Not Striving

It’s been a weird few months. Is that the understatement of the century or what?

The last time I published a post, we were all cracking jokes about what we’d do with our lives now that we couldn’t go walk around Target and Zoom happy hours were still a novelty rather than the norm.

As of last week, when Johnny and I ventured out to eat for the first time since New York went into lockdown, it had been 87 days since I had been to a restaurant. It’s superficial, but it’s also a really good marker between ‘then’ and ‘now.’

While I definitely missed the ease and comfort of lounging in a booth while a server attends to my every need, the world has moved on to bigger, more pressing problems. I haven’t had a lot to say about it because, well, I just don’t have a lot to say about it.

Take the Coronavirus. While doctors and nurses were pleading for PPE and bodies were being loaded onto trucks in the middle of New York City streets, I was lucky enough to be comfortably quarantined at home. I didn’t bake sourdough bread. I didn’t make any TikToks, although I did get a kick out of that flip-the-switch challenge that everyone was doing for a while.

Essentially, I just kept doing what I’d been doing—working from home, hanging out with my dogs (we got a second dog!) and not returning phone calls, but with a whole lot more hand washing mixed in. It’s a privilege to not be on the front lines, but it doesn’t make for very fascinating social commentary.

Then Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd and protests erupted all over the country. I was appalled, and the conversation happening on social media and in sound bites on the news made it clear that I had a lot to learn about the deeper issues at play.

I downloaded books. I read essays by Black thought leaders and activists. I researched Black-owned businesses, signed petitions, reposted things I found helpful and read up on other ways to support the movement. I’m learning more every day. More on this in a future post, because it has been massively eye-opening. But again, it’s not a conversation that I, a middle-class white woman from the suburbs, feel like I have a ton of new insight to add to.

So I’ve been listening. I’ve been taking a step back from frivolous posts about what I’m making for dinner (spoiler alert: probably something in the microwave). I haven’t been doing much of anything creative at all, unless you count the jigsaw puzzle that absorbed pizza and wine spills on my coffee table for three weeks before I finally finished it. I’ve been trying to stay away from all the carbs, but the carbs are winning.

I’m usually a pretty motivated person, always looking for my next project or something new to try. But lately that’s been the farthest thing from my mind. I decided to Google whether this was normal, and it took me down a rabbit hole of learning about how chaotic times take up a large amount of our mental capacity, leaving little for other things like creative pursuits.

Yes—that’s it exactly. My mental energy has just felt zapped.

So I’ve been leaning into it, as they say. I’ve been resisting the urge to always be doing something or saying something or posting something, and I’m letting go of the guilt that comes with not doing much. Sometimes it feels good to not be striving.

I think it was someone on a podcast that said, how would you treat your best friend right now? You probably wouldn’t beat them up for not feeling *inspired* or not making some profound statement on the state of the world or for not doing the most during a time when it feels like there are a thousand things we should all be doing to improve this dumpster fire of a situation we’re living in.

You’d tell them to take it easy, to take care of themselves. If that’s how you’d treat your best friend—and presumably, most of us would—that’s how you should also treat yourself. So that’s what I’ve been trying to do.

As for what I’ve actually been doing all day? For starters, I’ve been working a ton. Thankfully, I had a few clients who decided to use the Covid-related downtime to buckle down on big internal projects, which has kept my plate full with content writing projects.

The business my mom and I run together, a fitness website for seniors, is also doing well. We’ve seen a surge in traffic as people look online for alternatives to going to the gym.

I’ve been bonding with our new pup Tiki, who we adopted in April. She likes Johnny and me well enough, but she worships Bo. Seeing her tail nearly wag off her body when he gets up every morning is enough to renew my faith in humanity.

I’ve been saving money. Turns out all you need to do to hit your budget goals every month is stay at home and not go anywhere except to the grocery store and back. Add that to my list of budgeting hacks.

I’ve been reading, although I must admit getting through any one book has been a challenge.

I’ve caught up with friends I haven’t talked to in a while and gotten wine drunk on more than a few Zoom hangouts.

I’ve been sitting in a lawn chair in our backyard, soaking in the sunshine that’s finally made its way to New York. These past few months, it really has been all about the little things.

How are you holding up, and what are you doing with your time these days? Leave me a comment and let me know.