I'm a different woman now
“The person I have the least in common with is pre-covid me.”
I haven’t felt like myself lately. And, as a result, I’ve had trouble writing.
If I’m being perfectly honest, I haven’t felt like myself in a while. But I didn’t realize how long I’ve been dealing with this until I stumbled upon an Instagram reel from Janel Abrahami. Abrahami is a career coach decades younger than me and I don’t follow her, so I’m not quite sure how or why the social media gods decided to serve me her content, but they did.
It wasn’t her video that caught my eye: it was the top comment. It said, simply:
“The person I have the least in common with is pre-covid me.”
It stopped me in my tracks.
When we commemorated the anniversary of COVID-19 last month, The New York Times published “30 Charts That Show How Much Covid Changed in March 2020” (a truly phenomenal piece). And an MD/PhD student bravely published an opinion piece titled “It's Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About COVID and It Cost Lives” in Newsweek. But all I could think about was what the hell had ever become of 2019 Kate!
As of this writing, that one comment from @sjaychif has gotten 3,902 likes. I’m one of them, because what she made me realize is that while five years have passed since the COVID-19 epidemic started, and nearly three years have passed since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it officially over, I still don’t feel normal.
And look, I’m one of the lucky ones. I know that. I didn’t lose anybody close to me to COVID-19. I didn’t contract COVID-19 until after I’d been vaccinated — same with everyone I love — so the case was relatively mild. I worked from my cozy home while others risked their lives in hospitals, grocery stores and other essential businesses. My kids — all of whom have realiable wifi and their own computer — finished out the 2019-2020 school year at home, but were back in the classroom come fall. I escaped a global health emergency unscated. But I still don’t feel “normal.”
I think that’s because I spend way too much time at home alone.
This is, of course, not entirely because of the pandemic. COVID-19, after all, wasn’t the only big thing that happened in my life over the last five years. I’ve started two new jobs since March 2020 (and left one of them) — both were remote. Our family dynamic has also completely changed. My “kids” are older and more independent. Two of them don’t even live at home anymore, and the one who does has had a driver’s license for two years. Which means that I’m not forced to be out and about, schlepping him to school and athletics — and I’m not forced to be around other parents as much (this is, admittedly, mostly good, but it’s also isolating).
So it wasn’t just COVID-19. I’m in a different stage of life now, but the pandemic, which forced us to completely change our behavior overnight, didn’t help. And because my daughter was having brain surgery in 2020 and I was her primary caregiver, I had to be especially careful. I ordered groceries instead of going to the store; I worked out in the basement instead of at the gym; I didn’t make social plans (I was tired of getting my hopes up and then canceling when a new variant surfaced). I got a little too good at sheltering in place and avoiding contact.
When my kids were little used to dream about having the house all to myself (in fact, this is what I asked for when I turned 40: Rather than going away to celebrate my milestone birthday, I wanted my husband to take the kids out of the house and leave me home alone — it was glorious). Don’t get me wrong: I still love being home alone. I just need to balance it out with more time spent with other people outside these four walls. But how?
Believe it or not, I found the answer at work. A few weeks ago, I got to interview the poet
for Cog. It was glorious. She’s equal parts kind and quotable — the type of person who makes you realize there’s a better way to live your life and offers you the hope that you can make the necessary changes. And in a pep talk she published with us, she reminded me that “life, like a poem, is a series of choices.” What I needed to do was edit my life.So I got out my metaphorical red pen and got to work. The things that aren’t been working? Cut ‘em. The stuff I want more of? Add ‘em back in. So that’s what I’m trying to do. Here are the edits I’ve come up with.
Things I’m cutting from my life
Fully remote work. I can’t completely eliminate remote work from my life becuase I live about 550 miles from where I work. But since I’ll be an empty nester soon, I’ve come up with a plan: I’m going to pick a regular time to travel to the office once a month, say the first Tuesday and Wednesday of every month.
Working out at home. We’ve got a basement full of exercise gear, so exercising at home is convenient, but it isn’t as energizing as going to a gym is for me. I finally fixed this problem in January by joining a new gym. This will sound insanely goofy, but I love starting my day in community with other people. It’s just enough socializing to keep me going for a long day at my keyboard.
