returning to 8 hours a day in the office. I wish they would transition us back in slowly or discuss any sort of flex, but I know they won't. Mostly I dread the inevitable "hooray, isn't it great that we can all be back to Peak Performance now" instead of acknowledging that this is going to be a difficult transition AND that we've all been working really hard to keep things afloat the past year and it feels like a slap in the face to treat that collective giant reorganizing of work and life as "thank goodness you can all get back to real work now."
posted by nakedmolerats at 10:38 AM on March 11, 2021 [18 favorites]
posted by nakedmolerats at 10:38 AM on March 11, 2021 [18 favorites]
At a year in, I don't think anyone is "lucky", regardless of how their situation may appear from the outside.
I've been wondering whether to post this since a lot of people have been posting how much they've been struggling but I think there's probably others like me as well. I have been lucky and while I don't go around talking about it because I think it's insensitive, I also don't think it's really fair to other people who have been suffering much more to ignore it.
I've been fine and am not walking around with a mild cognitive impairment.
I haven't seen my family since February 2020 except for a half day in the summer, I haven't seen any of my friends since March 2020. It's unfortunate and I wish I could see them again, I very much look forward to being able to. I miss climbing (where I live this is unfortunately an exclusively indoor activity and I've not been able to travel for it in the last year). I miss restaurants. God do I miss the pub after work, going out to clubs, houseparties. It sucks.
My wife is in an extreme risk category and therefore even during the substantial easing of restrictions during the summer we limited our socialising to one outdoor dinner with friends. I've worn a mask in any indoor space I've been in since March 2020. That has been no more than three times. Luckily I live in an area with lots of open countryside for walking so I have been able to easily keep my distance from other people even while outside.
However this has done no damage to my mental health and while I think it's really helpful to point out to people that they are not alone and that this is an abnormal situation that is hurting many people, I'm not sure whether statements that everyone is traumatised and suffering from cognitive impairments right now are correct.
This has been a pandemic that has been very, very different for different people and I think we can recognise that just because someone stayed home the whole time doesn't mean they didn't suffer without also making the statement that we've all been traumatised.
I'm sure it's not the intention but trauma is a very strong word and using it so liberally that it's being applied to people who don't apply it to themselves has the effect of flattening all the suffering.
I've been fine, my family has been fine, we're all slightly bored and we got to combine our working from home with more hobbies. I learned German. I learned how to draw (badly). I spent more time with my wife. I actually did a lot of very good work.
I think that it's fair to say that every restriction that exists has been followed in my household and that we have taken every loosening of restrictions as a "nice to know" but certainly not a license to immediately do the maximum now permitted by the rules.
Do I know people who have treated the rules with much less seriousness than I do? Of course. Do I think that was unwise? Certainly I do. Do I hate those people? No of course not.
posted by atrazine at 10:57 AM on March 11, 2021 [6 favorites]
I've been wondering whether to post this since a lot of people have been posting how much they've been struggling but I think there's probably others like me as well. I have been lucky and while I don't go around talking about it because I think it's insensitive, I also don't think it's really fair to other people who have been suffering much more to ignore it.
I've been fine and am not walking around with a mild cognitive impairment.
I haven't seen my family since February 2020 except for a half day in the summer, I haven't seen any of my friends since March 2020. It's unfortunate and I wish I could see them again, I very much look forward to being able to. I miss climbing (where I live this is unfortunately an exclusively indoor activity and I've not been able to travel for it in the last year). I miss restaurants. God do I miss the pub after work, going out to clubs, houseparties. It sucks.
My wife is in an extreme risk category and therefore even during the substantial easing of restrictions during the summer we limited our socialising to one outdoor dinner with friends. I've worn a mask in any indoor space I've been in since March 2020. That has been no more than three times. Luckily I live in an area with lots of open countryside for walking so I have been able to easily keep my distance from other people even while outside.
However this has done no damage to my mental health and while I think it's really helpful to point out to people that they are not alone and that this is an abnormal situation that is hurting many people, I'm not sure whether statements that everyone is traumatised and suffering from cognitive impairments right now are correct.
This has been a pandemic that has been very, very different for different people and I think we can recognise that just because someone stayed home the whole time doesn't mean they didn't suffer without also making the statement that we've all been traumatised.
I'm sure it's not the intention but trauma is a very strong word and using it so liberally that it's being applied to people who don't apply it to themselves has the effect of flattening all the suffering.
I've been fine, my family has been fine, we're all slightly bored and we got to combine our working from home with more hobbies. I learned German. I learned how to draw (badly). I spent more time with my wife. I actually did a lot of very good work.
I think that it's fair to say that every restriction that exists has been followed in my household and that we have taken every loosening of restrictions as a "nice to know" but certainly not a license to immediately do the maximum now permitted by the rules.
Do I know people who have treated the rules with much less seriousness than I do? Of course. Do I think that was unwise? Certainly I do. Do I hate those people? No of course not.
posted by atrazine at 10:57 AM on March 11, 2021 [6 favorites]
Well, I just had to go to detox (from using Founders porter as a sleep aid) for the first time in my life. Pro tip: you do not want to go to detox.
posted by Camofrog at 11:04 AM on March 11, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Camofrog at 11:04 AM on March 11, 2021 [6 favorites]
This past year I've had moments where I feel like I'm from some parallel universe. My pandemic year has been mostly fine, if somewhat boring for a lack travel, while the people around me seem to be having a terrible time, mentally. But I've lived alone for years and spent most of my time alone, with mostly solitary hobbies, so in that respect I was more than prepared to spend another year mostly alone doing whatever (I got a lot of reading done). But I wasn't prepared for everyone else I know suddenly wanting to talk all of the time and arrange zoom parties and board game nights because they're lonely and, I guess, since I live alone I clearly can't be doing anything else with my time?
