Month: February 2021

Of all the fake names ever used in spam comments on this site, “Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine” is perhaps the most amusing and the most timely. I’ve been thinking a lot about the vaccine lately; about its availability, about when I’ll be able to get it, and about just how successful it’s going to be in the grand scheme of things.

In some abstract way, as we approach a full year in lockdown — although, it strikes me, few have fully observed the lockdown for that entire time; the seemingly increasing number of people wandering the streets without masks makes that all too clear, sadly — the idea that the vaccines will work, and that we may one day return to something close to what we used to call “normal,” feels almost impossible.

This, by now, is normal. This weird world where we don’t really go out and do things, is the world as it is and has been for the length of our short-term memory; even moreso, the idea of doing something else, whether it’s going to the movies, or going to a restaurant, or anything that used to be considered an usual social occurrence, feels not only alien, but more than a little unsettling to boot. Imagine being that close to strangers without wearing a mask at all times!

(Or two masks, even; I’ve taken to wearing two masks out in public after reading advice that it would be advisable considering the new COVID variants, and even that has become less strange and uncomfortable incredibly quickly — it was only a couple of weeks ago when I felt as if it was too much, and that I was breathing oddly, but now I do it without even thinking and feel entirely normal when I do.)

Perhaps this is just what happens, perhaps it’s just how our brains work. All I know is that, this far into COVID lockdown, the very notion that there’s an “other side” to the virus and to lockdown that we’re headed towards feels as if it’s science fiction.

I spent some time yesterday writing a pitch for a piece that I might be working on in the future, if all goes well; it’s something that I, ironically, was hoping to do for THR, before I was laid off and was then invited to pitch for elsewhere. The plus side of this is, I have a pretty good idea of what I’d want to do, given the chance. On the other hand, my pitch alone turned out to be longer than some stories I’ve written for outlets in the past, so it would be a significant undertaking.

(But, oh! If I had a chance to do it! It could be so much fun, despite the workload…!)

I am returning, in my head, to work — or the idea of working, anyway. I’d planned to use February to step away and get my head straight, to plane future moves and take a break before returning to things properly in March and pitching everywhere, writing some things for outlets old and new, and generally discovering what the future “swing of things” would look like. It felt like a good idea at the time, not least of all because, while I didn’t realize quite how much I’d been affected by being laid off, I knew the answer was “probably more than I know right now.”

Now that I’m here, though, I find myself both excited at the thought of working again — which is, in itself, surprising and exciting — but also quietly terrified about the vague plan I have for my future. Really, the fear centers around a very simple idea: what if I fail? What if I can’t make a living doing this anymore?

It’s a fear born of rejection anxiety after being laid off as much as any practical, “real” concern, I’m well aware. It’s also coming from the knowledge that I really did have it unnaturally good before, with my relationships with THR and Wired, and that things will never be that good again. I’m trying to be okay with knowing that, though, and embracing whatever is next, in whatever shape it comes. Even if it means writing enormously long pitches and crossing my fingers that someone says yes.

When I first moved to Portland, the concept of a snowfall that lasted more than, say, an evening, felt like an alien concept. I can remember with embarrassing clarity how ill-prepared I was for the first blizzard here, which arrived within a month of my arrival; I wandered out in what had felt like a heavy coat by California standards, only to end up huddled in a doorway, shivering and wondering what the hell was going on and could I get back to the house without dying of cold. (That’s only slightly more melodramatic than what I was actually feeling at the time.)

Within a couple of years, though, I’d discovered Portland’s snowy secret: It snows every year here. It’s not as if I can say it’s regular, or “like clockwork,” but it’s somewhere close — it will almost certainly snow at least once in January or February every year, and more often than not, it’ll stick around at least for a couple of days. The years where that doesn’t happen are far, far more rare than the alternative. With that kind of frequency, it’s relatively easy to get used to the snow and prepare for it.

