.SOMETIMES RAW.

My relationship with money was always pretty healthy. I know what I earn, I know what I can spend and I don’t live beyond my means. I did not have a job in 2019 and just started to work in January 2020. I survived with writing gigs, and help from friends and family. There were those times when I bought my son the food he wanted/needed and sometimes I ate nothing for dinner. Same for clothing. I just made sure he had everything he needed. I came second – holding everything together.

Before quarantine time, I would say I did spend quite some money. We needed furniture after the big move to Vienna. And we explored. Museums, bookstores, you name it. Since I have a very minimalistic approach to clothes, this is never an issue. Books are a different story. I used to buy a lot of books but actually read them all.

Since Corona, budgeting has been an act of self-care, as well as an act of will. It has taken me weeks to unlearn that I cannot browse through a bookstore. And the impulse book-free-fall from “add to cart” to “purchase” was never my thing. In some cases, I have stumbled, yet I have learned to flex my willpower like a muscle, propelled by the conversation around sustainability and excess. But, interestingly, it has never felt easier than now. This is my personal experience, so I will make that very clear before I say the following: I have never wanted “stuff” in my life less than I do right now. I cleaned my entire apartment, got rid of clothes (items I haven’t worn in a long time and won’t wear again), and stuff I wanted to sort through for a long time to realize how little I actually need. Maybe this is also because a global disaster has made me realize what is most important to me is not the things in my closet, my books and anything materialistic, but the connections I have with the people I love.

Is this feeling going to last? If I have learned anything about this time period, it is that these sentiments are subject to change. In a few weeks, when the temperature climbs up even more and warm breezes fill my apartment, maybe I will start having the itch to really buy that dress I saw window shopping yesterday, as opposed to thinking, hey, I already have something in my closet that can fit that need. Deep inside, I know myself so well. I will buy a book instead.

Since quarantine has started (Friday, March 13th in Austria), I have bought for my son and I: two puzzles, Lego, a basketball, a scooter, and food. He desperately needs sneakers that I won’t order online because he has to try them on. The puzzles and Lego were a joint decision because we both love it. It brings us joy, madness, and everything in between. It felt strange to be much more excited by these small purchases than I might normally be. We don’t need anything else, really. Which is an awesome feeling!

Everything else feels oddly like play. The “homeschooling”, gathering groceries for the week, rationing out new books while marking time with beverage habits.

Staying home feels like playing house. It is still strange, that in this time, my home suddenly feels full of charades. It might be also that we are slowly losing our minds. My son and I dressed up for dinner a couple of days ago saying we are taking each other out. Oh, he even prepared dinner – a pizza from scratch all by himself. There are half-finished Lego and maze-projects everywhere. My son moves from game to game to game, seemingly less and less interested in the “real world” and more and more in his imagined one. He does not want to go back to school. He loves it at home. He just misses his friends. “Mommy, you can be my teacher”, he said while I sighed and rolled my eyes.

I am the same. I really miss my friends and family. Fiction is absorbing me in a way it hasn’t in years. I find myself thinking about the characters the way I think about my friends, imagining their responses to things. I am interested in my appetite for play in the face of this lockdown and the unfolding dread that has caused it. Is this how children feel all the time? Is their capacity for fantasy partly derived from their limited freedom and the giant unknown? Are games a sort of response to fear and absurdity? Is it just simply that imagination is a lifeline or more complicated than that? All I know is that the ridiculousness in this time is fueling me, and I am climbing to it. In my experience, where adults dismay and panic, children often adapt and accept, which leaves room for frivolity. And this frivolity, unlike its adult counterparts, does not attempt to make what is awful into what is good. Children are surprised by neither joy nor pain. There are sad things and there are happy things. They don’t rule each other out or even overcome one another. They both simply exist. In a New York Times article a couple of weeks ago, Alain De Botton wrote about the coronavirus through the lens of Camus’s The Plague. He wrote: “recognize the absurd should lead us not to despair, but to a tragicomic redemption, a softening of the heart, a turning away from judgment and moralizing to joy and gratitude.” I think I am watching my child do precisely this. He is currently playing a game in which he is running from something scary and terrible. He expresses true fear and hides in his cave he built with huge cartons, blankets, and couch cushions. But then, he is laughing. After fear, he knows, comes a certain release.