In Alberta our "lockdown" -- which I don't think was ever as severe as what a lot of the US went through -- included a provision for people who live alone, that we can have not-socially distant indoor visits with 2 adults, as long as it's the same 2 adults and nobody else from their households. This, to me, has been almost more of a curse because boy do I know a lot of people who were very upset that I did not pick them (in retrospect I should have had an outdoor, socially distanced, Bachelor style rose ceremony, alas.). First on that list being my parents.
posted by selenized at 11:07 AM on March 11, 2021 [11 favorites]
In Alberta our "lockdown" -- which I don't think was ever as severe as what a lot of the US went through -- included a provision for people who live alone, that we can have not-socially distant indoor visits with 2 adults, as long as it's the same 2 adults and nobody else from their households. This, to me, has been almost more of a curse because boy do I know a lot of people who were very upset that I did not pick them (in retrospect I should have had an outdoor, socially distanced, Bachelor style rose ceremony, alas.). First on that list being my parents.
posted by selenized at 11:07 AM on March 11, 2021 [11 favorites]
there's an expression I learned from a favorite professor, "sitting in the tunnel." She said that sometimes, you can't say or do anything to comfort another person; sometimes, even if there's a light at the end of the tunnel, they're too tired to move toward it. So the best you can do is sit in the tunnel with them, and... witness with love. I only have a few people I consider "tunnel buddies," but the thing is, since I have a name for the practice, I find myself in that state of compassionate witnessing spontaneously. Occasionally. Rarely. The first time was watching Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testify about Kavanaugh, live, at work, while I was ignoring work. There she was, so brave, and there I was, so present with her, so far away. I felt like I was holding her heart in my burning hands and I think I cried.
The second time is today, when I read "people don't seem real to me if they're not physically there because I am broken." bowtiesarecool, for whatever an internet stranger's heart is worth, I'm in the tunnel with you today.
posted by snerson at 11:08 AM on March 11, 2021 [36 favorites]
The second time is today, when I read "people don't seem real to me if they're not physically there because I am broken." bowtiesarecool, for whatever an internet stranger's heart is worth, I'm in the tunnel with you today.
posted by snerson at 11:08 AM on March 11, 2021 [36 favorites]
Yes, it's okay to say that you've been fine, even good, and that you realize how lucky of a position this is! I also think there were many people, perhaps myself included, who felt that way in the first 3-6 months and then ended up feeling guilty or ashamed that they "should" continue to feel lucky and good because the situation doesn't SEEM different but the burnout has dragged on (for USians in the past 6 months: election fuckery, giant wildfires for all west coasters, actual fucking insurrection, Texas freezing, what did I miss?)
posted by nakedmolerats at 11:22 AM on March 11, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by nakedmolerats at 11:22 AM on March 11, 2021 [9 favorites]
I did not RTFA I just came to driveby scream at The Atlantic that this is not late-stage pandemic, you foooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooools it only just started JFC way to drive me even more crazy than I already am okay sorry please delete me I clearly resemble the topic of the very article that enrages me
I used to have the same annoyance when people would talk about late-stage capitalism. Capitalism is not in it's late stages - the phrase is being used more to mean "this is a thing that has been going on for a while." If you think about it that way it's less likely to cause me to lose it.
posted by medusa at 11:37 AM on March 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
I used to have the same annoyance when people would talk about late-stage capitalism. Capitalism is not in it's late stages - the phrase is being used more to mean "this is a thing that has been going on for a while." If you think about it that way it's less likely to cause me to lose it.
posted by medusa at 11:37 AM on March 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
I read one reference (probably The Atlantic) as to us being "mid-vaccine" and I think that's the more accurate one. We don't know what "late stage pandemic is" right now, really. If this is going on five years later and all that.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:43 AM on March 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:43 AM on March 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
I worked from home for a few months, but at a certain point my director asked us to come back to the building unless we wanted to officially file an HR request to work from home based on health issues, caretaker issues, etc. All of us but three returned, but spread out through the building. I currently work in a greenroom on a folding table near the spare tablecloths.
Otherwise, things have been more normal than not, which means the stress of isolation never quite happened in the same way for me as it did for a lot of people. But I have an 11-month-old niece I've never met, I've only seen one of my friends at all (at the dog park) besides on Zoom, and I'm just really tired all the time. I struggle at work and then worry about being fired. I eat really badly. My already bad anxiety flared up and I went on meds for the first time. And my attention span, never great, is just absolutely toasted.
I have my first shot tomorrow morning. I'm so excited about it. I don't know what the After Times will be like, but it will be nice to sit in a coffee shop and people-watch again.
posted by PussKillian at 11:58 AM on March 11, 2021 [6 favorites]
Otherwise, things have been more normal than not, which means the stress of isolation never quite happened in the same way for me as it did for a lot of people. But I have an 11-month-old niece I've never met, I've only seen one of my friends at all (at the dog park) besides on Zoom, and I'm just really tired all the time. I struggle at work and then worry about being fired. I eat really badly. My already bad anxiety flared up and I went on meds for the first time. And my attention span, never great, is just absolutely toasted.
I have my first shot tomorrow morning. I'm so excited about it. I don't know what the After Times will be like, but it will be nice to sit in a coffee shop and people-watch again.
posted by PussKillian at 11:58 AM on March 11, 2021 [6 favorites]
I AM SO ANGRY, FUCK THESE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE BEFORE TIMES
posted by Maarika at 12:27 PM on March 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Maarika at 12:27 PM on March 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
Late 2019 was full of doom I couldn't shake.
Thanksgiving I was delivering a food box and one of my favorite rideshare passengers was there because it was her grandmother so we worked out what could be done with what was in the box and she needed a ride home but I had to stop at my place to check on a pregnancy in the barn. I had zero qualms about bringing her there. She met the kids while I delivered an alpaca.
Two days later my kids stand up and sit me down so I can read the article about her and boyfriend being shot. It didn't make any sense to the kids either so we went to her house and looked. That the bullets came from outside the house was clear.
Two days later it was declared a murder/suicide pact and that just didn't fit. I went by her work and they didn't think so either. He was nice-it was her ex that did them both. No facts could get in the way of the small town investigation.
I think about her when I pass that exit and I was thinking about her 2 am xmas morning when somebody passed me on the right like I was rolling backwards. They slammed into the back of a minivan and both vehicles burned. It was so fast. Everyone in the blocked traffic was over the line drunk. Some of them had fire extinguishers they didn't even think about.
Meanwhile someone less than five feet tall skips down the road by the farm every morning in a bunny suit. I was either the only one who ever saw this or nobody wanted to talk about it. And yes, the farm is in the flight path.
I was able to help the kid in the bunny suit but it brought ire upon me and that's how 2020 started, trading bullets with bunny enablers while my relative in Hong Kong told me disturbing things about Wuhan.
The kids, especially the girls, were hating school and listening to Alice Cooper and T. Rex when school closed the first time. The boy said school wasn't good for them and he's not a conservative cleric. It really wasn't.
