The Next 200 Days
Three years ago today I was on the island of Kauai in Hawaii, on my honeymoon with my husband. It was just the two of us. A few days in, we met a couple from Kansas who got married just a few days before us, also on their honeymoon. We became friends, arguably because we were the only other couple there under 70 during the relative off-season of late October.
Now it’s just the two of us again– plus our dog Freddie, whose velvety little face I take in my hands every day as I thank him for being here with us.
It’s been 262 days since we crossed from Canada. We left our previous jobs and our apartment, completed the mountain of paperwork needed for a work visa, and relocated from Toronto to Fremont, California; absolutely sticking the landing on the pandemic. I was doing new hire onboarding on March 2nd, and got the memo that changed everything for all of us on March 5th, 239 days ago. I never met most of my coworkers. I’ve never in my life found it hard to make friends since I’m very extroverted and talking to new people comes easily to me, but it has been basically impossible to make friends. I moved to another country to work from home. I moved to America in 2020.
Similarly to our honeymoon, my husband and I have just the couple next door as the only people that we see regularly, but we aren’t close enough to them to consider being in a bubble. Unlike the quiet restoration of our time on Kauai, the isolation of quarantine pushed my already clinically depressed brain deeper into darkness. “Lonely” doesn’t scratch the surface for how I’ve felt.
There have been several posts by well-meaning coworkers saying that if folks are feeling down and want to talk, they can talk to them. These are truly wild times, and yes– it’s vital for us to show empathy to our coworkers, but if we’re going to normalize asking these types of questions with this level of intimacy, we need to be prepared for when people respond with “No, I’m not okay,” because that is a very real possibility. Consider how you would respond to someone sharing pain and struggles with you, and think about what you would do next. Consider what real, tangible, and immediate resources you can provide to people. You may, in fact, not be prepared for what people might tell you. This is a very kind gesture, and this type of support may work for some people, but as someone with major, even life threatening depression, I feel like if I utter certain words they would be as venom spraying from my mouth. Sharing my struggles with others isn’t an option because I’m afraid of causing them harm. Suicide contagion is real.
Historically, when someone was bitten by a snake, the best immediate option would be to suck out the venom. This would potentially risk the life of the rescuer, by causing them to be exposed to and potentially ingest the toxin. The amount of venom, combined with the individual’s reaction to it, determines the outcome. Anti-venom is of course the best medicine for snake bites, but it is expensive, inaccessible, and often not an option. Fortunately, because of my financial privilege I was able to access an anti-venom: a plane ticket back to Toronto.
If you had told me at the beginning of this year, as I was preparing to move my whole life to another country to start a new job, that the only place I would be traveling– let alone vacationing –would be Toronto, I would have laughed in your face. How could that happen? Something would have had to go terribly wrong. My husband dropped me off a deserted-looking SFO and I waited at my gate with a handful of other people, all wearing masks, while announcements about hand washing and social distancing played over the PA system. I flew across the continent, I spent hundreds of dollars on an Airbnb that I would not set foot out of during my federally-mandated two week quarantine: all to finally see my friends in real life.
During my 3 weeks off I could feel my soul being fed. I finally had a bubble, I snuggled my sister’s cats, we cooked dinner together, we hugged, we watched movies on the couch, we shared bottles of wine and listened to albums. My friends and I played in VR on my Quest. We collaborated on art–together, in person.
The night before I left Toronto, I sobbed uncontrollably on the floor of my Airbnb. I was returning to isolation, terrified that I’d slide back into that deep, dark viper pit once again. However, I had a new perspective and landed again in California not as a subject of circumstances that are happening to me, as was the case for the first 200 days, but as the actor dealing with them.
I’ve mapped where those venomous snakes are and am focused on tactics to protect my psyche, to prevent myself from being bitten. This is not a sprint, this is a marathon of unknown length. On top of the things I’m already doing to prevent the degradation of my motivation and mental health (again), such as ensuring I get enough sleep and working out or walking my dog daily, I’ve landed on 3 major tactics to stay resilient. They are pretty basic, but if this year has been good for anything, its clarifying priorities.
Tactic 1: Always have something to look forward to.
I may not have PTO left after my trip back to Toronto, but I’m still planning weekend camping now that the wildfires are calming down here in California. In the new year, I’m planning a trip to Colorado to see friend. Besides hosting an online Halloween party this weekend (candy bowl left outside and refilled by sneaking around my house from the back), I’ll be heading to the SF MoMA for some socially distanced art! We are starved for novelty right now, so I urge you to take a chunk of time off and do something unusual with it.
Go on a road trip, program a film festival with corresponding themed food and drinks, take an in-depth bootcamp course on something you’ve always wanted to learn, build something you’ve been meaning to, cook your way through a cookbook, paint a wall, start a book club, try a different bath bomb every day, hell– MAKE a different bath bomb every day! If you have PTO left: take it. Take 2 weeks off all at once. Your teams will be fine without you. I promise.
Tactic 2: Ruthlessly limit news exposure.
Ruthless prioritization is something we hear about a lot in the tech industry when it comes to our work, but I offer ruthless limits, boundaries if you will.
The news literally doesn’t stop and each day seems to gouge another wound in our collective hearts. The rushed nomination process of the latest Supreme Court judge was the catalyst for me stepping even further back from news consumption. It’s very hard to concentrate on my work when I find myself wondering how many days it will be until marriage equality is undone. Would that undo existing unions? What happens with my insurance? Nothing feels like it’s off the table at this point.
Previously, I was able to consume news through a handful of podcasts, but then had to scale that back to one, and now I don’t purposely seek out news at all. The information wends its way to me through my social feeds, through podcast titles, Google News stories when I open a new browser tab on my phone, memos, and so many other ways that I had never considered access points before.
Tactic 3: Spend time with friends.
This is a tricky one because I don’t want to pressure anyone to engage in any actions that would be outside of their personal threshold of acceptable risk. Everyone’s risk tolerance is different, and while there clearly are activities that would be broadly regarded as unsafe, like hosting a house party indoors a la before times, there are some safer activities, like a socially distanced hangout in a park, that many folks would still interpret as too high risk for them, and that’s okay. Making friends has become even harder because of many coworkers moving out of the Bay Area. Digital hangouts are fine, but many folks are so burned out from work video chats that social VC applications are losing their delight. The small social cues that deepen bonds don’t translate over VC. Message me if you’re in the Bay Area and want to do a distance hang in a park!
Looking forward to the next 200 days, we’ll see the outcomes of government reorganization, we’ll endure winter, we’ll face 2nd and 3rd waves, and many more earthshaking things that we cannot see from where we stand right now. As people have been saying for months: we are in unprecedented times. There is no precedent to what we’re currently experiencing, but that means that the actions that we take now will set the precedent.
