Phase 1: Panic
It’s real. It’s real and it’s a real threat. You panic, people around you panic. You panic buy and you panic wee and you make a hundred cups of panic tea. Everything you do is in a state of panic.
Phase 2: Hobbies
Panic eases off. You turn “inwards” and try discover your “hobbies”. Turns out your hobbies are going out to eat, drinking alcohol in crowded bars, seeing your friends and spending money. Also any other hobby you thought you had is connected to a side hustle, so it isn’t really a hobby, it’s just more work. (Confirming your workaholic suspicions). But no one is spending right now so you look for more “wholesome” “hobbies”. You see people “around” you baking. You. Are. Not. A. Baker. You turn to art, music, sewing. Anything, but baking.
Phase 3: Baking
You cave and bake the worst banana bread ever. You succumb to the delicious images of banana bread bombarding all aspects of your life. It’s in the news, in your work emails, social media, media media. Everywhere. You resist for as long as you can and by the time you finally cave, you’re the last banana bread baker in all of COVID land. And it doesn’t even turn out good. Your fiancé wonders if it’s edible because you used Arm and Hammer Baking Soda. You don’t even know if you’re going to die from this banana bread but you’ve BAKED it now so there’s no turning back. You’re a baker, not a quitter.
Phase 4: TikTok
Hello underage teenage models. Where is your awkward phase of growing up? Why do you all have limbs to the roof? Where is the blue eyeshadow? Why are you all so synchronized? How do you reach this level of coordination? How come you get to skip from cuteness to gorgeous without the uncomfortable stages of struggling through puberty?! WHY IS LIFE SO UNFAIR? Also, apparently TikTok groups you into things you like… i’ve been grouped into mum’s over 30. You go to bed humming TikTok music loops and wonder if there’s truth to the TikTok algorithms.
Phase 5: Fall in Love with Cuomo
Some days you even find yourself getting dressed up ready to listen to his daily 11:30am briefings, hushing anyone or thing that tries to interrupt you for that hour.
Phase 6: Impact to planned life event
If it hasn’t happened already, your big plans are being cancelled. You’re super devo. But good thing is there’s no FOMO.
Phase 7: Onesie
Here we goooo! Roll out of bed and into work. You’re getting good at this now. You settle into a new routine and you’re leaning in to the laziness. You embrace your inner sloth. You stop beating yourself up about not reaching 10k steps / day. You accept it’s ok to do less if you’re dealing with more, even if you’re not dealing with more because you have a super privileged life. You join work calls as Hagrid and your day time pajamas are way more comfortable than your night time pajamas because you buy a onesie from Amazon and wear it ever since the day it arrives in your life. Now this I can get used too.
Haha! Phase three!