So the other two adults took a contract on the other side of the ocean. Piece of cake, lucrative, couple months, I can deal, we'll be fine. The contract took almost a year. Love still lives here, it's just a bit shredded. The kids resemble responsible adults and I still listen to them. I just don't have anything new to say.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 1:23 PM on March 11, 2021 [17 favorites]
Thanksgiving I was delivering a food box and one of my favorite rideshare passengers was there because it was her grandmother so we worked out what could be done with what was in the box and she needed a ride home but I had to stop at my place to check on a pregnancy in the barn. I had zero qualms about bringing her there. She met the kids while I delivered an alpaca.
Two days later my kids stand up and sit me down so I can read the article about her and boyfriend being shot. It didn't make any sense to the kids either so we went to her house and looked. That the bullets came from outside the house was clear.
Two days later it was declared a murder/suicide pact and that just didn't fit. I went by her work and they didn't think so either. He was nice-it was her ex that did them both. No facts could get in the way of the small town investigation.
I think about her when I pass that exit and I was thinking about her 2 am xmas morning when somebody passed me on the right like I was rolling backwards. They slammed into the back of a minivan and both vehicles burned. It was so fast. Everyone in the blocked traffic was over the line drunk. Some of them had fire extinguishers they didn't even think about.
Meanwhile someone less than five feet tall skips down the road by the farm every morning in a bunny suit. I was either the only one who ever saw this or nobody wanted to talk about it. And yes, the farm is in the flight path.
I was able to help the kid in the bunny suit but it brought ire upon me and that's how 2020 started, trading bullets with bunny enablers while my relative in Hong Kong told me disturbing things about Wuhan.
The kids, especially the girls, were hating school and listening to Alice Cooper and T. Rex when school closed the first time. The boy said school wasn't good for them and he's not a conservative cleric. It really wasn't.
So the other two adults took a contract on the other side of the ocean. Piece of cake, lucrative, couple months, I can deal, we'll be fine. The contract took almost a year. Love still lives here, it's just a bit shredded. The kids resemble responsible adults and I still listen to them. I just don't have anything new to say.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 1:23 PM on March 11, 2021 [17 favorites]
Oh, Mr. Yuck, that's just...so damn much.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:34 PM on March 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by wenestvedt at 1:34 PM on March 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
I just want to say thank you for this thread. I posted the article thinking that a few people might have some interesting comments... and I'm just blown away by how thoughtful and interesting the discussion is.
posted by medusa at 1:48 PM on March 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by medusa at 1:48 PM on March 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
Thank you for posting it. It made me realise a lot about how I'm feeling lately. My mother read it too and she appreciated it as well.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:21 PM on March 11, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:21 PM on March 11, 2021 [6 favorites]
I'd also like to say thank you for being here. Thank you for telling how it is for you. Thank you for making me feel less alone in this terrible waiting.
I've spent the last year teetering, trying not to let fear, rage, anxiety, and grief (mix and match, depending on the day) get the better of me. I conclude this year having learned things I'd rather not know, like how to watch your medical-field spouse cry when people die, how to suppress a "Fuck you" to a random stranger going maskless where your child works, how to not scream when the boss says "We're open to the public because the board thinks Covid is a hoax." Like making my mini panic attacks quieter than the shower. Like not being able to tell my kids that this will end and that they will see their friends again. I have learned to doubt my state's ability to organize the vaccine rollout. I have learned that I am surrounded by people who adore ignorance, and claim to be good Christians while refusing to wear masks in church or anywhere else. I have learned that I don't have to give their opinions any weight, because they have showed me who they are. I have learned that the Boy Scout who sells me BBQ chicken tickets can shove it this year because he won't wear a mask in my building even after I have asked him to several times; yes, I am that petty. I have learned to go for a walk every day to steel myself for being home with my family (every few days I take a picture of myself, figuring that exercise might lift my spirits, but I cannot get my face to do the right thing, my eyes aren't smiling, I despair of my self-portrait, what is the point of getting fit and losing 15 pounds this year, and does it even count if it was undertaken as a way to keep myself from screaming?). There has been precious little joy. I am a bad friend. I just don't have anything for anyone, and no energy to pretend, and I am ashamed of my grim and graceless efforts to get through the day. I miss my friends, but God, I am relieved that they're not seeing me struggle. That leg pain was not, in fact, anything more than a hamstring pull, but I still woke up at night with nightmares, and thinking that I was dead because I couldn't hear my own heartbeat, maybe I'd had an aneurysm in my sleep (a fear left over from childhood). For a while, I just went very thin, and I learned to walk anyway, leaden legs and all. I used that time to think, most days, and other days to construct a bright white room in my head, with walls to block out the fearful whispers about vulnerability and hostages to fortune and mortality. I never had a knack for faith, but the little confidence I had in others has disappeared, and I feel dumb for having believed, for having volunteered in a community that fundamentally doesn't care and regards me as an alien for giving a shit about science, learning, revising practices because of new information. Fear, rage, anxiety, grief: at least I feel something. It's going to have to be enough to get by on until we reach the other side of this thing.
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:55 PM on March 11, 2021 [26 favorites]
I've spent the last year teetering, trying not to let fear, rage, anxiety, and grief (mix and match, depending on the day) get the better of me. I conclude this year having learned things I'd rather not know, like how to watch your medical-field spouse cry when people die, how to suppress a "Fuck you" to a random stranger going maskless where your child works, how to not scream when the boss says "We're open to the public because the board thinks Covid is a hoax." Like making my mini panic attacks quieter than the shower. Like not being able to tell my kids that this will end and that they will see their friends again. I have learned to doubt my state's ability to organize the vaccine rollout. I have learned that I am surrounded by people who adore ignorance, and claim to be good Christians while refusing to wear masks in church or anywhere else. I have learned that I don't have to give their opinions any weight, because they have showed me who they are. I have learned that the Boy Scout who sells me BBQ chicken tickets can shove it this year because he won't wear a mask in my building even after I have asked him to several times; yes, I am that petty. I have learned to go for a walk every day to steel myself for being home with my family (every few days I take a picture of myself, figuring that exercise might lift my spirits, but I cannot get my face to do the right thing, my eyes aren't smiling, I despair of my self-portrait, what is the point of getting fit and losing 15 pounds this year, and does it even count if it was undertaken as a way to keep myself from screaming?). There has been precious little joy. I am a bad friend. I just don't have anything for anyone, and no energy to pretend, and I am ashamed of my grim and graceless efforts to get through the day. I miss my friends, but God, I am relieved that they're not seeing me struggle. That leg pain was not, in fact, anything more than a hamstring pull, but I still woke up at night with nightmares, and thinking that I was dead because I couldn't hear my own heartbeat, maybe I'd had an aneurysm in my sleep (a fear left over from childhood). For a while, I just went very thin, and I learned to walk anyway, leaden legs and all. I used that time to think, most days, and other days to construct a bright white room in my head, with walls to block out the fearful whispers about vulnerability and hostages to fortune and mortality. I never had a knack for faith, but the little confidence I had in others has disappeared, and I feel dumb for having believed, for having volunteered in a community that fundamentally doesn't care and regards me as an alien for giving a shit about science, learning, revising practices because of new information. Fear, rage, anxiety, grief: at least I feel something. It's going to have to be enough to get by on until we reach the other side of this thing.
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:55 PM on March 11, 2021 [26 favorites]
MonkeyToes, if you like, I'll send you a great big tele-hug. Look out for it coming in from the east. You deserve all the hugs and so much more. We all do.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:03 PM on March 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:03 PM on March 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
MonkeyToes,
Thank you for every word. There are many fearful ghosts around...and your comment has helped.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 4:09 PM on March 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
Thank you for every word. There are many fearful ghosts around...and your comment has helped.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 4:09 PM on March 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
It took me days to work up to writing a response to this post.
In the beginning, I joked that I was doing this on "easy mode". I already worked from home, and my spouse's job allowed her to work from home starting from March of last year. We don't have any kids.
But our lives have been getting more and more constrained. We get everything delivered now and can't take long walks because people just WILL NOT KEEP THEIR DISTANCE. In the UK, which has one of the highest death rates in the world. We stay in our flat and sneak out for walks in the nearby park, playing human Frogger across the busy paved pathways to get to the grassy areas where we have some room.
But that's it. There's nowhere else to go. Days flash past but months last years. Things break and we can't get them fixed.
Things are the worst for me in the mornings. I can't get anything done in the mornings. Sometimes it's anxiety. Sometimes it's depression. Sometimes it's just exhaustion. And then sometimes I wake up and feel fine except for wondering what's wrong with me on all those other days.
I'm a writer. My first published novel was released last year and, as far as I can tell, vanished into the pandemic. All the things I was supposed to attend to promote it - conventions, festivals, events - were cancelled, one by one. And then, for months, my writing just ... stopped.
I've started writing again, at least, finally. I have a minimum wordcount I try to hit daily. It's low, so I always feel like I'm not doing enough. But at least it's something.
By the way ... two of my closest friends vanished out of all contact starting maybe April of last year. I wrote inviting them to chat online once every two weeks, even though they never replied. I wondered if they hated me or if I had offended them terribly somehow. Then in January, first one and then the other answered as if there'd never been any break and we've had a few chats since. I've never outright asked why, in part because it's pretty obvious that they were just having a hard time of it.
posted by kyrademon at 5:04 PM on March 11, 2021 [25 favorites]
In the beginning, I joked that I was doing this on "easy mode". I already worked from home, and my spouse's job allowed her to work from home starting from March of last year. We don't have any kids.
But our lives have been getting more and more constrained. We get everything delivered now and can't take long walks because people just WILL NOT KEEP THEIR DISTANCE. In the UK, which has one of the highest death rates in the world. We stay in our flat and sneak out for walks in the nearby park, playing human Frogger across the busy paved pathways to get to the grassy areas where we have some room.
But that's it. There's nowhere else to go. Days flash past but months last years. Things break and we can't get them fixed.
Things are the worst for me in the mornings. I can't get anything done in the mornings. Sometimes it's anxiety. Sometimes it's depression. Sometimes it's just exhaustion. And then sometimes I wake up and feel fine except for wondering what's wrong with me on all those other days.
I'm a writer. My first published novel was released last year and, as far as I can tell, vanished into the pandemic. All the things I was supposed to attend to promote it - conventions, festivals, events - were cancelled, one by one. And then, for months, my writing just ... stopped.
I've started writing again, at least, finally. I have a minimum wordcount I try to hit daily. It's low, so I always feel like I'm not doing enough. But at least it's something.
By the way ... two of my closest friends vanished out of all contact starting maybe April of last year. I wrote inviting them to chat online once every two weeks, even though they never replied. I wondered if they hated me or if I had offended them terribly somehow. Then in January, first one and then the other answered as if there'd never been any break and we've had a few chats since. I've never outright asked why, in part because it's pretty obvious that they were just having a hard time of it.
posted by kyrademon at 5:04 PM on March 11, 2021 [25 favorites]
Like many, we have been "lucky" this year. Ability to work from home, wide sidewalks and parks where we can be apart from others (though Big Purr and I needed to switch the paths for our dog walks, since his walk in the evening was WAY TOO CROWDED), kid who took online schooling ok, a playground nearby, some kids in the neighborhood for outside playdates, and a weekly zoom hangout with friends to play online party games.**
My problem? TOO MANY PEOPLE. It's just the three of us, but we are all rattling around this house ALL THE TIME.
At work, I had my little cube and could zone out and do my thing, plus go swimming, or run errands by myself. Now it's every 15 minutes "let me show you this/can I have snack?/can I watch the tablet?/Work sucks, Rwar/dog wants to go out, dog wants to come in/lunch time!/school's over!/can I go play with XX?/talk about his work" OMG I fantasize about running away from my family and becoming a hermit in the middle of the woods and rarely come out with anyone. We have our routines, but there is just NO TIME ALONE. Little Purr has returned to hybrid schooling recently, and the 2 days are so weird and calming, but Big Purr still comes to talk to me and complain. I've also had to start waking up over an hour before everyone else just to hear silence, read a book, or nap on the couch.
But I'm not sure if it's the jolt of warm weather we are having, the fact that I'm halfway to my 2nd shot, Little Purr back at school (which they love, and who are taking COVID seriously), but I've been almost manic with optimism. I want to make plans! Invest in the Stock Market! Go travel internationally! Eat all the Brunches! There is a very strange disconnect where I simultaneously want to run away and hide but also do All. The. Things. I dyed some of my hair purple because when else will I get to try it out, and also, Fuck COVID.
Also, because of COVID, I am now scooping sanitary wastewater (aka poop water) for testing. Since it got me out of the house and the sampling is quite meditative, it got me through Feb. Brains are weird.
**there are also many sucky, sucky things that have happened this year, and my brian is def. in a fog, so this post is not meant to be a humblebrag.
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 5:37 PM on March 11, 2021 [16 favorites]
My problem? TOO MANY PEOPLE. It's just the three of us, but we are all rattling around this house ALL THE TIME.
