The World Didn't Stop For You To Get Your Shit Together - Corona, Part II of ?

If we line up all the shitty events in my life in the order of their shitty magnitude, I would say the 2015 Breakup Incident is a distant second behind the 2020 Coronavirus Fuckery.

The difference was that the 2015 Breakup Incident was essentially the "We need to talk" moment combined with me trying to reassemble myself, knowing that the worst had already happened.  The 2020 Coronavirus Fuckery is like every governor, mayor, and world leader saying "We need to talk" about twenty times a day for days and days and days and days on end followed by me trying to reassemble myself with a growing anxiety over the fact that the worst thing that could happen is still largely unknown.

The thing that helped me find a place of recovery after the 2015 Breakup Incident was that I was able to find clear meaning in what had happened.  I knew after many years of false starts and doubt that I needed to finally act on my desire to leave Las Vegas.  Productivity became a coping strategy.  I had a master's thesis to finish, which would assist me in my search for a new job.  There were resumes to craft, cover letters to write, phone interviews to stumble through, and cities to research.  It paid off.  Ten months after the 2015 Breakup Incident, I landed a new job and moved to Denver, where life has been infinitely better.  It was an opportunity to get my shit together and I crushed it.

One thing the 2020 Coronavirus Fuckery has gifted us cursed us with is time.  I can't leave the house and my anxiety is too much to go grocery shopping.  There is so much time.  Every project that I've failed to do is now mine for the conquering!  You can do it as well! And, of course, since it's a time of great upheaval, what better time to truly become the best person you can be.  Organize your closets, take 27 Zoom Yoga classes a day, cook things, do tai chi, actually write shit to post on your blog that no one reads, finish EVERY work project you've ever dreamed of. The possibilities are endless as long as you just get your ever-loving shit together.

But you zone out and watch TV.  Since your commute has gone from twenty miles to twenty inches, you don't feel the urgency to get out of bed.   No one is coming to your apartment for a long time, so as long as you can't see any dirty dishes behind you in a video conference, you're golden.  You haven't had an in-person conversation in almost a week.  The time which you suddenly gained is once again lost.  You feel vaguely guilty.

You have every opportunity to be a better person right in front of you.  Instead, you're eating Fritos while staring at blank television screen.  You have failed at seizing opportunity.  You crawl into bed.  You begin breaking your own rule about technology in bed.  You see one of those inspirational quotes.  The kind that are designed to make the sharer feel morally superior.  You change it to reflect your reality.  It may be a negative reality, but it's reality and there comes a point when attempting to put a positive spin on everything becomes grating.

You know there is still joy to be had in the world.  You still laugh.  You still love.  You still seek to be your best, but you've lowered the bar as to what your best is right now.  That's perfectly fine.  You've accepted that the closet didn't get cleaned today.  It's not negativity.  It's reality.

You also know that as you finally clear your head of a parade of anxious thoughts that you are one day closer to the time when this might possibly end.  It will end. The timeline is just uncertain.

The world didn't stop for you to get your shit together.  The world stopped for us to navigate a crisis.  A crisis accompanied by a rough sea of emotion with no past experience to guide us.  If somehow, you've managed to make lemonade out of diarrhea water, Lord bless you.  And if all you did was make it through an hour, a day, or a week, you, my friend, are doing just fine.

There is no shame in your feelings.