Maybe, by now, you’ve already been bombarded by articles on how to optimize your days during the time of the Corona pandemic. Perhaps, by now, you’ve already been bombarded by the counter-arguments to ignore all the productivity garbage. Maybe, by now, you are wrestling with the inconsistency of it all. I don’t know how you feel but I do know that there is not one creative process that suits us all. There is no one way to navigate a pandemic. In this time of collective insanity, instead of sharing a prescription, I want to entertain and invite you in so we can all learn from each other.

I woke up around 6 am this morning, which is typical of a weekday morning. Various thoughts of inadequacy trailed through my head in a silhouette, causing me to acknowledge how flimsy and overexposed and trivial I have been feeling. As I moved from quarantine week 4 to 5, survived the weirdest Easter in years, I feel, I don’t know, disassociated from the present state of hunger, deprivation, loss, catastrophe and, in some way, myself. Is this how sociopaths feel? It is the mood fluctuations, I think. At times, I find myself incredibly appreciative of the intimate time of being with my special people. I am also very proud to announce that I know the entire store inventory of the local grocery stores. And how much shit costs. I could start working there. Like now.

But then at other times, I am like: ENOUGH WITH THIS S***! WHEN WILL IT BE OVER? If I hear my son scream and yell, or experience his refusal to draw another picture or build another marble maze, I am going to knock myself unconscious just to escape. And then, I am also like: I want to go out. Dress up. I got refunded for the opera tickets that I purchased for my son and I since it is, you guessed it, CANCELLED. I want to feel normal. Dressing up makes me feel normal. Getting ready for work makes me feel normal. And, these days, I have this urge to write at 6.30 am. And then after I published my words, sometimes I am fine. But other times, I am just like, WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? And then I stop myself and ask who is asking the question and who the you to which I refer is? And that really confuses me, so I revert back to the question and try to understand why I am having this unsettling reaction to an effort that seemed good and honest and pure just moments earlier.

The best I have come up with is the broad spectrum of feelings that punctuate time always, but especially in quarantine. The immediacy of the disparity of the moods that occur in rapid succession, seemingly for no reason beyond the physical motionlessness of my days. Mostly, I cling to writing and meditation and being calm because I cannot see how indulging the inflammatory anger, irritating frustration, depressive discouragement, desperate sadness, and worry can be channeling toward anything productive without it.

Productivity can mean a lot of things. For the purpose of this article, I guess I am talking about what I need to do to pass the days without feeling like I am floating in space, or getting sucked into a vortex of insignificance. What comprises what you need to do, by the way, is going to vary a shit ton from person to person and we may not always have the same answer. One day I might clean, do laundry, cook (always cooking and having thoughts about buying food), but this is all in order to do the same thing: prove my worthiness. Prove that I have tasks to do. I write a to-do list every day with things such as: do laundry, clean kitchen, Yoga, go for a long walk, read, entertain and educate my son that I strikethrough like a pro once accomplished.

For me, there seem to be two schools of thought on how to pass this quarantine. I can either make the most of it or go easy on myself. But I say those thoughts aren’t binary, I don’t have to pick one. In fact, I cannot pick one. I think we all have to do both to a degree. But before we can, we must first define what making the most of it really means. And we can only do this practically if we go easy on ourselves about it. I think. Do I sound preachy? Have you heard of the concepts of impermanence? It was hard for me, or should I say almost impossible, to understand that so many things that I love and depend on are only temporary. But these days, I realize a deep acceptance of these concepts, there will still be a few things that always seem a bit too temporary. I don’t know if it is absurd that I am somewhat comforted by the notion that everyone is connected by the same, singular dilemma at the same, singular time. We can all learn from each other about how our days are changing, where we might be stuck, and remember we are all figuring it out for the first time. To lighten things up, here are some things that make me happy.