At work, I had my little cube and could zone out and do my thing, plus go swimming, or run errands by myself. Now it's every 15 minutes "let me show you this/can I have snack?/can I watch the tablet?/Work sucks, Rwar/dog wants to go out, dog wants to come in/lunch time!/school's over!/can I go play with XX?/talk about his work" OMG I fantasize about running away from my family and becoming a hermit in the middle of the woods and rarely come out with anyone. We have our routines, but there is just NO TIME ALONE. Little Purr has returned to hybrid schooling recently, and the 2 days are so weird and calming, but Big Purr still comes to talk to me and complain. I've also had to start waking up over an hour before everyone else just to hear silence, read a book, or nap on the couch.
But I'm not sure if it's the jolt of warm weather we are having, the fact that I'm halfway to my 2nd shot, Little Purr back at school (which they love, and who are taking COVID seriously), but I've been almost manic with optimism. I want to make plans! Invest in the Stock Market! Go travel internationally! Eat all the Brunches! There is a very strange disconnect where I simultaneously want to run away and hide but also do All. The. Things. I dyed some of my hair purple because when else will I get to try it out, and also, Fuck COVID.
Also, because of COVID, I am now scooping sanitary wastewater (aka poop water) for testing. Since it got me out of the house and the sampling is quite meditative, it got me through Feb. Brains are weird.
**there are also many sucky, sucky things that have happened this year, and my brian is def. in a fog, so this post is not meant to be a humblebrag.
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 5:37 PM on March 11, 2021 [16 favorites]
Monkey Toes: : ...making my mini panic attacks quieter than the shower.
Oh, honey, no. You shouldn't have to do that. No one should have to do that.
You're doing great just ticking over. Your family values you and we're glad you're here.
Spring is coming, the earth will warm, and plants will rise. You'll rise, too.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:26 PM on March 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
Oh, honey, no. You shouldn't have to do that. No one should have to do that.
You're doing great just ticking over. Your family values you and we're glad you're here.
Spring is coming, the earth will warm, and plants will rise. You'll rise, too.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:26 PM on March 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
kyrademon: I'm a writer. My first published novel was released last year and, as far as I can tell, vanished into the pandemic.
Nah, it didn't vanish: I just ordered a copy. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 7:29 PM on March 11, 2021 [21 favorites]
Nah, it didn't vanish: I just ordered a copy. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 7:29 PM on March 11, 2021 [21 favorites]
Content alert: suicidal ideation.
There's never a good time for a pandemic-and-lockdown, but I can aver that a year after a divorce is final is... not a great time for a pandemic-and-lockdown. I was just starting to figure out what I wanted the contours of my life to be like when everything suddenly clamped down on me like an iron maiden.
Materially I'm fine. My job hasn't been in any danger, and I can do it from home. My home is mine alone, and I got a refi on the mortgage early this year that cut the payments and the total payback. I have lots of friends-in-the-computer. I even found a locavore meal-kit service that delivers to my home, accommodates my vegetarianism and my loathing of mushrooms, and makes better food than I can with my brain a bit foggy and groceries coming in once a month max. I donated both my stimulus checks because I don't need the money and others surely do.
Yet there have been days where I've thought to myself that if I weren't responsible for a couple of cats... I mean, why should I be so well off when the world is burning and people are dying? Do I contribute so much that I can feel I deserve this level of safety and comfort? Of course I don't. Who could?
And election night was just awful. Choking, heart-squeezing, terrible fear. I'd done what I could -- working the polls, working local early-voting events, donating, and so on -- and lord, that night it sure looked like none of it had mattered and we were in for another four years of sheer hell.
I'm still here. Still working elections. Regular work is hard; getting things done feels like wading through hip-deep peanut butter more days than I wish were true, and I have projects hanging fire that should have been finished long ago but every minor setback feels like a mountain dropped on me. I miss my office and my colleagues and my students. I cry a lot more than I'm used to, and I can't even always understand why. I can't make myself move much; exercise has never had mental/emotional benefits for me (endorphins? never met 'em).
But I'm glad I have the cats.
posted by humbug at 7:42 PM on March 11, 2021 [13 favorites]
There's never a good time for a pandemic-and-lockdown, but I can aver that a year after a divorce is final is... not a great time for a pandemic-and-lockdown. I was just starting to figure out what I wanted the contours of my life to be like when everything suddenly clamped down on me like an iron maiden.
Materially I'm fine. My job hasn't been in any danger, and I can do it from home. My home is mine alone, and I got a refi on the mortgage early this year that cut the payments and the total payback. I have lots of friends-in-the-computer. I even found a locavore meal-kit service that delivers to my home, accommodates my vegetarianism and my loathing of mushrooms, and makes better food than I can with my brain a bit foggy and groceries coming in once a month max. I donated both my stimulus checks because I don't need the money and others surely do.
Yet there have been days where I've thought to myself that if I weren't responsible for a couple of cats... I mean, why should I be so well off when the world is burning and people are dying? Do I contribute so much that I can feel I deserve this level of safety and comfort? Of course I don't. Who could?
And election night was just awful. Choking, heart-squeezing, terrible fear. I'd done what I could -- working the polls, working local early-voting events, donating, and so on -- and lord, that night it sure looked like none of it had mattered and we were in for another four years of sheer hell.
I'm still here. Still working elections. Regular work is hard; getting things done feels like wading through hip-deep peanut butter more days than I wish were true, and I have projects hanging fire that should have been finished long ago but every minor setback feels like a mountain dropped on me. I miss my office and my colleagues and my students. I cry a lot more than I'm used to, and I can't even always understand why. I can't make myself move much; exercise has never had mental/emotional benefits for me (endorphins? never met 'em).
But I'm glad I have the cats.
posted by humbug at 7:42 PM on March 11, 2021 [13 favorites]
Thanks for the article and the thread. It's good to not feel quite so alone.
During occasional chats with friends over the past year I've tended to joke that my "last normal day" fell rather earlier than theirs, as I had a total knee replacement in late February of 2020 and had been stuck inside ever since. Of course that wasn't true - my real last normal day was four years earlier, when I made the stupid mistake of (checks notes) turning to press the button for the garage door opener, causing my meniscus to shit itself. By the time doctors figured that out, it was three months later. Too late to do anything but a total replacement, although it took four years of grinding pain and hard-won weight loss before I was un-fat enough / old enough that the replacement was approved by insurance.
Your life can get very small when you're in that much pain for that long. When lockdown hit as my medical leave was ending, I realized that not much in my life had changed: I still worked from home, still ordered most groceries online and picked them up in person, still spent more time inside and online than I wanted to. The real hell of it was learning over the rest of the year that however small life had felt in the before times, it was able to get smaller still, and it did.
