First Pandemic

I know I’m not the only one feeling burnout after the last year and a half. When the pandemic first started, I was taking advantage of all the extra time at home. I was diving into my hobbies, reading, writing, and ukuleleing like never before. I had several Marco Polo conversations, Zoom meetings one after another, and a weekly Google hangout with my family. I was cooking more and figuring out a home workout routine. I planned at-home dates and we played through every single board game we own. Anything and everything to fill the time.

Now, after being stuck at home and staring at screens for this long, I’m tired. I want to read, but I can’t make myself open a book. I know I should be writing, but there’s no motivation. I have a desire to be healthy and go to the gym, but then I go to Chick-fil-A instead. My phone stopped dinging with notifications and I now dread turning on Zoom. Screen fatigue is absolutely real, unless it’s Netflix, of course.

Life was sort of going back to normal. I got vaccinated and started going to restaurants and movies again. My mask got crumpled at the bottom of my purse and my first day back at work full time in person was on the horizon. And now it seems we’re tumbling back to how it was. How it has been for the last 16 months. Just when I thought I was going to get back to some semblance of normal, with a routine I could follow, with a way out of this rut, I get sucked back in. 

And my first thought is to be disappointed in myself. I’m so angry that I scroll my phone and rewatch That 70s Show again instead of picking up a book or taking 30 minutes to crank out a blog post (let’s all take a moment to applaud me for writing this one haha). I consider myself a failure when I don’t live up to my January 1st expectations. I’m sad, so I get food to make me happy, and then I get upset the second I finish eating. It’s a vicious cycle and it’s not healthy for anyone. 

I attended a workshop of sorts with writer Jon Acuff and he said something that finally allowed me to give myself some grace: “This is your first pandemic.” When you try anything for the first time, no one expects you to be good at it. Your first pancake will be a flop, your first book will be cringey to you years later, and your first concert will have a few off notes. It’s okay. You’re figuring it out. And this is all of our first pandemic. We have no idea how we’re going to react and cope and deal with it. We’re figuring it out and that’s okay.

Twitter user @gwensnyderPHL said, “You just went through 1.5 years of a profound ongoing threat to your health/wellbeing/life, social isolation, aggressive disinformation, political turmoil, and financial uncertainty. OF COURSE you are not functioning at your peak. OF COURSE you are stressed out, burned out, unproductive, disconnected, anxious, depressed, exhausted, aching, and/or sad. YOU ARE TRAUMATIZED. This is what trauma does to the human mind, to the human body, to human relationships…. Give yourself permission to not be okay. Give yourself permission to not be somehow spontaneously healed…. Give yourself space and time and above all, grace.” Over 200,000 people interacted with that tweet.

We’re going through it. We’re all going through it. We’re all still going through it. But we’re all still going through it together. So find your people, have a drink, and do something that gives you a pocket of joy amid this chaos.