That first cup of coffee.

The honeymoon phase of a new relationship. The honeymoon phase never has to be over by the way. Just always communicate. This is the simplest tool to prevent misunderstandings and future fights.

Taking a bath and my bathwater being at the right temperature.

Kisses & hugs.

Afternoon naps on a rainy day. Listening to the rain.

Being in nature.

Planting things and gardening.

Getting a package or a handwritten letter.

Calling my parents.

Seeing someone’s face light up after giving them a compliment.

Snuggling up and reading in bed.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez is one of my favorite books and movies of all time. If you enjoy a beautifully written love story, read this book. Why? Because you have T.I.M.E. Lots of it. And love is great.

How is your love life these days? Is it like in the Movie Ghost and this particular scene with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze?

This pandemic is remodeling our society like it is clay spinning on the axis of a pottery wheel. I wonder what it is like to be a therapist/couple counselor these days. The divorce rates are probably rising. Will there be a Corona-Baby-Boom in January 2021? Will therapists be more in demand than usual? How have their routines changed? Or, do you want to kill your husband/wife or partner at this point? Does your husband’s cereal chewing so loudly in the next room bother you that you are thinking about this Misery Scene being Kathy Bates?

If one thing is for certain, it is that during this curious and trying time, love is being both challenged and affirmed. While some relationships have taken a step forward, new couples choose to isolate together, some decided to spend quarantine alone, some couples built and some fell deeply in love, while others have taken a different route. Maybe you find yourself in an inflammatory situation. Maybe you are at the edge of a divorce. Since the lockdown was initiated, divorce rates in China have soared. In the Xian Province alone, the number of requests was so high, they maxed out the number of appointments at government offices. I don’t know the numbers in Austria, Vienna but I know of a couple of friends who are struggling in their relationships as well.

As John Lennon famously said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” I had plans! We all had so many plans. Then life happened. And continues to happen, albeit in an unrecognizable way. At this point for me, all this isolation has made for very deep and interesting conversations. Sometimes it feels like if people have moved past small talk and right into real talk. And this is what happened to me, too. Somehow, this has made me connect with people more than I did previously.  There is nothing quite like a crisis to make you feel connected and nothing like invisible cells, transferred from person to person, to prove just how interconnected we truly are.

For me, perhaps the biggest show of love has been all the conversations with my friend. They keep me sane. They keep me happy. He keeps me sane. He keeps me happy. As the world changes rapidly inside and out, this much has become clear: in many ways, large and small, love is all around. And I can feel it.

And for those moments when I am stuck cleaning up dishes from the millionth at-home meal or when I am listening to myself cracking open pistachio after pistachio, or wondering when I will see and hug my parents again, there is always a shift in perspective. Because as the memes say, we aren’t stuck inside, we are safe inside. And that isn’t so bad, after all. In the meantime, I just keep cracking those pistachios. #eyeroll

Corona makes me appreciate and love to be on this planet. The earth is a living, breathing thing and I don’t think we have really respected that. Now the earth seems to say: stop, think about what you’ve done and come back with a new plan of action. How many things do we really have to do in a single day? How much do we really need? I bet we’re all rethinking things which will make us stronger. Which maybe make us appreciate or love each other more? Also, we are debunking the myth that real work happens in an office or at business meetings.

It is amazing how, a couple of weeks ago, I was concerned about things like buying a more comfortable reading chair. This seems both hilariously naïve and also quite prescient considering the amount of time I now spend in this chair. I always enjoyed being home, and am actually oddly suited to this current situation. It is really not so bad. Just some days. I am not alone after all. Otherwise, I have been thinking about health, togetherness, and maintaining stability. And love. With someone who likes Love in the Time of Cholera as much as I do.