I would have said the two airless smoky weeks of wildfires were my lowest point of the year, when air and light itself were denied to us, but then winter happened. I crashed, tapped out of everything that wasn't absolutely required of me, and eventually had to restart one of the meds I'd hoped to have dropped from my depression cocktail for good. For a while it helped, but then the daily crying and intrusive thoughts picked up again after Insurrection Day, and recently my doc and I upped the dose. It seems to be helping, in that I'm crying less, but it helps more when I try not to think about how much weight I gained last time I took it, or how it's compounding pandemic brain with its tendency to disappear words just when I need them.
This comment feels like too much and not nearly enough all at once, but I'm glad to have a place to make it.
(On preview, concur with humbug about the importance of cats, and being a cat servant acting as a kind of anchor.)
posted by Vervain at 8:23 PM on March 11, 2021 [14 favorites]
During occasional chats with friends over the past year I've tended to joke that my "last normal day" fell rather earlier than theirs, as I had a total knee replacement in late February of 2020 and had been stuck inside ever since. Of course that wasn't true - my real last normal day was four years earlier, when I made the stupid mistake of (checks notes) turning to press the button for the garage door opener, causing my meniscus to shit itself. By the time doctors figured that out, it was three months later. Too late to do anything but a total replacement, although it took four years of grinding pain and hard-won weight loss before I was un-fat enough / old enough that the replacement was approved by insurance.
Your life can get very small when you're in that much pain for that long. When lockdown hit as my medical leave was ending, I realized that not much in my life had changed: I still worked from home, still ordered most groceries online and picked them up in person, still spent more time inside and online than I wanted to. The real hell of it was learning over the rest of the year that however small life had felt in the before times, it was able to get smaller still, and it did.
I would have said the two airless smoky weeks of wildfires were my lowest point of the year, when air and light itself were denied to us, but then winter happened. I crashed, tapped out of everything that wasn't absolutely required of me, and eventually had to restart one of the meds I'd hoped to have dropped from my depression cocktail for good. For a while it helped, but then the daily crying and intrusive thoughts picked up again after Insurrection Day, and recently my doc and I upped the dose. It seems to be helping, in that I'm crying less, but it helps more when I try not to think about how much weight I gained last time I took it, or how it's compounding pandemic brain with its tendency to disappear words just when I need them.
This comment feels like too much and not nearly enough all at once, but I'm glad to have a place to make it.
(On preview, concur with humbug about the importance of cats, and being a cat servant acting as a kind of anchor.)
posted by Vervain at 8:23 PM on March 11, 2021 [14 favorites]
Thank you to everyone for your stories. I don't think I can read the article, though - not sure I can handle it right now.
From a distance, our family is doing pretty well here - we have housing, a decent income, all five of us are (relatively) healthy and COVID free, we have fairly compatible interests. Our youngest son loves online school! Mr. Sencha is still employed! We get deliveries! It's all good, right?
(NARRATOR VOICE: It is, in fact, Not All Good.)
2019 was a terrible year for us - my mother in law (who our kids were really close to) had ovarian cancer and passed away, my sister had cancer, one of our best friends had cancer, our oldest kid was in a partial hospitalization program for severe anxiety/burnout. I struggle with seasonal depression and the weight of all of that made it worse that winter; I was just starting to come out of hibernation, ready to see all of the people I'd been avoiding all winter and starting to think about finding a job for the first time in many years ... and then lockdown arrived.
All five of us are here; our oldest dropped out of college, moved in with a friend in a different state for awhile, and suddenly moved back home after a falling out from said friend. Middle kid started college (though I tried to convince him to defer for a year), lasted two months before taking a leave of absence, and is now taking a class remotely from here. Mr. Sencha works from home; youngest goes to school remotely.
I cannot concentrate on anything. There's the never-ending COVID anxiety laid over my already-present anxiety, with a side helping of anxiety over everyone else's anxiety. It's never quiet here and I can't go anywhere else. I haven't seen my mom since Christmas 2019, nor my sister's family and young kids. I believe I haven't gone more than ten miles away from our house since last March; I know I haven't ridden the El since last February. My recent blood test results were deeply unfortunate and I'll be meeting with my doctor soon about that (more anxiety! yay!). The paper piles in the area around my desk are horrific; my kitchen and bathrooms are absolutely filthy. My brain atrophy seems to be in the form of executive dysfunction. I have no idea how I'm going to be able to find a job with my brain in this state.
There have been a few good things - getting back in touch with old friends, a 100 day streak on Duolingo, doing jigsaw puzzles and other games together - but really it's just a lot of waiting, in some ways like a vacation with constant rain. Or, like my high school years in a rural area in the pre-internet (and mostly pre-cable TV) era, when I did a lot of reading and crafting and waiting for college to start.
posted by sencha at 8:26 PM on March 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
From a distance, our family is doing pretty well here - we have housing, a decent income, all five of us are (relatively) healthy and COVID free, we have fairly compatible interests. Our youngest son loves online school! Mr. Sencha is still employed! We get deliveries! It's all good, right?
(NARRATOR VOICE: It is, in fact, Not All Good.)
2019 was a terrible year for us - my mother in law (who our kids were really close to) had ovarian cancer and passed away, my sister had cancer, one of our best friends had cancer, our oldest kid was in a partial hospitalization program for severe anxiety/burnout. I struggle with seasonal depression and the weight of all of that made it worse that winter; I was just starting to come out of hibernation, ready to see all of the people I'd been avoiding all winter and starting to think about finding a job for the first time in many years ... and then lockdown arrived.
All five of us are here; our oldest dropped out of college, moved in with a friend in a different state for awhile, and suddenly moved back home after a falling out from said friend. Middle kid started college (though I tried to convince him to defer for a year), lasted two months before taking a leave of absence, and is now taking a class remotely from here. Mr. Sencha works from home; youngest goes to school remotely.
I cannot concentrate on anything. There's the never-ending COVID anxiety laid over my already-present anxiety, with a side helping of anxiety over everyone else's anxiety. It's never quiet here and I can't go anywhere else. I haven't seen my mom since Christmas 2019, nor my sister's family and young kids. I believe I haven't gone more than ten miles away from our house since last March; I know I haven't ridden the El since last February. My recent blood test results were deeply unfortunate and I'll be meeting with my doctor soon about that (more anxiety! yay!). The paper piles in the area around my desk are horrific; my kitchen and bathrooms are absolutely filthy. My brain atrophy seems to be in the form of executive dysfunction. I have no idea how I'm going to be able to find a job with my brain in this state.
