Getting down with the lockdown
Here in Connecticut, weāve been in a semi-lockdown for about a month now, and like many people, Iāve vacillated between panic attacks and depression and trying to see the silver lining/it-could-be-worse side of things. For example:
Iām so lucky I still have a job and can work at home!
Oh my god, now that my mom lives with me and my husband, Iām the only one with an income!
At least my husband is still getting job interviews in a time like this!
Holy shit, heās an immigrant and just moved to the US at the worst time possible and I feel so guilty!
Believe it or not, the panic even carried over into crafting - like many sewists, I did order a few yards of fabric and elastic to make masks for others. Compared to the relative ease with which Iāve made garments and bags though, masks have become the bane of my existence. Everyoneās face is different! I have no idea how youāre supposed to mass produce these. Iāve made 3 for my husband and have yet to make one that fits him right - I may have yelled at him for having the wrong sized head. Since I work at a medical school, I was going to donate these to our healthcare providers, but since weāre still getting conflicting information on whatās considered acceptable PPE, I decided to donate them to a womenās/family homeless shelter - someplace that is ostensibly lower risk than an ICU ward, where people will actually use them and will hopefully help to slow asymptomatic spread of COVID-19. Anyway, this fed into my anxiety because with every mask that I felt I messed up, I was angry at myself because it meant wasted material and one less person who would get a mask.
And then Iāve also been grappling with feeling like, okay - I got out of working in news because covering humanitarian crises was not great for my mental health, and then a pandemic followed me to a medical school, and now I have to read about COVID-19 research and case numbers all day and make videos about this stuff. Cool. But yaaaay Iām so lucky to be employed and have health insurance, even if I was barely making it to the end of the month before, everything is fine!
Anyhow. Iām doing a little better now that Iāve set an alarm to make myself take my anxiety and migraine meds at the same time every day. Duh.Ā
If there is a silver lining amidst the endless human suffering, the 20% unemployment rate, the miles long lines for food banks, the disproportionately high death rates for POC, the poor - folks who canāt afford to socially distance - I guess it might be this.
Weāre all being forced to cut a lot of conveniences out of our lives right now. It means different things to different people, but it boils down to less consumption. Fewer trips in the car, fewer frivolous trips to the store, fewer mindless purchases. With places like Chewy and Petsmart out of stock of my usual pet supplies, my locally owned pet stores are coming to the rescue with curbside pickup. Same for craft supplies. The tiny vegetarian, organic, family owned supermarket by my house is usually better stocked and has better behaved customers than people at Stop and Shop or Target. If you can afford to do takeout, you can pick up meals from local restaurants that are still open, rather than ordering through Grubhub that takes a large commission from these places that are already suffering.
On the flip side, the things that have been added into my life these past few weeks are having my mom and my husband get more time to bond, since weāve always lived far away in the Middle East, being grateful for both of their compassion, going on lots of hikes and walks and bike rides together, cooking together, playing card games, reading books and watching movies.Ā
The things that seemed important a few weeks ago - maybe trying to get a job with a fancier title at a fancier institution, deadlines set for myself (including finishing my masterās this year), what people think of me, what my house looks like - all that has gone out the window very rapidly. On the other hand, even with all the uncertainty, itās easy to contemplate long-term plans with my family, because that is solid.
In other words, now is the time to contemplate what we want to let back into our lives when things eventually go back toĀ ānormal.ā Do we even want a return toĀ ānormal,ā consideringĀ ānormalā is what got us in this situation?Ā āNormalā means our jobs are our whole lives in the US - without a job, we have no health insurance and no safety net.Ā āNormalā has resulted in world-class healthcare systems collapsing and manufacturing supply chains being broken globally. And this crisis has revealed that scientific research and innovation can happen rapidly - we just havenāt been prioritizing it with funding before now. Now is the time to Marie Kondo all that shit and think about the kind of lives we want to lead.