Boating with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Aaaaaaand I’m back!

I took a little vacation. I went up to Washington state with some people and spent a few days staying in a beautiful house on a lake. I had a wonderful time, thank you for asking. I got to ride on a boat. I got to run in the forest. I went to new places and met new people and I only embarrassed myself a little more than the normal amount.

The pandemic is not over, I know, but the scientific miracle that is these vaccines has given us back a version of life that I am incredibly grateful for.

It wasn’t until I arrived back in my empty little apartment on Tuesday night that I realized how debilitatingly lonely I have been. My situation is not unique. Lots of people went through quarantine alone. I was lucky to have family zoom calls and a supportive group of coworkers and friends to talk to, but nothing is quite as life affirming as being in the same room with other people. It is with good reason that some countries consider solitary confinement to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment. 

I’m not going to lie, I cried a little when I got back here. Not because it is terrible here — I’ve made the best of quarantine, I suppose — but because of how much simply being around other people felt like such a warm blanket. It was like walking in out of a bone chilly cold into a room warmed by a fireplace and with chocolate chip cookies baking nearby. I had to go back out into the cold eventually, but the experience of the cold is different after you’ve known warmth.

There is a scene I always think about from the book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It is a book about prisoners in a Stalinist gulag. Each morning they have to pile out of the bunkhouse into the Russian winter and the guards inspect each prisoner to make sure they’re not taking anything illicit out on their work day. Solzhenitsyn goes on for like two pages about Ivan’s strategy for standing in front of the fire in the bunkhouse absorbing as much warmth as he can before he has to step out for inspection. About the way he’s learned to buckle his coat over his body to make sure he takes as much heat with him as possible. The thing that sticks in my mind about it is that Ivan knows that the guards are going to make him open his coat once he lines up outside. He’s not trying to take the warmth with him all day, he knows he’s only going to get to enjoy it for a few brief moments. But he has a whole strategy for it, because he knows that at the very least, those are moments that he can enjoy. Ivan has learned to appreciate things as brief as that.

Now, I am not in a gulag. I did think of Ivan though while I was gone. I so enjoyed being able to be a person in the world again, to talk to people, to drink with people, to play cards with people, to enjoy people again, to laugh until I cried. There is so much life out there still and bit by bit by ever-too-slow bit, it is coming back. And I am eager for its return.

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How to Feel Grateful When You Don't Wanna.

 

I’m in an odd little funk today. I have a bunch of work I need to get done today for my job and I’m feeling a little weird about it. Tomorrow night I will begin my first post-Quarantine trip and I am very excited about that! But there is this pile of work between me and that.

Interestingly, this might be one of the first real “vacations” I have taken as a professional and grown up person that is specifically happening because I need some time to chill the fuck out away from work. Most of the times I have taken vacations they occurred because there was someplace I wanted to go or an adventure I wanted to have. This is that too. This trip basically fell into my lap (a friend put it together), but I was going to take some time off no matter what. My boss even told me recently that if I didn’t use some vacation days, she’d make me. That was very nice of her.

I’ve explained to people before that I am not a workaholic. In fact I’m the opposite; I’m just doing what I have to do to do my job well. Lately that has just required a lot. The stress of it kind of ruined my weekend too, but that is a longer story.

Perhaps it is because I know that tomorrow I’ll get to check out that today already feels like such a slog. I don’t like feeling this way at the start of the day. 

But we carry on, right?

Attitude matters, not to get all self-help-y on you. Sit up straight. Smile. Grit your teeth and get your nose to that grindstone. 

All the minimalists that I follow always eventually get around to talking about what you should do AFTER you have purged all of your stuff, because it isn’t really about the stuff, it is about the life you are trying to make for yourself, and eventually they get around to gratitude. About how important it is for people to recognize how much they have in their lives and to feel grateful about it all. I’ve been trying to do that more. Sure, my job is hard, but I am happy to have a job. Yesterday I drove down to the beach for no reason and sat on a log as the sun was sinking into the sea and I just watched the way the light played on the water and it was a nice and peaceful moment and I’m thankful that I got to have it. I have people in my life and tomorrow I get to take a trip with them. I have a place to stay and people who will welcome me. I feel gratitude for all of that. Or, I’m trying to feel it, at least. I’m not good at this part yet, but I’m working on it.

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An Airstream on the Beach.

 

This will have to be a short post. I have kind of a big day at work today (tomorrow as well) and I will need to go log in a little early. There is a silver lining though, after tomorrow I should be able to downshift into a more reasonable workload. I may even get crazy and take a day off! We’ll see. A lot depends on how these couple of days go.

Yesterday I was talking to my family (on our weekly Zoom call) and said that although I would like to take a couple days off and take a little trip at the beginning of May (which will be two weeks after my second shot), it has been hard to come up with somewhere relatively nearby to go to. See, since I like on the central coast of California, why would I want to go anywhere else???

What I really want is to hop a flight to anywhere with just a backpack, and spend a couple days wandering around and looking at the world, but I don’t think I’m quite in the right head space yet for a non-essential flight, so I’ve been doing what I do and looking at Google Earth and trying to find a weird place I can drive to. No luck yet, I haven’t settled on anything. What I really want is to rent a nice Airstream sitting on a beach, but I have yet to find exactly that.

Maybe today during the not super busy parts of my day, I’ll make a list (I love lists) about what I would like to do with a couple of free days. I think that what I really miss is being around people, but we are not yet at a point where that is quite back to normal yet. I would really like a good hotel bar, but it doesn’t seem like we are quite there yet either.

I heard this morning that half of all Americans over 18 have gotten at least one vaccination, which makes me very happy. A rare good bit of news. I suspect that getting the remaining half of people vaccinated will take much much longer, but I also hope I’m wrong.

I’m hoping that without too much trouble we can start to reach some of those “herd immunity” thresholds, because that’s really when we can hop back on planes and go to bars and concerts and museums. That will be when we can meet strangers and have a drink and tell big fish stories in airport bars. I’ve said before that when we come out the end of the tunnel on this whole thing, my personal clock resets to when I’d only lived here 5 months and so I have to begin again the work of meeting people and making friends and building a life. I’m not entirely sure if I am looking forward to that work, but I’d like to go ahead and get started on it already.

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