There have been a few good things - getting back in touch with old friends, a 100 day streak on Duolingo, doing jigsaw puzzles and other games together - but really it's just a lot of waiting, in some ways like a vacation with constant rain. Or, like my high school years in a rural area in the pre-internet (and mostly pre-cable TV) era, when I did a lot of reading and crafting and waiting for college to start.
posted by sencha at 8:26 PM on March 11, 2021 [10 favorites]
Here's a companion article to the one above about all the people not doing the right thing: "To the People Who Tried"—apparently originally titled "The Wrong People Keep Listening to Calls for More COVID Caution."
posted by limeonaire at 11:09 AM on March 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by limeonaire at 11:09 AM on March 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
Can I just say that "soft pants" vs. "hard pants" is absolutely brilliant, and I hope you don't mind if I steal that. (Brought to you by the fact that I have to put on hard pants for a trip out to a medical appointment and I really don't want to.)
posted by kitten kaboodle at 12:04 PM on March 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by kitten kaboodle at 12:04 PM on March 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
It's also important to remember USians just came out of a 4 year abusive relationship that we could not get out of, with a shit ton of gaslighting thrown in for good measure.
posted by benzenedream at 3:58 PM on March 10 [76 favorites +] [!]
Truly. I cannot overstate how triggered I was all the time, having grown up with acoholic parents as well as being a survivor of intimate partner violence.
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:12 PM on March 12, 2021 [12 favorites]
posted by benzenedream at 3:58 PM on March 10 [76 favorites +] [!]
Truly. I cannot overstate how triggered I was all the time, having grown up with acoholic parents as well as being a survivor of intimate partner violence.
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:12 PM on March 12, 2021 [12 favorites]
Mrs Molerats and I both work in education fields, and were just realizing that not only is this the one-year marker, we're in the exact mirror of then--scrambling and planning and dealing with day to day changes of how to go back to in-person rather than how to go remote. No wonder it feels surreal.
posted by nakedmolerats at 12:41 PM on March 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by nakedmolerats at 12:41 PM on March 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
"soft pants" vs. "hard pants"
When my aunts & uncles, now in their 70s, were very young they used to refer to leather dress shoes as "hard shoes."
Reportedly they would wail whenever they were forced to dress up and wear those hard shoes, because it meant going somewhere as a family -- which, when you had eight kids, was a hell of a production in the 1950s.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:56 PM on March 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
When my aunts & uncles, now in their 70s, were very young they used to refer to leather dress shoes as "hard shoes."
Reportedly they would wail whenever they were forced to dress up and wear those hard shoes, because it meant going somewhere as a family -- which, when you had eight kids, was a hell of a production in the 1950s.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:56 PM on March 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Nah, it didn't vanish: I just ordered a copy.
I did too.
It was a pleasure. A connection. I am finding this very hard - then there are lovely bits of hope.
We must all get through this.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 1:10 PM on March 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
I did too.
It was a pleasure. A connection. I am finding this very hard - then there are lovely bits of hope.
We must all get through this.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 1:10 PM on March 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
Nah, it didn't vanish: I just ordered a copy.
Me too! Looking forward to reading it.
posted by mydonkeybenjamin at 5:38 PM on March 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Me too! Looking forward to reading it.
posted by mydonkeybenjamin at 5:38 PM on March 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Oh, my goodness. Thank you all so much!
posted by kyrademon at 6:29 PM on March 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by kyrademon at 6:29 PM on March 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Just, you know...it better not suck.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:27 PM on March 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by wenestvedt at 7:27 PM on March 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
We are all survivors each in our own lifeboat. Isolated yet within shouting distance. The anti maskers are zooming around on jet skis perilously near to swamping the rest of us.
posted by Gadgetenvy at 8:34 PM on March 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by Gadgetenvy at 8:34 PM on March 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
And when the jet skis run out of fuel, they will demand a seat in our boats.
I am praying for sharks.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:44 PM on March 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
I am praying for sharks.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:44 PM on March 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
Related article on CNN: 9 anxiety-inducing social interactions as the world reopens
Closing thought:
Closing thought:
Overall, "cut yourself a break," Gajendran said. Those of us who have been staying in for most of the pandemic may feel strange and anxious about readapting to society, but we're in the same boat and can (safely) help one another through it.posted by darkstar at 9:16 AM on March 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
What's all this about the world reopening? Our numbers are climbing.
posted by Too-Ticky at 10:26 AM on March 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Too-Ticky at 10:26 AM on March 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
I'm relating to Captain Awkward today about friends who disappeared during the pandemic and a Washington Post article about being afraid of losing friends during. I have had the mindfuckery so bad on this topic....
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:43 PM on March 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:43 PM on March 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
When asked what I did during the Big Pandemic, I will have to say I'm not sure. I cooked. I experienced weird stress. It was hard to not be able to do much when the weather got cold.
What I really did: I survived a genuine crisis. It's been a year since I was the person saying at a group, I won't be here next week. I think I'm going to start locking down, whatever that means and lots of the country started shutting down, making and wearing masks, learning about how to handle grocery deliveries. A certain amount of time was consumed with getting pandemic stuff done. Masks to wash, things to scrub, N95 masks to try, unsuccessfully, to find. Weird stuff to negotiate; is it safe to meet outside?
My achievement was taking care of my life and Not Getting Covid. And people who got Covid get the Survived Covid Badge. And people who died deserve mourners, tears, candles, and grief. One of may favorite things about Biden is the formal mourning of those who have died, and, with it, the implication that we have all experienced trauma.
If you have kids, they Survived a Year of Crazy. Congratulate them. Explain what they accomplished.
If you had what feels like an easy time, Yay, you. If you had what feels like a hard time, I'm so sorry, I will hug you as soon as I can. It was hard alone, it was hard with a partner, kids, etc.
posted by theora55 at 3:05 PM on March 14, 2021 [17 favorites]
What I really did: I survived a genuine crisis. It's been a year since I was the person saying at a group, I won't be here next week. I think I'm going to start locking down, whatever that means and lots of the country started shutting down, making and wearing masks, learning about how to handle grocery deliveries. A certain amount of time was consumed with getting pandemic stuff done. Masks to wash, things to scrub, N95 masks to try, unsuccessfully, to find. Weird stuff to negotiate; is it safe to meet outside?