The funny thing — and it is funny to me — is that Portland as a city seems unable to do that. It feels like, every year, there’s mild panic buying in stores as soon as snow is forecast, and then when it’s started falling and lying on the ground, you can see people wandering around as if they’re in a post-apocalyptic landscape with handmade bindles full of supplies, their faces covered with scarves and goggles as they stare into the distance. That’s saying nothing about people abandoning their cars on the sides of the road if the snow gets particularly heavy, which I’ve seen happen more than once.

Quite what’s behind the city’s collective amnesia when it comes to cold weather continues to fascinate me. Things could be so much easier for everyone here if they’d get panic less and remember what it was like this time last year… but I can’t deny that it’s especially wonderful to me when, just like right now, the snow is falling outside my window and I suspect that half of my town thinks that the sky is falling.

There’s an irony to the fact that I struggled for longer than I’d care to admit about what to write for today’s post — no, really, I’m talking on-and-off for the past couple of days, an unusually long time for me, for here — without managing to come up with a topic worth my time or yours, before giving up and thinking, you know what, maybe I’ll just skip it. It’s more important to be kind to myself than force it, and then to realize, oh, that’s what I want to write about after all. It’s not a fun irony, because I’d like all that struggle time back, thank you, but I’ll take it.

I was going to write that I’ve been focusing on being kind to myself since being laid off last month, but the truth of it is that I’ve been trying to do it even before then. It’s still an unusual and occasionally uncomfortable and awkward practice for me, not least of all because I spent so long in a relationship that wasn’t kind to me at all; I still have moments where the concept of trying to identify what it means to be good to myself feels either greedy and selfish or, worse, a question I don’t have an answer to. It is, nonetheless, something that I’ve come to realize is a necessity if I want to be anywhere close to healthy and happy.

The form of being kind to myself changes regularly; it’s giving myself a break on self-imposed deadlines, or watching another episode of Project Runway while snuggling Chloe on the couch. It’s eating well, or being okay with spending time to clean the kitchen because I’ve been noticing small messes that frustrate me far too often. It’s basically understanding what I need at that moment and quickly doing the mental math of if it’s worth the cost (the effort, the financial impact, the whatever) before making what feels like the right decision. A simple practice, but one I never got around to actually trying until too recently.

I’ve been relaxing more than I expected since being laid off, and taking things slower. Sometimes I worry that I should be doing more, but there’s time enough for that later; for now, I’m working on being kind, instead.

The most surprising thing about my first week of unemployment was just how busy it ended up being.

I don’t want to give the impression that I was rushed off my feet the entire week, without any chance to sit down and relax, because that’s obviously not true; I spent more than my fair share of time in front of the television, enjoying the cinematic fruits of many people’s labor including some genuinely terrible, yet utterly enjoyable, movies. (The Meg, I’m looking at you pretty directly.) There was a lot of downtime, and it was particularly enjoyable; I can’t and wouldn’t claim otherwise.

Despite all that, though, there were things that I’d fully intended to do with that week that just… didn’t get done. And not for lack of trying, either; I would start days with an internal checklist of things to accomplish, with specific items on the list, and they would somehow still be on that list by the end of the day, and I wouldn’t really have any excuse for that other that, “somehow, things got in the way…?” What those things happened to be, however, felt as mysterious to me as to everyone else. Nature abhors a vacuum, and somehow, my days became filled by whatever it was possible to be filled by.

Some of this was filled by work stuff, or at least work-related stuff; I did an edit test for a gig I didn’t get, I sent a lot of emails, I made some phone calls and tried to set up future things that may or may not happen. I also found out about things that wouldn’t happen, or found out news about the landscape out there that made my plans feel that little bit less possible, and I feel as if those were the things that filled my week the most — the emotional labor of having to reassess things and deal with the bad news aspect of it all.

This might be the thing I wasn’t expecting, but will have to deal with the most over the next few weeks: having to deal with things not working out and having to come up with Plans B, C, D, and however far in the alphabet I have to go before something sticks. The perils of a previously charmed life, I guess.