The COVID-19 Quarantine, Re-assessed: Three Reminders to Live By

Words by Matthew Romano
Graphics by Aspasia Celia Tsampas

At the time of writing this piece, we gradually approach what resembles an estuary. One that is, for better or worse, flowing slowly and steadily away from the surreal, months-long pause of normal daily function as we know it and into an inevitable tidal of disorienting re-openings and feared re-closings that is likely to give renewed meaning to Green Day’s 2005 plea to hibernate through the month of September. It’s safe to say that never before has “Beware the Ides of March” seemed so prescient a warning. Never before has mid-march felt so distant, so foreign, from September.

On the mornings preceding March 11th, chances are many of us students within the ever-obstinate force that is CUNY walked into and out of our 9:30 A.M classes with the same, almost communal, and contagious, somnolent, coffee-fueled, ‘morning’ look drooping over our dour demeanors. We were likely simultaneously aware of the mounting coverage of the shadowy but remote ‘Coronavirus’ wreaking havoc across the pond in China and Italy. However, most of us remained somewhat impervious to the occasional and soon unavoidable rumblings among students, professors, and faculty saying that CUNY might be forced to succumb to the force of reality placed on it, and the world, by this virus. Hindsight is 20/20 because these swirling rumors were the P-wave to the category 10 that split our world in two on that fateful day in March.

If you’re anything like me, your post-shut-down mentality is best described as a world of conflict and convolution, both in flux and out of whack, not unlike the world. 

Much of the time between March and June, time during which I somehow unconsciously managed to finish my senior year at CCNY, “graduate”, transition my tutoring job to a virtual space, and pick up a book ‘for fun’ for the first time in forever, is a blur. At the same time as my last remaining shreds of an actual social life gave out 6 feet under the pressures of social distancing, something about the isolation and free time did wonders for my mental health.

During a time when article upon article, op-ed after op-ed, and 95% of social media posts shared their Must Do’s to survive a pandemic. . .

·      Find a healthy routine

·      Maintain a healthy sleep schedule

·      Take up a new hobby

·      Save money

·      Set aside time to be productive

·      Catch up on those things you’ve been meaning to do

·      Journal

·      Spend time with family

. . . I found myself doing very little of this. I soon realized that even a pandemic and social distancing can’t stop me from measuring myself up against someone else’s perceived ability to ‘survive a pandemic’. It’s as if someone said that there’s this magical list of items that you MUST do to make it through and that if you do these things, you’ll come out a better person. That doesn’t sound too far off from what ‘they’ told us.

It may be a hot take but the minute those flighty, frivolous, and seemingly innocuous BuzzFeed articles and NYT op-eds and lifestyle blogs/vlogs, and colorful how-to or 10 ways, or life hack posts that flood timelines, attract celebs, and become just another piece of fodder in the culture of click-to-share turn the least bit prescriptive and cavalier, they do more harm than good.

So, I interrupt your regularly scheduled programming of 101 sure-fire ways to fail/succeed during a quarantine, a new normal, or life itself with this brief, important public service announcement: Success is subjective, people are different, everyone’s confused, perfection is a disease, and mental health matters.

If you’re like me and you’ve definitely ‘failed’ by any supposedly measurable standard as ordained and indoctrinated by any amalgam of pop-culture, social media, twitter prophet posts that make up digital society, here’s another list (embrace the hypocrisy). These are three reminders to live by if you want to start living on your own terms, for yourself, and towards your own ends as we approach what is ostensibly the ‘re-opening’ of the world, the final throes of a month’s long social/financial lockdown, and the early phases of this undeniably new era that we’re all, for better or worse, embarking on together.

What did you do when the city that never sleeps suddenly fell into a deep, trance-like, alternate-universe comatose? Did you make a mental (or physical) list of all the stuff you plan to accomplish during lockdown? Read 5 full-length novels, learn another language, makeover your home, write the great American novel? How much of these things did you actually accomplish? If you met every goal you set out to achieve when you took your first look at your new “everything but” normal, good on you. You’re the object, I’m sure, of a lot of people’s envy. If not, that’s fine also. Here’s my logic: You likely were working your ass off before quarantine. You deserve the break. You are certainly not alone.

