As I write these words from home, I’m recalling great words of wisdom passed on to me by my mentor shortly before I quit my full-time job and went solo as a freelancer. Those words were:
You’re going to go through so much more toilet paper.
Truth be told, I wound up staying at home far less than I had first anticipated. I learned quickly that I like working alone … around other people. I like to work at coffee shops, cafes, the library, different coffee shops, different libraries, and so on, on repeat.
For that reason, the closing of many of my local small businesses, stomping grounds, and watering holes has me feeling just as antsy as full-timers loosed from the confines of offices.
Though, unlike many of them, I’ve come to the stay-at-home chapter of my professional life well stocked with a freelancer’s number one (get it?) tool.
That said, I’m still feeling the antsiness. The restlessness. The notion that if I’m not out, I’m not working. I’m still stuck in the status quo churn, the belief that creating requires movement — that productivity requires getting up and going, and in-person interactions, and stress, followed by anxiety-releasing trips to the gym, followed by further anxiety-releasing hangouts with friends at bars. Followed by too little sleep.
When I realized I was stuck in that false feedback loop of productivity, a small bell chimed in my head. When forced to stay home, I’m antsy because I’m not distracting myself from my notions of unworthiness. I’m not distracting myself from…myself. And staring into that well of quarantine, seeing myself reflected in the water, is disturbing.
We’ve had smartphones since 2010. Internet in our homes since 1995. Television since the 50s. We’ve been distracting ourselves from ourselves progressively for decades.
Scaling back is painful.
This quarantine is shrinking our worlds so that they center once again on our home, our family, our immediate circle, and ourselves.
So what’s ahead? What is there to look forward to?
When we emerge from this quarantine, we’re likely to be a little financially poorer, a little rounder, and a lot stir crazy.
But hopefully, we’ll also emerge socially richer.
Hopefully, we’ll have spent our nights and weekends connecting with the family and friends we can’t currently see in person. Hopefully, we’ll have rediscovered the art of cooking and reading and bodyweight workouts and entertaining ourselves.
For some of us, living in this strange time of quarantine tips a domino toward destruction. Some of us will need to reach out for help —help making ends meet, getting food in our kitchens, maybe even dealing with some personal demons that threaten to harm us.
But for those of us not facing actual harm, these days and weeks of mandatory-voluntary social isolation and social distancing may give us an incredible gift — a gift of peace.
At first, the peace won’t feel at all peaceful. It will force us to come to terms with stillness. And many of us have only ever known movement.
Many of our customary distractions have been closed, postponed, put on hold, put online, or cancelled. Many of our customary obligations have been altered so as not to break the epidemiological obligation of distancing. For the first time in our lives, our customary distractions from our unhappiness, uneasiness, displeasure, and discomfort are gone. We’re coming to terms with the unsteadiness that was in our hearts and our minds all along, and it’s uncomfortable.
For some people, those aspects of life aren’t distractions — they’re lifelines. For those individuals, the cancelled interactions, school days, meetings, concerts, events, and activities bring hope, community, foundation, food, and an income.
For others, however, these days are dark but not life-threatening. For those folks, this dramatic, uncomfortable, and unprecedented (in modern history) shift from a world outside ourselves to one inside is — though decidedly distressing — a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reconnect with ourselves.
I hope those folks who are okay, but maybe deeply uncomfortable, can use this time to step back from the status quo —step back from the routine of racing from home, to work, to stress to stress relief, to expensive relaxation, and back home in order to sleep too little and start it all over — I hope they can use this time to examine those facets of life critically. To work through their discomfort with stillness. To uncover the discomforting notions of inadequacy and emptiness, to shine a light on those myths, and then dispel them.
I hope as many folks as possible are able to use this time to hit tare on the balance of their lives.
I hope folks have the space and the safety net available to be grateful for what they have, and envision how it would feel to not have it.
I hope we all can come out of this happier, healthier, and more whole than we went into it.
Stay safe out there, folks.
