Lost in Place
When you thrive out in the world, in the places you love, that coping strategy is impossible to recreate right now. There isn’t an app for smiling at a stranger across a crowded cafe, or for the way your dress flutters against your legs on a perfect spring day. No amount of control or self care or intention can account for a need for something that is real and physical and palpable. Here we look at how the stay in place orders are starting to affect our mental health even as we look for silver linings.
I am failing at Lockdown.
A friend reminded me that the idea is just to not die and, in that respect, I’m killing it.
But in all the other ways, I do not have this. We are not in this together. Because the zoom call you can’t attend, it’s in my head. And in there, the lockdown is tight, and restrictive, and sucking the breath out of my days.
I am a fixer. I make all the things happen. I do not pause. I don’t play. I get things done. I’m an A++ type (read Anxiety in those As) though I hide it with whimsy and pretty dresses. I know my tendency to fall. That for this pandemic I need to build fortresses around myself.
It was with this mindset that I approached the stay at home order here in California now 7 weeks ago.
I printed out all the things: a cute chart for more connection and laughter and peace and quiet. A list of 100 things to do with kids during Coroanvirus Quarantine and Social Distancing. Ideas for science experiments from esteemed institutions. And homeschooling tips sent to my inbox every Monday that would bring hands-on project-based learning into our current world of google-classroom and worksheets.
I made all the schedules: each child had a whiteboard that we’d look at each day. My son’s would be mostly Maths, which he’d inevitably swap out for reading Harry Potter as he races through all 7 books. My daughters would have hearts and stars and she’d cross out half each morning before hiding under the table.
I even had my own: A morning routine starting at 5.30 to get me through before the kids woke up. To give me the self-care that I’m told I need.
My husband and I had one: dividing up our nights so that each has a turn to binge-watch crappy TV, and each has a turn to watch Disney+ with our kids. We even added nights without alcohol, cause that bit wasn’t going so well.
I made the house fun: I tipped out all the Lego that we own and made a Lego mountain in one of the rooms. My son is a fanatic, his eyes sparkled at the disarray. We turned a bedroom into a disco so that we could boogie unashamedly with glow-up balloons and flashing torches. I’m thinking of buying a disco ball. We even made an obstacle course with marshmallows: one station = marshmallow fight, one station = build a marshmallow tower, one station = marshmallow catch, one station = find the marshmallows. You can eat them at the end but no one wants to.
We did all the things: watched the latest funny video doing the rounds, felt that pang during The Great Realisation, visited the feeding times of sea otters, had Michelle Obama or an astronaut or Josh Gad read to us, got drawing lessons from Mo Willems and science from Mark Rober, visited mud volcanos and geysers, tried the Louvre.
I downloaded all the apps: Plant Nanny for enough water, Couch to 5K for exercise, Headspace for Meditation. I subscribed to Luminary and to Audible, to courses on creativity and small business skills. My phone tethers me now as much as any lockdown requirements.
Then I played it out with all these new tools. I did all the things thinking I was immune. I added in time for myself I haven’t had in years because no-one is now commuting or waking up to go to school. I made space for meditation and running and interesting podcasts because keeping me together matters in this house. I am its heart; I need to stay whole.
And to this once-therapist-in-training it’s obvious what I was trying to do: I was taking back the control I lost when my kids’ school closed. When my writing days became homeschooling ones. When I longed to see friends who lived so, so close, but I wasn’t allowed near. When our plans for the great move home, ended, and we sat in the not-knowing while advice came in harder and the news shifted. As disappointments accumulated and we tried to be ok, to model resilience and gratitude and love for our children.
My dentist sent a note, dated April, saying I hadn’t visited for a while. Maybe he should remove me from his client list.
I missed a kid’s birthday on Zoom.
Online traffic for the guide I write started to go down as those places shuttered.
I forgot to cancel subscriptions.
I stepped on the Lego now all over the floor.
Food deliveries started costing more because you know snacks and panic.
I put on weight, I burnt the bread, my drawings are awful.
I hated the weekly wave-thru at my kids’ school though I beamed and smiled through the car window.
I started to resent neighbors excelling at everything chalk. My kids refused to draw the rainbows.
I started to fail Lockdown.
And there are no strategies that I haven’t turned to. There’s no advice you need to give me. Because what I need is to get out of my head and for me, that means getting out of here. Over the years I have learned the antidote to my anxiety. I know enough of where to go when I inevitably fail at life: I recharge with other people, I come alive in cafes, I need bookstores and museums to feel things. I need to walk down streets with strangers, to be in sunlight as the blinds at home start to close for the summer months.
I know that I haven’t died and that is the only success I should be looking to at the moment. I know that I should be grateful that my husband has a job. I know that I shouldn’t feel these things. I know there are silver linings, and a planet healing, and priorities being reset. I know the good, I feel it too. I can equally write a piece with all that is wonderful and positive and needed as a consequence of this pandemic. I can tell you a hundred things I’ve experienced the last weeks that have been life-affirming. And I know all this as I die quietly inside.
Imaginary Places
This week we decided to pull together some of our favorite imaginary places (from TV shows, plays, movies and books.) We found that it was quite fun to imagine where we’d love to spend our time, if reality weren’t a confine.
We’ve spent the last year and a half devoting ourselves to finding the places in the world that help to support us as people.
We’ve defined categories representing our most basic needs for happiness and connection and belonging. We’ve categorized and consolidated, gained traction and lost momentum, burnt out and forged on. Eventually, we found our stride and mapped out our plans. You might be able to imagine, then, our surprise (read: panic) when the world shut down and “going places” was, suddenly, no longer a thing.
Instead of wallowing in self pity or questioning our entire lives, or throwing in the towel, we’ve pivoted, temporarily resetting our path and redefining our focus. (You can head here to see all of our prompts for surviving while Lost At Home or here to check out the tote bags we created to support struggling small businesses.) If we’re being honest though, the thing we miss more than anything is finding the most magical places for people.
So this week, we decided, instead, to pull together some of our favorite imaginary places (from TV shows, plays, movies and books.) We found that it was quite fun to imagine where we’d love to spend our time, if reality weren’t a confine.
We hope this list inspires you! And if it does, we have a challenge for you. Your prompt this week is to dream up your own imaginary place, sketch it out, write a story. Maybe when we come out of this, you could aim to stretch that imagination into the actual, and make that place real.
In the mean time, here’s a look at the places we’re visiting via Netflix binges and late night read-a-thons.
Our Favorite Imaginary Places
Scrappy adventures at home
This weekend we brought the outside world indoors. Now we’re trying to bring the magic of the undomestic world home.
In a creative outburst (or desperation on day 40 of lockdown), we pitched a tent in our living room and went camping. We blew up the deluxe mattress, brought down our duvets, and hung a super bright lantern. The six-year-old asked for spooky stories, the eleven-year-old asked for more bouncing on that deluxe mattress, the forty-four-year-old husband gave up and headed for an actual bed, alone. As I fell asleep with the kids, we looked at the sky and trees through windows, snuggling into the warmth of indoor camping and our even cozier imaginations.
As we’re increasingly longing to be out in the world, we’ve also starting to think about how we can bring our favorite places indoors. We’re learning in our very scrappy way how to recreate a little of our former world’s magic in our domestic unbliss. Thrown together with whatever we have lying around the house, our manifestations at home are ungainly, un-Pinterest worthy recreations, but somewhere in our souls, they are filling an ever-growing need to be somewhere else, with you in the world outside.
We’ve noticed on social media the creeping in of festivals, discos, museums, into our living rooms, gardens, kitchens. We’re seeing a blending together of before and now, and a relentless hope that once was will come back again. For now, our attempts at capturing the spirit of where we once gathered will have to do.