My achievement was taking care of my life and Not Getting Covid. And people who got Covid get the Survived Covid Badge. And people who died deserve mourners, tears, candles, and grief. One of may favorite things about Biden is the formal mourning of those who have died, and, with it, the implication that we have all experienced trauma.
If you have kids, they Survived a Year of Crazy. Congratulate them. Explain what they accomplished.
If you had what feels like an easy time, Yay, you. If you had what feels like a hard time, I'm so sorry, I will hug you as soon as I can. It was hard alone, it was hard with a partner, kids, etc.
posted by theora55 at 3:05 PM on March 14, 2021 [17 favorites]
Thank you, theora55 -- we did all accomplish something just by making it through. And no criticism of those who did not: CIVID was a genuine killer.
posted by wenestvedt at 4:10 PM on March 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by wenestvedt at 4:10 PM on March 14, 2021 [4 favorites]
Awhile ago, I started taking notes on everything—like conversations with friends. Because otherwise I would forget even the most important things that were happening to them. So I would review my notes before the next time I saw them.
My sense of time is a wreck. I have a medical procedure I get every three months, and I was due for it this week. I thought I'd gone in for it maybe three weeks ago? A month at most? Nope. It was really three months ago.
I just had to chime in. It's weirdly reassuring, because like other people I was afraid something was specifically wrong with me and my brain. Now I'm trying to not worry about it until some unspecified time in the future when we're well into The After.
posted by Orlop at 8:50 AM on March 16, 2021 [8 favorites]
My sense of time is a wreck. I have a medical procedure I get every three months, and I was due for it this week. I thought I'd gone in for it maybe three weeks ago? A month at most? Nope. It was really three months ago.
I just had to chime in. It's weirdly reassuring, because like other people I was afraid something was specifically wrong with me and my brain. Now I'm trying to not worry about it until some unspecified time in the future when we're well into The After.
posted by Orlop at 8:50 AM on March 16, 2021 [8 favorites]
My problem? TOO MANY PEOPLE. It's just the three of us, but we are all rattling around this house ALL THE TIME.
It's been me, my partner, and two teenagers in a small house. We had a lot of "lucky" features—like that we already homeschooled, so the stress of making decisions about schooling, or trying to deal with online school, didn't happen to us. We live in a suburb and have a large yard, so our very energetic 13-year-old was able to get outside with his dogs and get some exercise, even though it wasn't enough because he was used to sports practices 3-5 days/week. Our neighborhood is a quiet one, so you can take a walk or a bike ride if you want and it's unlikely you'll run into anybody.
Still. A few months ago I asked my partner of almost 28 years to move out of our bedroom because I so desperately needed some privacy. He turned the dining nook into his own little space, with a desk for work and a single bed, and it turns out he really likes having a nook. It has a temporary wall for visual privacy but only a curtain for a door. But he likes it. And he totally understood me needing some space, one of the things I love about him—he didn't for a minute think this reflected some underlying relationship issue.
posted by Orlop at 9:24 AM on March 16, 2021 [10 favorites]
It's been me, my partner, and two teenagers in a small house. We had a lot of "lucky" features—like that we already homeschooled, so the stress of making decisions about schooling, or trying to deal with online school, didn't happen to us. We live in a suburb and have a large yard, so our very energetic 13-year-old was able to get outside with his dogs and get some exercise, even though it wasn't enough because he was used to sports practices 3-5 days/week. Our neighborhood is a quiet one, so you can take a walk or a bike ride if you want and it's unlikely you'll run into anybody.
Still. A few months ago I asked my partner of almost 28 years to move out of our bedroom because I so desperately needed some privacy. He turned the dining nook into his own little space, with a desk for work and a single bed, and it turns out he really likes having a nook. It has a temporary wall for visual privacy but only a curtain for a door. But he likes it. And he totally understood me needing some space, one of the things I love about him—he didn't for a minute think this reflected some underlying relationship issue.
posted by Orlop at 9:24 AM on March 16, 2021 [10 favorites]
You have a good partner Orlop.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 11:42 AM on March 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Mr. Yuck at 11:42 AM on March 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
Oh golly, not just me then? Sorry to hear it but good to know.
posted by Bella Donna at 6:39 AM on March 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Bella Donna at 6:39 AM on March 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
Krista Tippett's "On Being" show this week is an excellent listen: Christine Runyan: What’s Happening in Our Nervous Systems?
"So this process of naming and “allowing,” I think is the term that I would say — seeing it as a human response to the conditions that are, rather than something wrong with me — so many of us humans are prone to even ask that question, “What’s wrong with me?”...And I even bristle a little bit at some of what I’m seeing, in terms of trying to codify the effects of this — what is the effect of the social isolation that we’re experiencing — because we are using measurement and terminology that we know and that is familiar; like, what are the rates of depression now, what are the rates of anxiety now. And I worry about that a little, because I think it does two things — one, we’re using that language because we have a way to measure that; but it is such a medical lens. It’s such a lens of pathology. And I don’t think it actually captures what I’m saying, which is, this is a very normal, in fact predictable, human experience, given the conditions that we have....We want to have control. That’s why the uncertainty, the unpredictable nature of this is so hard for us, physiologically. And as a mindfulness teacher and practitioner, I really work at this intersection, too, of metabolizing the reality that there is no control. [laughs] And it’s one thing to know that at an intellectual level. It’s another thing to really embody that as our lived experience, every day."
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:29 AM on March 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
"So this process of naming and “allowing,” I think is the term that I would say — seeing it as a human response to the conditions that are, rather than something wrong with me — so many of us humans are prone to even ask that question, “What’s wrong with me?”...And I even bristle a little bit at some of what I’m seeing, in terms of trying to codify the effects of this — what is the effect of the social isolation that we’re experiencing — because we are using measurement and terminology that we know and that is familiar; like, what are the rates of depression now, what are the rates of anxiety now. And I worry about that a little, because I think it does two things — one, we’re using that language because we have a way to measure that; but it is such a medical lens. It’s such a lens of pathology. And I don’t think it actually captures what I’m saying, which is, this is a very normal, in fact predictable, human experience, given the conditions that we have....We want to have control. That’s why the uncertainty, the unpredictable nature of this is so hard for us, physiologically. And as a mindfulness teacher and practitioner, I really work at this intersection, too, of metabolizing the reality that there is no control. [laughs] And it’s one thing to know that at an intellectual level. It’s another thing to really embody that as our lived experience, every day."
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:29 AM on March 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
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posted by allegedly at 11:30 AM on March 10, 2021 [73 favorites]