Business As Usual

Pandemic life from your friendly hermit

On my laptop, I have an empty Google doc simply titled, “wills for singles,” so you know how I’m doing. Ok, that’s untrue. Not about the document—I thought it might be a good service piece because I have no idea who would deal with my stuff if I died—but how I’m doing, which is totally fine. Normal, in fact.

I hesitate to express my true feelings about self-quarantining because they are at odds with practically 95% of the universe. Frankly, I’m loving sitting inside, not working (despite not qualifying for that damn stimulus check even though I was unemployed five months last year and four months so far this year. For the nosy, I got a superficially large, heavily taxed severance check January 2019 because I’d been employed at the same company since 2007, which inflated my annual salary), getting food delivered to my doorstep, ignoring my treadmill downstairs (yes, I’m privileged with a split-level ranch) watching TV, reading books, and never seeing anyone socially. I mean, that’s how I live in the best of times. 

Maybe I should change my journalistic focus from “wills for singles” to “pandemic lessons from hermits.”

(And yes, I do care about the ethical implications of having other people do your food shopping and delivery. And no, I don’t use Instacart. I also live with someone who has a job that necessitates being out and about, which is worrisome and unfair.)

Everyone (by which I usually mean prominent media types on Twitter) seems to be productivity-shaming right now. Laziness is my natural state so I’d love to lean into this current zeitgeist of low expectations, but I’m still hellbent on trying to focus on my personal projects with this unexpected pseudo-downtime. 

One result is that I’m back to interviewing regular women about being middle aged. My latest Q&A subject is Chicago’s own Rachel McPadden. As always, I’m on the lookout for future interviewees and dread cold emailing, so if anyone has suggestions/requests, I’m open. 

I will admit I miss going out to restaurants, and as I’ve recently discovered, being able to play video slots at dive bars. I’m not really much of a gambler, and even spending $40 here and there on an all-luck game that takes no skill whatsoever is kind of embarrassing. At least I don’t buy lottery tickets? Gambling is shameful because relatively smart and solvent people are supposed to know better. It’s like diabetes in that it’s only for dumb, poor folks (and yes, I’m diabetic—thanks shit genes). That’s why I really loved this recent ode to gambling in the The New York Times’ “Letter of Recommendation” column. (I wish I were able to write so smartly about my irrational obsessions.)

It has become a cliché to note that participating in athletic competition is good preparation for life: a way to invest and discipline yourself, and then to both triumph and lose with grace. For the more pessimistic among us, gambling offers even more profound practice, because its wins and losses occur for no reason. Unless you’re clinically crazy, you can’t believe you affect the results of a roulette wheel. To gamble is to give up control. If fortune smiles on you, you can exercise humility in the face of good luck. And when, more often, it crushes you, you are forced to directly confront (and maybe absorb and integrate) how vain all our designs and efforts can be. Something for nothing is a thrill. Nothing for something is a test.

I’m all about nothing for something. So much so that I’ve been playing online slots secretly with real money. Don’t worry, I’ve only sunk maybe $30 into this newfound bad habit over the past few weeks. I haven’t smoked regularly in years and barely drink anymore, so what’s the harm? Bagels and candy will probably get to me first. I don’t understand the legalities of it and I’m not even convinced I could cash out if I wanted (there’s a lot of fine print and hoop-jumping) but I love it anyway. Sure, there are sites where you can play online slots just for fun, but what’s the point in that? As I’ve recently discovered, I don’t even enjoy playing video games.

My morning routine consists of waking up at 7am (a vestige of having to work on East Coast time, remotely), writing a short food news piece for Taste of Home by 9am, looking online for jobs and mustering energy to write enthusiastic cover letters (how does one muster passion for writing about telematics, which I did this weekend) then futzing around for maybe 20 minutes playing games with titles like “Legend of 9 Suns,” “The Sand Princess,” and “Mayan Bounty.” There’s something for everyone. I’m partial to “Fish & Chips Fortunes” because it’s slower and more deliberate than some games so you feel you’re getting your money’s worth, plus it’s blessedly free of bosomy women or racial motifs and you get cartoon fries, lemon wedges, and ketchup. In fact, this morning I made SC52.05 in five minutes. Ok, so SC a.k.a. “scatter coins” is a made-up proprietary currency, but hypothetically it’s real money.

10am to noon is a tough lull because I’m doing intermittent fasting like a dummy and only eat between 12pm and 8pm, which has been an exercise in futility so far. I should probably use that two-hour window to compose and send my dreaded cold emails and read while on the treadmill, but that rarely happens. Productivity can suck it.

Random Reading Corner

I just finished vaguely music-related Doxology by Nell Zink—originally, I intended this newsletter edition to be music-themed so I’ll talk about it later. I can’t think of a book in recent history—or any history—with main characters who are ‘80s hipsters. Are you intrigued yet?

Also, Ada Calhoun’s Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis, which is very obviously in my wheelhouse (even though I sleep like a baby every night for 8-9 hours—don’t hate me). It’s the sort of book I could see myself writing, though obviously I don’t need to now. I mean that it stitches together lots of statistics and interviews, which is something I have the ability to do not a “my three-year-old could paint that” knock. Often, I read things where I’m baffled and intimidated by how the writing came together in the author’s brain and on the page, the perfect mix of personal anecdotes and universal insights, which sounds like a slight on Why We Can’t Sleep. It reads breezily like an extended women’s magazine article, which was indeed the genesis. It’s one of those books that’s satisfying because it validates vague feelings in a concrete way.   

I also have a library ebook of Samantha Irby’s Wow, No Thank You on hold because I need to know how funny women are writing personal essays these days. This was a notable non-funny essay about being single and childless in a pandemic. “To be single and without children after a certain age is to largely disappear off the cultural map” is an apt observation, though I dislike the good aunt trope (which I just made up). Remember when marketers were trying to make PANKs a thing? Nope? Good.

I don’t even watch SNL—and hate online videos—but can’t resist.