Here’s our rundown of what we’re missing and how we’re, and you perhaps, are bringing places out there in here.
Cafes: Missing, missing, missing. We admit to buying a coffee maker as Step 1 of our lockdown journey (not sure there was a Step 2) and have since spent way too much time working out how to make an oat milk latte with froth (who needs to write the next NYT bestseller?). Add in Spotify’s Coffeehouse playlist, find a quirky chair at home, and nurse that coffee for 3-4 hours while trying not to make eye contact with anyone else. Maybe even throw $7 in the bin if you live in the Bay Area. You are almost, almost there.
Festivals: Can of wine, loud music, and deck chair on whatever outside space we can find. Kids running wild. We’ve nearly nailed it. The only things left are to throw mud at our tent, find the wellies, and start smoking.
Bakeries: A friend is baking cookies and cakes for distraction. Actually, everyone is baking cookies and cakes for distraction. There’s a run on flour and yeast and cultivating a sourdough starter has just become the new learning a language of lockdown. We’re also opening cookbooks like “50 most calorific things you can cook today with real sugar”, rather than “The Joy of Kale and Brown Rice”. Scents of bread baking, old school achievement, something to eat that isn’t from a can or cereal. Also comfort eating – it is a requirement to comfort eat right now. Pairs well with white wine at the end of the day. This is not the moment to diet, numb feelings yes with carbohydrates and alcohol. No one can see you anyway.
Coworking: If you live alone, sorry this one is going to be tough; you could make cut out figures as today’s art project and prop them next to your laptop while smiling at them occasionally. If you live with other people, just find any table, crowd around it, write an aspirational saying like ‘We work best together’ somewhere on a wall, and occasionally high-five each other. Points for adding name tags.
Indie cinema: Just switch out Netflix for National Theater Live, add in posh popcorn and a vodka tonic, and you’ve got the vibe.
Museum: Entry-level efforts, hang all the new creations you’ve been working on with everyone else on a wall in a pretty way. Add wall labels with cute names and give the whole thing a title (no, “Untitled” is cheating). Even better hang them on a wall outside and call it ‘Public Art’. But if you want to take it seriously, and you do, because you know ‘Art’, then follow the lead of New Jersey resident Teresa Mistretta. If you want to get super fancy, make your home into one of those experiential museums – paint your walls candy-colored (you need a DIY project right now). Even better, make merchandise in said theme to sell back to yourself.
Library / Bookstore: Those books on your shelves at home you’ve been meaning to read, now is the time to actually read them, not just wave at them. That might mean pulling I Could Pee on This off your shelves, but hopefully, you have something lying around like Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. If going for the library vibe, post them back through your front door for added return affect. If indie bookstore, make cute piles randomly around your house. For either, go crazy and curate subject areas, that only you understand – brave princesses who’ve learned to say no, self-help for the days you hate everyone, chick-lit which you basically see as the great American novel but are too ashamed to say so. You could also print a cool Indie Store name on the side of a paper bag and shop your shelves. We always wanted to own a bookstore.
Lecture series: You can be inspirational too. Watch something by Brene Brown or Elizabeth Gilbert or Glennon Doyle, then hold forth at dinner about the value of vulnerability, creativity, love. Your co-lockdown companions will appreciate your Ted Talk at the kitchen table. They might even take notes.
Safari: If you have pets, just follow them around the house for an hour, narrating their escapades. Maybe even give them a backstory that adds drama – you need an arc for this one to work. Make sure to practice a Megan Markle narrating Elephants range of emotion.
Retreat: Basically, lockdown with some sort of epiphany and hiding alone in your bedroom trying not to talk to anyone.
Places in the world – we miss you. And though our attempts to make you real in our living rooms and gardens may be naff, they’ll have to do for now. One day when we visit you again, we will shower you with love and attention and never take you for granted again. We Promise.