I’m going to go out on a pretty sturdy limb and say that for most of us, the last 6 months have blurred by like a montage of film credits that we didn’t care enough to watch. Sure, March and April might have felt like some of the longest months ever but the minute you started binge-watching that soapy teen-drama that’s been on your radar (One Tree Hill, The O.C.) or gave in to the pressure and impulse-bought Disney + (because no at-home-order is quite complete without Hannah Montana belting out throwback pop-bops) time cranked into fifth gear and has been playing speed racer with the Gregorian calendar ever since.

Good routines, such as a morning/night routine or a strictly delineated hourly one, ostensibly guarantee optimal productivity and even curbed stress levels. As such, scrupulously developed and perfectly executed routines are often lauded as the key to actualizing your potential, excelling in work/school, and attaining positive mental, social, and emotional health. Basically, the holy grail. As the story of the relic goes though, the holy grail is a myth and if you’ve ever tried and failed at executing a routine, it feels as if the same is true of the illusory ‘routine’. The fact is that we’re all different, and some of us feel imprisoned by the intensity of a painstakingly delineated structure. For some, our day-to-day is too capricious, too unpredictable and as hours slip away and the to-do list remains the same, confidence wanes in the process. If this sounds like you, consider focusing on deadlines and maximizing days that are less busy to make time for the ebb and flow. C’est la vie.

The ceaseless rodomontade over foiled sleep schedules is a craze made ever more popular during the uncertain hours and days of quarantine, a sudden rift in our normal time-space continuum. Zoom meeting debriefs unfailingly begin with someone mourning the tragic loss of their cherished sleep schedule. God forbid everyone doesn’t sleep exactly at 11 pm and wake up exactly at 8 am, for the optimal 9 hours and 6 cycles of REM sleep.

I’ve never really done well with bedtimes. As a teenager, it was a rite of passage to stay up past your bedtime. It instantly made you “rebellious”, “angsty”, and “oooh, so bad”. In college, I was a certified last-second crammer often staying up all night, alternating between English papers and the TV show I had missed the night before. I guess it’s no surprise then that I’m here to tell you, for better or worse, binge watch those tv-shows, play those video games, finish those puzzles, read those unnecessarily long and soapy books, do whatever is worth staying up all night for. Don’t shirk off responsibilities, but if you can balance it, an all-nighter can be fun, peaceful, youthful, and rebellious and we all need to have those experiences, and why not… if there’s nothing better to do? Who’s stopping you?

Don’t let these 6 months of relative powerlessness and banality fool you. At the end of the day, it’s your life and thus, success, happiness, progress, etc. are all subjective and self-defined. Still, we’re all wondering where we go from here. It’s the question on everyone’s mind.

It’d be easy for me to lay my plans out on paper and just put an asterisk to qualify them

Fall 2020*: Virtual Student Teaching

January 2021*: Initial teaching certification

February 2021*: Hired by DOE

August 2021 – June 2022*: First year of teaching

*Subject to immense and volatile change and notwithstanding the true extent to which our lives will be permanently impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic* 

It’s harder to actually truly grapple with the question of what’s next because you can’t even begin to answer that question without first coming to terms with what the hell is going on now and what possible ways out are on the horizon.

I say, best not to gamble with the lives of yourselves and others by answering these questions yourself.

Await further instructions.
Keep abreast with updates/orders from the CDC and using a discriminative eye, some politicians.
Stay as safe and as cautious as possible.
Prepare for the next 6 months the way you’ve dealt with the last 6.
Refrain from setting expectations that are too high or deadlines that are too soon.
Better yourself for yourself, not anyone else.
Protect yourself from external and internal threats. Remember that poor mental health, depression, anxiety, extremely low self-esteem, and high stress can kill and are just as dangerous, if not more so, than any virus.

Oh, and wash your hands.