Embrace the Lull
Dear Friends,
“Apparently, the pandemic’s over now,” a friend said to me last weekend. We rolled our eyes. While those of us with unvaccinated toddlers or compromised immune systems may feel otherwise, the pandemic’s second anniversary seemed to bring about some societal agreement that COVID is now in the past. People are over it. Mask mandates are crumbling. Companies are summoning their remote workers back to the office, back to whatever normal means now.
Personally, I’ve found it difficult to get off of pandemic autopilot. I’ve been taking certain precautions for so long that they’ve become habit. Masks indoors, playdates outdoors. Takeout and patio dining. Avoid crowds, avoid making plans, avoid getting your hopes up.
Last Friday my spouse and I dropped our daughter off at preschool and then went to get breakfast in Old Town, as he was working a later shift that day. We went into the cafe and ordered, then took our table number out to the patio, where we sat in the 40 degree weather and waited for the server to bring our quiche. And I had this moment, like, why are we still doing this? We just dropped our kid off at indoor preschool where they’re no longer requiring masks. It’s cold. Is this really preserving “danger points” any more?
The truth is, I don’t know. It’s hard to separate habit from performance from precaution from anxiety. In the absence of rules, I made up my own, but now they’re making less sense. Or am I just easily influenced by the glow of a warm cafe on a not-quite-spring morning?
Things feel okay in my small world right now, but I think my hangup is that “okay” still feels temporary. The specter of another variant looms, waiting, like Omicron and Delta before it, to crush plans and send the country back into instability and horror. Is it coming? Or did Omicron really shift our collective immunity in a new direction? Maybe the “new normal” we were all waiting for is just Perpetual Uncertainty.
One of my survival tactics is to always be on the lookout for a new framework. Lately, it’s this: embrace the lull. For now, the most intense chaos feels like it’s living somewhere else, and with the knowledge that it could come roaring back, I’m trying to have a nice time. See my friends and family. Do a few more things. Let myself experience a sense of ease. I’m struck by how different “embrace the lull” feels from its cousin, “seize the day.” The latter feels full of infinite possibility with little regard for the future. Embracing the lull is sleeping with one eye open, but hey, at least you’re lying down.
I’m trying to forgive myself for my paranoia. For my inability to fully relax, to override autopilot and make new decisions. My brain’s not ready to jump right back into assuming good things about the future, and I’m coming to realize that that’s okay.
Reminding myself to “embrace the lull” feels gentler on my long-term-stressed brain than “stop being ridiculous” or “believe in miracles.” It also leaves room for uncertainty and remaining risk while nudging me to be mindful of opportunities to feel more safe. Even if I’m not yet ready to adjust my behavior (is dining indoors fun with a two-year-old anyway?) I am using the lull as a time to stop spinning my wheels. It’s been difficult, over the past few years, not to see the world as one nightmare after the next. We had lulls in 2021, but I missed them waiting for things to be perfect. Now, I want to make a conscious effort to magnify the smoother times.
Anybody with me?
Take good care,
Dot
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Blog Posts
We’ve reached a heavy pandemic anniversary—two years since the world shut down. Anniversaries often bring up intensified feelings. Adele Stuckey, Matthew Brooks, Dot Dannenberg, and Laura Miles talk about one complicated feeling brought on by this phase of the pandemic: anger.
Links We Like
This poster benefitting Ukraine reminded me of how the best art can communicate so many ideas at once.
Mari Andrew on the intersection of evangelical purity culture and how we’re “supposed” to feel about Ukraine.
Also loved Haley Nahman’s take on the hot take, vibe shifts, and “using your platform.”
We will forget much of the pandemic. That’s a good thing. (NYT)
A simile I can’t get out of my head: “But the pandemic has been this terrible trauma. It’s brought out the best in us, but not all of us rose to the occasion…The pandemic has been like one of those scenes in a movie where everyone’s on a plane, and then it starts to nosedive. People are confessing things they never thought they would confess. Some people are helping others, while another person is smacking the guy next to him. But now, the plane is leveling off. We now know how our neighbors dealt with the pandemic, and we can’t unsee that. So how can we move on together from that?” - Shawn Hubler (NYT)
Is burnout just a trauma response in disguise?
Love this illustration reframing the way our lives narrow over time. (The NYT newsletter about reclaiming time lost to COVID is also worth a read).
Chuckling at these self help titles.
“I just want to say that if you’re an adult, and you’re kind of like, ‘Hey, you know, I’m doing everything right in my life, but I just don’t — I don’t feel good, like something’s missing’…I just want to propose that the thing that’s missing is riding a bike.” (Medium)
A moment of peace by Quentin Monge:
