6 Ways Quarantine is Improving My Life
I haven’t had a single fight with my wife
There are two immediate and enormous caveats that accompany the rest of this post:
- Nobody I know personally is sick with COVID-19
- I haven’t lost my job
Some people talk about thriving in crisis when crisis has never touched them. I hate that. It feels like the author is misleading me.
Maybe I will get sick. Maybe I will lose my job. On that day, I will write about those things. For now, though, I’m moving forward with immense gratitude and an almost endless appreciation for each passing day.
Here are a few ways my life has improved, even while the world feels like it’s falling apart.
I learned devotion to my wife is paying off
Kate turned 30 in the middle of this mess. Even though we’d spent every day together anyway, I still took off work. When I returned to my email the next day, I saw the message which made me more proud than I’ve ever been.
“Taking the day off for your wife’s birthday? Now that’s dedication.”
Many people are fighting with their spouses. I’m giddy that Kate and I get to spend this much time together. It feels like we’re in college again. We are married, and — get this — we still enjoy spending time together. We scrounge up leftover bread and olive oil, and pretend we are in Paris.
Dedicating ourselves to each other when there wasn’t a crisis has made it much easier to get through the stressful days. We haven’t had a single fight during our time in quarantine.
Although I am in isolation, my memories aren’t
Yesterday, I drank a beer. My mouth said: this is beer. My brain said: this is baseball and sunshine and hot dogs.
The banana bread I ate last week wasn’t just banana bread. It was the hardwood floors my first apartment combined with that one flavor of coffee I used to drink. The pen I wrote my first draft with feels like Valentine’s Day 2018. Kate said: “You’re a writer. You need a good pen.” I melted inside. I still melt.
Before this, my stuff was just stuff. Now, I can see that every item in my home is linked across the entirety of my life. It’s nice to remember.
I stopped overthinking the short term
My attention has narrowed down to each passing hour. All I can do is keep breathing from sunrise to sunset. That is the only goal. As I fall asleep I say “thank you.” Never in the history of my life have I been more grateful for another 24 hours.
Unsurprisingly, my anxiety about emails and projects and conference calls have melted away. They aren’t important.
I stopped underthinking the long term
On March 27th, I logged in to Southwest to change flights. Probably I wouldn’t be able to board the airplane allegedly leaving in 26 hours
While I was clicking new dates, something magic happened. I could clearly see our lives six months down the road. I thought “wait. I can make choices now that improve our future experience.”
Before this time, there was no such thing as “six months down the road.” Who had time to think about October when it was only March? Now, I had the presence of mind to realize that if we rescheduled for those dates, we could stay in the little B&B Kate wanted to go to in the first place.
Tickets booked. Future improved.
I learned to be resourceful
The past 50 years in America have been all growth. Make it bigger. Better! Keep the machines running, always. But if you water a flower too much it dies, and if you keep humans in abundance, they get lazy.
I lied to you earlier about not fighting with Kate. We had one brief spat. She wanted something from the store but wouldn’t let me go get it. Dinner without turkey bacon. Can you imagine?!
Do you know what happens whenever your normal comforts are ripped away? You adapt. You change. You learn. You grow.
I remembered how to write
Writing made me famous. Then, these things happened in a matter of months: I got cocky. My sister-in-law died. My great-grandmother died. A friend from high school died. My goals shifted from writing better to chasing followers. Medium changed its algorithm. The company I worked for sold. All of my team got fired or left.
Each day, I wrote less and less. Then, I stopped entirely.
I came back the wrong way. People made $100,000 in a year on Medium and I wanted that. Instead of writing to people, I wrote to an algorithm. This was boring and also stupid because money comes from readers, not algorithms.
During this pandemic, I started reviewing my old work. Younger Todd impressed me. He didn’t care about impressing robots. He wasn’t chasing fans. He said what needed to be said and then finished.
I’m trying to be more like Younger Todd. I’m trying to write the truth, and say “screw you, algorithm.”
I hope you are enjoying it.