Progress Can Look Like So Many Things That Don´t Look Like It

A one-year anniversary of my socially acceptable pajama pants

One year ago, I bought myself a pajama. A nice, two-piece made of viscose from Marks and Spencer.

The trousers are wide-leg, held at the hips with a rubber band. The top has adjustable straps and is embroidered with fine lace. It´s not the fanciest, but the pants are almost socially acceptable.

Up to then, I had never bought myself a pajama ever. The few times I had put effort and some money into buying nightwear, it ended up hidden in the back of my wardrobe under my socks and sports bras.

But this week marks the one-year anniversary of being stuck at home and the pajama pants have become the epitome of what the pandemic has made of my life. They are socially acceptable while just being what they are — pajamas.

And I wished I could say that what I learned this year would be something wise or deep or at least practical. But I just cant. I cant see anything some stoic emperor wrote some two thousand years ago anymore. I still don’t do yoga regularly, haven’t started an online business for masks or hand-sanitizer, and still cant bake sourdough.

Like a grim birthday card, we are reminded that it’s been one year since we started stacking every free corner in the supermarket with noodles and instant mash, sharing our documentation of the empty shelves where once toilet paper has been and moving back home to our parents.

And if there’s one reason we don’t learn from history, I think this is why: this year’s progress does not look like progress at all.

If anything, this year looks like a major setback.

Since March, I watched one part after the other of my neatly ordered life dissolve into entropy.

I stopped waking up at 5.30. Then, I stopped fasting 16 hours a day. I stopped dressing, washing my hair, and reading. I stopped writing, then started again. My OCD came back and so did my acne. I started worrying (more), going for walks, and drinking cold coffee.

And I started wearing my pajama pants to shopping for groceries and dentist appointments. I started wearing them on my sad little walks around the neighborhood. I started wearing them on the weekends around my boyfriend and while watching my online lectures.

At a closer look, however, what felt like one step backward after another might offer a much more valuable, much more subtle lesson.

I got back all my problems that never fully went away

The whole pandemic has shown me what didn´t work.

All the habits I had, all the routines that supported my goals — when they broke away everything got a bit harder. Getting in my steps and leaving the house is not so easy when I don’t have to leave the house — and walk to the station and back two times a day. Eating healthy is not as easy when I stopped preparing my lunch for the next day every evening and there are cookies in the cupboard whenever I pass it. Fasting is not as easy when I stopped having lectures until lunchtime. Staying sane is not easy without busying myself with daily outfit choices, register when to return my books, and charging my phone each night.

This year, I learned that progress does not always look like getting your life together but more like seeing everything crumble that was not bulletproof in the first place.

And I think we pay too little attention to that. That’s a real lesson. A real epiphany.

This year has destroyed my whole conception of what progress looks like — and what I thought it had to look like

Up to now, I thought progress looked like it was shown in the movies.

It was what I had aimed for before. Reading more on the train. Running a little further. Talking a bit slower, being a bit braver, writing a bit bolder. Making better notes, better conversations, better eggs.

Not that my life was orderly before the pandemic — but it was much easier to pretend.

And this is what differentiates this year from those before. Because I can’t measure this year’s progress in shiny accomplishments or deep life-lessons.

Instead, I can measure it in my flaws pointed out, the deep-seated problems unearthed, the quick-fixes dissolved, and the band-aids loosened.

Final words

What this year has taught me is that progress does not look linear. It does not even look shiny. It often looks more like discovering another problem, becoming aware of how unwell and unsmart and unresolved we all are.

It was an uncomfortable year and I wished to hell everyone who wrote another article on becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable. Because, hell, we don’t even have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. We just have to do it. Bear it, hold it together. Spend another month inside going on stupid little walks. Fighting our daily battles against TikTok distractions and the news eating our souls.

Watching our progress in not eating chocolate spread with a spoon every time we enter the kitchen. Count how many days in a row we take a shower. One load after the other, we do the laundry. Write another page, delete it, write it again.

And the biggest lesson is that we can all do it in pajama pants. Nobody cares. Ironed trousers were all along a facade for a well-ordered life. It’s not the pajama that makes our lives messed up — we just need them to admit that.

It’s march again — and what the past 12 months have taught me is that it’s not about getting our lives together as much as it is about discovering how little we had our lives together all along.

If there is one thing this year has taught me is that progress can look like so many things that don´t look like it.