Hello friend,
Two years in to this pandemic and I was doing pretty well, all things considered, if one could be considered to be doing “well” — healthy, aside from the extra pounds that the shut-in lifestyle bequeathed unto my waistline; Covid-free; gainfully employed; enjoying motherhood and my thriving, happy toddler. This month feels like the month that things started to fall off the rails.
I fight often with a sense of guilt because here’s the thing: I have been playing this game on Easy Mode.
When I say “Easy Mode” what I mean is stuff like, flexible work, comfortable and convenient home, and the incredible luxury of three adults to share caregiving and household responsibilities. Now we’re in the messy midst of a home renovation, and I’m living in a series of temporary apartments, separate from one of my partners, and we just came off of a full week of no childcare because apparently daycares have “summer break” (?!), and our neat routine has fallen apart. I’m grasping at anything that will make life easier. Lots of takeout. Cutting out any activity that isn’t an absolute necessity. Survival.
This week, I realized that the accumulation of months of elevated stress, a pervasive atmosphere of suspicion and risk, and finally, losing childcare (due to a scheduled outage followed by Covid striking our teachers) and that extra pair of hands — that third adult who is usually around all the time — was quite consequential for my own mental health, and intertwined with my recent feeling of “losing it.” There is no village, only us. And when everything is a precarious balance, any small disruption of routine can be enough to knock over the whole damn pile.
We human beings aren’t made to be “on” continually, for months and months at a time. I lie down at night to sleep and can’t find the comfortable side of the bed that isn’t really my bed. I wake in a strange room and feel disoriented, but before I can locate myself in the world it’s time to get my toddler dressed and put coffee in my face and sign on to 4 straight hours of video calls.
This month has brought a new level of feeling that my brain is full. When I get that feeling is usually when I start to make more mistakes—everywhere. I try to put something into my head and something else falls out. I can’t always follow sentences that are said to me at the end of the day. I cracked my car’s side mirror trying to back out of a too-tight parking spot. I forgot a remote doctor’s appointment and missed it. I start typing text messages and get distracted and find them later, half-written and unsent. I find mugs of old, cold coffee in the microwave, hours after I put them in there to reheat them.
Prolonged stress isn’t healthy. It affects all systems in the human body. Chronic stress can create chronically tense muscles, loss of range of motion, physical pain, breathing problems, elevated blood pressure, chronic fatigue, depression, memory problems. The list is dire. Anne Helen Petersen explored this much more eloquently and in greater depth — go read her missive on the topic of how our bodies are continually reacting to the pandemic. It’s not just that we “should” attempt “self care”; it’s a medical emergency, a survival need, an imperative. And the pace of modern life is increasingly such that we are duped into feeling guilty for admitting that we need rest.
As we joke darkly about how poorly we feel, heading into year three of the pandemic with no real end in sight, my friends and I cling to the bits and pieces of camaraderie and joy that we can still find. The ongoing text threads that say, I’m still here. A delicious cocktail; a photo of the last time we were together (how many years ago?); a moment of innocent exaltation with our kids.
I realize that by even mentioning my struggles, I open myself to ridicule. Privileged woman announces being an adult is hard, go cry me a river.
That’s ok. I’ve spent too much of my life pretending that life is easy and perfection is attainable, and it’s not, and I’m wiped out and it’s not worth pretending because every single person I know is struggling somehow right now so we might as well share it.
So, friend, in this haze of exhaustion, I want to know: How are you holding together? How do you handle that too-full-brain feeling? What is lighting you up inside, or at least helping you keep your little candle burning? And, the hardest question for me these days: What are you looking forward to?
Me? I’m looking forward to the day, now blessedly very soon, now actually concretely scheduled on the calendar—the day my child can finally get her first Covid vaccine, and we can tiptoe closer to living like normal people again.
Creative juice
Recently, I had the opportunity to have a fascinating conversation with artist O. Koren, a nonbinary “photo ethnographer,” about their work documenting and depicting Black culinary tradition and contributions to American foodways and popular culture. In this piece, we get into it, delving into their background and inspirations, and discussing how brands and visual artists alike can achieve more accurate, thoughtful, and nuanced depictions of important cultural narratives — on Juneteenth, and every day.
Side quests
That’s a stress response: the body is bad at pretending. Jenny Odell teaches Jon Favreau how to do nothing (podcast). My favorite controlled substance is daycare. Literature as care work. The pandemic’s impact on women’s employment in 7 charts from McKinsey. Art’s relatively recent intersection with AI exposes the paradoxes of authorship, creativity, authenticity, and agency. Reasons to log off. This identity design was inspired by videos of slicing Spam.
Last thought
“What if we spent less time shouting into the void and being washed over with shouting in return-and more time talking in rooms to those for whom our words are intended? If we have only so much attention to give, and only so much time on this earth, we might want to think about reinfusing our attention and our communication with the intention that both deserve.”
― Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy