Stir Crazy

Love in the Time of Corona—Days 9 + 10

First, the good news: My condition has held steady and I dare say even improved the past few days. No chills, no fever, minimal chest discomfort and diminished fatigue as this weekend has gone on. I won’t consider myself “in the clear” until two full weeks have passed, but I was concerned that if things were going to get more severe it would happen this weekend, and so far I am happy to have nothing to report on that front.

Aside from that, this weekend has been a hard one—yesterday in particular.

When this whole fun quarantine thing started, my coworker Kaylynn posted a Twitter thread about how freelance writers would be the ones to survive the apocalypse. For the most part I felt this was dead-on: People used to working from home under normal circumstances should in theory be well-positioned to overcome the difficulties of boredom, isolation and the like that quarantine presents. As someone who’d spent years freelancing out of tiny New York City apartments, I felt I was particularly suited for this challenge—and up until yesterday, I was.

Yesterday, cabin fever descended upon me as if it were the 11th plague of Passover. I mean, I was miserable. I wasn’t sad, though, or even anxious. I was, to use the parlance of our times, “bored AF.” My mind raced, my head ached and I made about 2,643 trips between my fridge, cupboard and couch.

In the prophetic words of Kurt Cobain:

I feel stupid

And contagious

Here we are now

Entertain us

Yeah.

(I know, you’re singing it in your head now, right?)

Among the contributing factors to this stir craziness, I blame the following:

• Because I’ve been self-quarantining due to the virus, I have only left my apartment three times in the past eight days, and each of those occasions was only to go downstairs and pick up food items that friends delivered (from a safe distance).
• Because I’ve been recovering and have been anxious to weaken my immune system by pushing my body too hard, I haven’t exercised in over a week.
• The depth of my phone addiction skyrocketed to disturbing levels. (There’s probably a semantic contradiction there between “depth” and “skyrocketed,” but you get the point.)

I blame my friend, Michael, for telling me to download Words with Friends so we could play each other during quarantine. He only downloaded it the other day and the two of us haven’t even finished one game yet … but I’ve played about 839 games against the computer and random opponents during that time, reminding myself why I deleted Words with Friends from my phone in the first place. (I would say I plan to delete it again soon, but I would also say that if you want to challenge me, prepare to go down, Chief.)

I’m sure I’m not the only one who can’t put down Words with Friends, Instagram, the news and Tiger King during this period of social distancing. Overall, it’s a nice thing for us to have distractions, and to be able to occupy ourselves when we have so much time on our hands.

At the same time, we all need to be extremely careful about how much distraction we take in on a daily basis, because too much of it will initiate a vicious cycle like what I’ve gone through this weekend—where our brains can’t sit still for more than three minutes, and no amount of memes, Netflix or sea salt pita chips will be able to fill the gaping void of “For the love of God, give me something to do!”

How can we break the cycle?

For one thing, we can make sure we’re getting enough sleep. I think that part of my internal crisis yesterday stemmed from having been unable to get more than a few hours of shut-eye at a time the past few days, which made it harder for me to self-regulate my thoughts and emotions and get myself out of the rut.

Additionally, it’s critical to find ways to interrupt ourselves when we’re spiraling into boredom. This can be achieved by creating moments of inner stillness; meditation, yoga, walks in nature and drinking cups of tea or hot chocolate in silence are great for this. It can also be achieved by doing calming, creative activities that allow us to invest ourselves fully and lose track of time—such as painting or drawing, home improvement projects, reading and writing. (Or, you know, we can just throw our phones off our balconies like Robin Williams at the end of Hook. That’d work too.)

The key is to be active with our attention spans, instead of passive. Whereas TV and phone distractions allow us to bury our minds in things without really thinking, the activities listed above require us to participate fully in the moment. This makes boredom much less painful because it creates a positive flow of energy—we’re glad that we’re spending our time doing something that feels good and encourages us to be more present. The difference is night and day.

(Seriously, though: If you play Words with Friends, bring it on.)

Read other posts from the “Love in the Time of Corona” series by Sam Rosenthal:

• Love in the Time of Corona — Day 1
• Days 2 + 3, Purgatory
• Day 4, Powerless
• Days 5 + 6, On the Necessity of Everyday Heroism
• Days 7 + 8, Rose-Colored Realism

Read more of Sam Rosenthal’s work at samrose101.com, check out his #businesscardstories collection, follow him at @SamRoseWrites and stay tuned for his debut novel, Walking Backwards.

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