My reliance on apps. A couple of years ago, I wrote about becoming too reliant on the various apps that eased the panic of the pandemic: Order your groceries for delivery! Work out at home! Do all your chores without getting off your couch! I talked about looking for ways to live a more analog life and forcing myself to get out of the house more often. It’s hard to resist the siren call of a frictionless life on your phone. I’ve made some progress here, but I still sometimes can’t resist the allure of the “add to cart” button.
Things I’m adding more of to my life
Travel. I actually prefer in the office to working at home (I enjoy the separation of church and state and the in-person collaboration), but since I’m not moving to Boston anytime soon, I’m trying to focus on the positives of remote work and the biggest one is the ability to travel. When my youngest heads off to college in the fall, I plan to take full advantage of my ability to work from anywhere so I can travel everywhere.
Getting dressed. OK, this one’s weird, but I, like a lot of people, have forgotten how to dress. Between the pandemic, knee surgery and back surgery, I’ve spent way too much of the last five years in sweatpants. So now when I get home from the gym in the morning, I try to dress like 2019 Kate — like I’m headed into the office. This is a muscle you have to rebuild over time, but I’m starting to see results.
Getting out of the house when my husband’s home. In the early years of her marriage, Joan Didion’s mother and aunts used to warn against spending too much time with her husband. “For richer or poorer, but never for lunch,” they’d say. And I know exactly what they mean. I love my husband. We’ve been together nearly 35 years. But we were never meant to be around each other this much. So I’m making a concerted effort to be out of the house more when he’s working from home. Sometimes I walk a few blocks to the museum cafe and work from there. A friend suggested working from the public library. I may join a co-working space, but I’m not sure I can justify the cost. I’m open to other ideas if you’ve got them.
Hobbies. Remember how much fun folks had knitting and baking sourdough in 2020? I need to harness some of that energy. I think of writing this newsletter as a hobby. (I do it for fun, not money. It’s a practice of sorts.) But I already spend too much time on my laptop. So I’m still trying to find some analog activities to embrace — ideally ones I can do with other people.
This may seem very basic to you. But making this list helped me understand what I’ve been missing, why I’ve felt so “off.” Here’s to feeling like ourselves again.
Have a great weekend,
Also on my mind
This is how lifestyle creep starts. And, in case you need a reminder (I know I often do):
Speaking of lifestyle creep and being less dependent on apps, “God wants us to walk, but the devil sends a limo.” That quote from a 2020 profile of Val Kilmer (written by Taffy Brodesser-Akner) got a lot of attention after the actor’s death on April 1. Here’s what Ann Friedman wrote about it in her newsletter:
I got kind of obsessed with the metaphor. In a limo, you're partitioned off so you don't see who's controlling the car, or the work that goes into driving. Or maybe you're not even riding at all—the proverbial limo is transporting your dinner or the three random things you ordered next-day delivery. It's cushy and easy, but also wasteful and infantilizing.
And speaking of Taffy Brodesser-Akner (I could do this all day, people), stop what you’re doing now and read her latest masterpiece, “This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write.” She’s so damn good.
I’ve always been freaked out by burial (it seems like such a waste of money and space), so I always told my husband I’d like to be cremated when I die. But then I learned about forest cemeteries, and now I want to be reborn as a tree.
In this 4-minute video, Mike White of ‘White Lotus’ fame explains his two phases of creativity: open and closed.
Jeff Hood fights to save men on Death Row, whether they’re innocent or not. “The Last Face Death Row Inmates See,” a Rolling Stone article about his work, was both harrowing and hopeful.
Dyeing Easter eggs is too expensive this year. Here are some other ideas.
Summer sandal season is my favorite. Here are three pairs I’m loving now: The nailhead trim on these Free People flip-flops ($68) makes them look much more expensive than they are (these come in black, too); this crossover sandal from Madewell ($118) features cool stud embellishments (but the “dried acorn” color is a little off); and any woman who was a kid in the 80s will understand the appeal of Vince’s update on the classic jelly flats ($198).
Photos: Madewell.com; Shopbop.com; Shopbop.com. And, in honor of the warmer weather, this week’s poem:
My sexual orientation is spring —Kyla Jamieson We change time, make the days longer. I start to forget the pact I made with unhappiness, take myself to the ocean, say 'I just need to catch the last few minutes of light." This is how spring is love, the way it pulls us towards pleasure.
Bonus: It’s National Poetry Month. Celebrate by calling 385-DIAL-FSG (385-342-5374) to hear a Farrar, Straus and Giroux author read you a poem.
This and you are brilliant; holy crap so much of this resonates.