A Year in the Basement
A little bit about working in my basement for a year, but also about how we're so close to the other side of this thing.
Here’s the thing. Everyone else is writing their retrospectives about what it felt like on March 11, 2020, when everyone more or less became immediately aware that the pandemic would be bad—but not how bad—and that things would be upended for a while. Some people were very much aware, while others, like myself, thought maybe we’d be able to stay home for two weeks or so and beat it.
“We’re trapped here for three weeks and this is the only way to stay sane when not working,” I said at the time.
Obviously this could not be farther from the truth.
You don’t need to look far to find condemnations of the complete abdication of responsibility on the part of governmental leadership at damn near every level, but starting chiefly from the top. I’ll never be able to forgive Donald Trump or his supporters for the outright hell they put us through, not just as we dealt with the pandemic but also everything else.
I have been in my basement every Monday through Friday for a year, grinding and working and—in part—thriving. Some days are good. Others are bad. All of them are still a blessing, because I know it could be so much worse.
But so far, knock on wood, I have survived. Things are different now, and will continue to be different. I’ll likely get anxious in crowds or enclosed spaces. I took baby steps a few days ago and spent the afternoon with the majority of my team in our office. I only almost freaked out once. It felt good, but it also felt alien. Something has been lost. I hope I can reclaim it.
Required Reading
If I’m at a loss for words at what I should have written this week, the opposite is definitely true for all the things I’ve read. There’s an absolute wealth of great writing out there. Here are some of my favorites:
I can’t do this Joe Berkowitz essay in Fast Company any justice by describing it, but I think you should read it immediately.
In this essay, We Hate You Now, Quinn Norton talks about the raw contempt and rage that they feel toward people who couldn’t be bothered to even pretend not to be selfish; the ones who show naked disregard for others by not wearing masks, going on vacation, and otherwise pretending that nothing is wrong. As much as God may talk about forgiveness, it’s a real son of a bitch to try to muster. Like Norton, I’m not sure it’s something I’ll be up to for some time:
After a year of care and patience and sacrifice in my family, with cases still going on relentlessly around the world, I personally have lost it with you people. I don’t think I’m alone. I’m pretty sure everyone else who just spent a year at home, or only going to an essential job while doing everything they could to prevent transmission have also lost it with you people. We may not know who you are, we may never know, but we hate you now. You did this to us.
In Vaccines, Guilt, and the Burden of the Individual of a Crisis, Cooper Lund writes about the guilt that comes from getting vaccinated because they were in the right place at the right time. It also deals with the failure of the State to adequately prepare for this day. Just like how badly containing the pandemic was fucked up, the beginning stages of attempting to end it were equally bungled:
Since it began almost a year ago, the burden of the pandemic in America has been thrust almost entirely on the individual. It was on all of us to understand the confusing and conflicting public health guidance, to weigh what we are able to do because the government is allowing it versus what we should be doing, and these things were frequently in conflict. The CDC warned everyone to maintain social distancing while state governments opened indoor dining. We were told that we had to stay home, but millions of people had to go to work to stay in their homes. Survival in the biggest crisis any of us had ever experienced felt a lot like trying to use a life preserver with instructions in a mix of English and Polish, which was upsetting enough.
As Lund states at the end of the essay, getting vaccinated isn’t just a matter of protecting yourself. It’s also about the person behind you in line at the supermarket, or the daycare worker caring for your kids.
If you are tabbed to get the shot, take the shot. There is no nobility in sacrificing your opportunity to get vaccinated in favor of some elderly person who may or may not exist. It is much better to accept the jab than to hold out for the hypothetical hero of a healthcare worker who may or may not be around to take the shot in the first place.
In the world of essays not directly related to the pandemic, regular favorite Anne Helen Petersen writes in The Anti-Church of Glennon Doyle about the author’s movement away from the Evangelical movement and into something else entirely. It’s an essay about deconstructing and moving toward secular beliefs, and I found it interesting as a former Youth Group Kid who is pretty much regularly mad at God for the unfathomable personal tragedies I’ve endured and filled with rage at His Church for the erosion of several major interpersonal relationships in the wake of 2016. This portion in particular spoke to me:
Doyle has “gone secular,” then, in part because anti-racism, intersectional feminism, and LGBT+ inclusion are conceived of as secular values. Same with assistance for the poor, universal healthcare, even science or mask-wearing — they have to be conceived of as in opposition to Christian values in order for the logic to hold. What the gospel does or does not teach about any of these policies ultimately matters far less than the fact that they are aligned with Democrats.
That’s honestly all I have this week. Happy Friday. I’ll see you next week, when I plan on talking about personal growth in the aftermath of tragedy. It’ll probably link back to the Berkowitz piece, because it’s so fucking good.