How to thrive during a global pandemic

Or: what does thriving mean anyway?

Throughout these five-going-on-six months of quarantine, my sister Carrie and I have been having long phone conversations about how we’re doing, how we’re coping, and how weird it is that we’ve been feeling mostly good when seemingly everyone else outside of Asia and maybe Germany is feeling terrible. Okay, maybe “good” is too strong a word to be applied to anything in 2020, but we both definitely seemed to be more comfortable in quarantine than many people. Lately, however, we’ve both confronted some transitions that threw our quarantine routines (quaroutines?) for a loop and destabilized our cozy pandemic narratives along with them. So we chatted about it.

Lizzie: Maybe we could start with a basic outline of your pandemic life so far. 

Carrie: It’s had its twists and turns! When the pandemic “started,” whatever that means (I’ll take it to be mid-March or so), I was in a very transitional place, going back and forth between our parents’ house and my girlfriend’s apartment, which are a little over an hour away from each other. Keely and I moved cross-country toward the end of last year, and she’s since started law school, but I was still in the process of finding a job and figuring out what life was going to look like. And then bam, there’s this whole new set of terrifying parameters to consider. I remember a friend living in northern California called me in a panic the day their stay at home order came down, and I was talking him through it, and then lo and behold a week or so later, same thing in Los Angeles. I was sitting at our parents’ kitchen table when the order came through here, after which I immediately called Keely and said “I think it’s time we choose where to hunker down.” That ended up being our parents’ house for the first few months, because no one really knew what was going on at that point, and there was a) more space out there, b) a strong case to be made for helping out with things like grocery shopping, and c) a sense of security that comes with being a family unit, rather than just two of you together. So we were pretty much all there as a bubble from mid-March to mid-July. Since then, Keely and I have moved into our own place, which was its own process (not as harrowing as I thought it would be, pandemic-wise) and we’ve been extremely locked down here since then. Aside from being very bored and very overheated (this heat wave is no joke), we’re both doing well. I actually think that being in a life transition prior to all this happening ended up helping me out, because it wasn't like I’d had everything all set and then suddenly it all crumbled around me—I was still in search of what my life was going to look like, and…turns out it’s this! I say that knowing that the supports and resources I have, whether those be personal or financial, are really the linchpin here; if I were out here doing this on my own, or not coming from a place of economic security, I would not be feeling as good about the transition.

Lizzie: Yes, that’s obviously the big key to my experience as well. My job as a science journalist was the opposite of imperiled by the pandemic, and I already worked from home, as did [my husband] Luckez. So logistically quarantine wasn’t that big of an adjustment, and while obviously I have abstract worries about “the economy” and “media” and “the future of my job,” we have the tremendous privilege of economic security for now. As for my pandemic experience, I’ve been in my same apartment in Mexico City the whole time. Just by chance, I didn’t have a lot of plans for this year that were disrupted by the pandemic and quarantine. I was already kind of planning on staying home and writing as much as possible because I really wanted to finish my book proposal. And that’s what I’ve done, just with this horrible backdrop of global disaster.

Carrie: Y’know, that. Haha.

Lizzie: Yeah, just that. What has your emotional journey been, and where have you landed lately?

Carrie: I’d like to think that I have a unique perspective on this question, because I’ve been housebound before. In childhood and at the start of college, I had some major surgeries that laid me up for months—and honestly, my day-to-day circumstances during that time felt way worse than now, in a lot of ways. Relearning how to walk, coming on and off of pain medication, only lying on my stomach for months because everything else was too painful…yeah, that’ll put all this in a weird perspective, haha. So pretty early on in the pandemic, when it became clear that it was stay at home or bust, I sort of channeled the skills I’d honed during those times in my life. Understanding “okay, this is the scope of my world right now, and so I have to make the best of it,” and taking the small wins that come as part of that mindset. It’s very much in line with your philosophy of the Achievable Goal. And I think being able to go to that place has been extremely helpful, just this well of past experiences to draw on and the knowledge that I can make it through something like this because, in a way, I have before. Of course, that’s meant a lot of conscious boundaries around things like news consumption; I learned the hard way early on that no amount of childhood-trauma coping mechanisms will save you from the COVID news rabbit hole, you gotta do that yourself. I’ve largely stuck to local news, meaning LA-centric, as a way of not totally spinning out, and that worked out well. That being said, I know I was “thriving” a lot more in the early days than I am now. That’s not a coincidence; early on, having our parents around helped a lot, even if they sometimes drove me nuts (sorry Mom and Dad, we love you). Just having four people instead of two in your pod really makes a difference. Plus, yes, it is nice to be able to lean into familial support during a global crisis! And while you and I are both still doing that now, just in a different way, it did feel…safer? I guess? When we were all together. Even though that’s an illusion. I get why my brain made that up. I don’t even think safer is the right word, but that’s all that I’m coming up with. Now, I am definitely better off than I would have imagined by this point — I’ve been working from home, doing everyone’s favorite nebulous job, “consulting,” which is very pandemic-friendly. And I'm still drawing on all those skills from the past. But the cabin fever has started to set in a little bit by now.

Lizzie: Ah yes the cabin fever. I am familiar. Like you, I am still very, very locked down, and I don’t think either of us plans on changing that anytime soon. Among the privileges I consider myself lucky to have is a very high tolerance for alone time, being inside, and a lack of in-person socializing. I certainly don’t have the medically housebound experience you can draw on, but I am temperamentally suited to quarantine in a way I am very grateful for.  

Carrie: Yes, a trait we share! Score one for genetics, maybe.

Lizzie: Introversion for the win!

Carrie: Truly.

Lizzie: For me, the pandemic has had at least two distinct phases, and I think I am entering a third. 1. The Beginning, during which I felt like I was going to explode out of my skin every single minute. This was the phase when I felt driven to, you know, do my job and write about the pandemic in some way. I had no boundaries around my work time, and I just powered through until I finished what I thought of as My Contribution, a feature about the intersection of inequality and past pandemics. That came out in mid-May. Then, 2. The Burrowing, I guess I’ll call it. This is when I realized I couldn’t take knowing so much and being so attuned to an outside world that was increasingly dire but was also, of course, entirely out of my control. This is when I flipped the switch to Forever Quarantine, and I haven’t looked back from that. At the height of the Burrowing, I was working every day on my book proposal but not for that many hours a day. I loved it so much. I had momentum, driven by an internal fire rather than external obligations, and I also felt like there was a reason I was doing *gestures wildly* all this that wasn't just “I’m trapped in a story I cannot control.” Now that that project is over, at least in the form I was working on, I can feel that I’m starting a new phase, but I’m not sure what it is yet. I’m taking two weeks of “vacation” to figure it out.

Carrie: And that is so important! We’ve talked so much about your vacation in the lead-up to it actually happening, haha. What does it mean to “take a vacation,” now and anytime, really, and how to say no to things.

Lizzie: I have said no to a lot of things recently, and I am very glad I did.

Carrie: I have to say I’m very proud of you for sticking to that. It’s never easy, and especially now, when it can feel like if you say no, people are like…“well, what else are you doing?”

Lizzie: What else am I doing indeed. But now that there’s no way to discharge the energy of life milestones and transitions in the outside world, I find that I have to create the space inside myself. It takes longer than I think it will. 

Carrie: That’s a good way to put it. And now that you say that, I’m realizing that may be part of why this new phase, the “we’re in our own apartment and going forward, it’s…just this!” feels less stable and Totally Fine for me than the beginning did. Because at that point, it didn’t feel like real life, in some ways. It felt like a temporary response to a scary, but temporary, time. And now, it’s clearly not temporary—it never was, we just made that up, but anyway—and the ups and downs of actual life have started to be part of the experience. Like, you have some huge achievements to celebrate! I have a birthday coming up! But where does that go? When there wasn’t that emotional topography to consider, it felt a lot easier, at least to me. Does that resonate with you?

Lizzie: Definitely. In this essay we both loved, the author talks about “snapp[ing] almost immediately into a kind of hibernation mode.” I don’t know if I got there immediately, but the hibernation metaphor really resonates. I feel like I put everything that had suddenly switched from Normal to Impossible (going to a restaurant, hugging a friend, traveling to a new place) into a box that I carefully packed away. One day I’ll be able to unpack it again, but not yet. But yes, as this drags on, I do wonder if I put too many things in the box.

Carrie: Right! Yes. Same here. And I’ve thought about that essay every day since you sent it to me.

Lizzie: Our lives are not actually paused. They are fully happening, just in this new way.

Carrie: Yes. And I realize I’ve contradicted myself—“oh, this is so much easier for me because I have a lot of experience in this area” and “oh, this is harder than I thought it would be by now.” But part of the process, at this stage, has been recognizing that those things are both true, and they both have to be! That there’s a pretty kaleidoscopic range of emotions to work through here, and they’re all going to show up, no matter how hard you taped down the lid on that box. I did the same thing at the beginning; turns out that’s a very effective short-to-medium-term strategy, but less completely tenable for the long haul.

Lizzie: What I don’t think will change as I transition to however I feel next is what I like to think of radical acceptance, a term I’m positive I’ve stolen from somewhere and am perhaps inappropriately applying to this experience, but whatever. I do not think about this being over. I have let go of what I thought any future would be like. For a while that felt like the same thing as pressing pause, but I think it’s different. It’s, as you said about being housebound, an acceptance of your new limits and a determination to make the best of what you can do inside those constraints. Rather than wasting any energy trying to fight the constraints or figuring out how to test their boundaries or whatever. 

Carrie: Yes! Looking for loopholes isn’t how you should be spending your time.

Lizzie: I have been so grateful I already went to therapy to learn about recognizing what I can and cannot control in any given situation, that’s for sure. 

Carrie: SERIOUSLY. Shout out to my therapists past, turns out you really did your jobs. For me, the guiding light has become the fine art of undercommitment. Rather than being in full hustle mode, which I think is an extension of the “when this is over” mindset (“I’m going to MAKE it be over” or “I MUST be the same way I’ve always been”), I’m relishing the opportunity to pare down, whether that be with the number of clients I take on, what I spend my money on, or how I spend my time in general. I’m very intentionally NOT filling up my days with constant stimuli. Quality over quantity feels like an oversimplification, but that’s certainly part of it. Like, no, more is not more. And not hoping for more, instead making do with what’s here and only taking on new responsibilities very intentionally, has been a sanity saver. I think part of why it feels good is because I went through an extremely intense period of professional and emotional burnout last year, and in some ways had never been so miserable in my life. I had to do a lot of heavy lifting (therapy again!) to realize why that wasn’t working, and what about it didn’t feel right. And so now, rather than apply that old “keep grinding” mindset to this experience, I’ve tried to consciously stop and not just say yes to every new thing, to make this feel like a “normal time” through sheer force of will.

Lizzie: So wise. “Keep grinding” definitely crept back into my life toward the very end of my proposal work, when I also found myself juggling some faster magazine writing, and I’m trying to root it back out.

Carrie: It’s a sneaky bitch! You’re not alone. I have to give credit where it’s due, these are not my original ideas by any means. Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry is the best at unraveling “grind culture.”

Lizzie: The Nap Ministry! I love that.

Carrie: Oh it’s phenomenal, my number one pandemic mental health recommendation. Go follow her now.

Lizzie: Thank you, I will! [Edited to add: I loved this post in particular.] I want to acknowledge a trap that a lot of “mindfulness” or “power of positive thinking” bullshit falls into—it can’t solve everything, or even most things. Many people have many quarantine challenges that positive thinking will do absolutely nothing to solve—unemployment and no child care chief among them. I think it’s important to say that neither of us have kids.

Carrie: Absolutely. And we are both white, which is another very specific vantage point to be coming from here. It’s safe to say our experiences are not universally applicable, nor should they be held up as the standard.

Lizzie: Yes. Mindfulness will not solve systemic racism either. But I do think that not recognizing your limits, or purposely blowing past them, will almost universally not make your life better. And in this specific time, when our limits are perhaps more obvious and more frustrating than they’ve ever been, not respecting them is a recipe for deep unhappiness.

Carrie: Yes! And I guess in some ways that feels like the big spoiler: that’s ALWAYS been true! Surprise! COVID: exposing what has always been true.

Lizzie: I was typing almost the exact same thing.

Carrie: I went into our conversation wondering what “pandemic thriving” really means, and talking with you helped me figure it out: 1) there is no perfect definition and 2) it’s different than I assumed. At the start, I thought thriving meant, “I am totally nailing this pandemic because of these specific habits and behaviors that will carry me through,” but as time has passed and you and I have had a chance to talk it out, I’ve realized that thriving under these circumstances is much more about how you respond to both change and a total lack thereof. It’s knowing that even if your days look exactly the same from the outside, you can adapt to a million different internal landscapes and understand them as part of the process rather than debilitating setbacks. Thriving is not a set of rules (though to be clear: WEAR A MASK, STAY HOME, LISTEN TO SCIENCE); it’s knowing how to respond when the “tips and tricks” aren’t enough.