Transitions are definitely hard, no matter how much you’re headed in a great new direction, but my god, I for one am so ready to go back. I am going to be so appreciative of every inconvenience other people present: the sweat and heat of the bodies on the train and the annoyance of jockeying for space; the interminable wait at a restaurant everyone else missed, too; the rudeness from the stranger on the street who’s just having a bad day; the coughs in the concert hall your neighbor just couldn’t contain — I will just be so glad to be doing things TOGETHER again that I am already preparing to react with gratitude to each and every moment of pettiness and insufferability that the upcoming reunion of humanity will bring flooding back into our lives. I mean it: what a blessing to be sharing space again! For all the minor and multifarious indignities it entails - it will be so much better to be together than to be apart.
It makes me bitter seeing articles like this, coming from people who never had to continue to work in person during the pandemic, in packed offices, doing home visits, transporting clients in small cars (one of the highest risk activities out there), still running in person groups, knowing that people who quit their jobs were sitting at home with their families getting paid more than I was, hearing that the state might cut our wages because of the economic impact. All of the risk, none of the relaxation. If you'd rather be on the couch at home than in a bar, maybe have better boundaries and just do that instead of wistfully appreciating a killer pandemic for intervening on your behalf?
Like I say...I'm pretty bitter about it. Been seeing this take a lot, and it just does not resonate.
I appreciate you sharing this! I think you’re spot on—it’s tone deaf to romanticize an event that has taken so much, that many have not been able to appreciate or relax through—and yet I still feel the feelings I expressed in the email. It’s one of the many contradictions I’m feeling at this time. I by no means meant to belittle your relationship to the pandemic or the immense amount of privilege it takes for me to even write something like this. I also resonate with the sentiment Anne Helen expressed in the piece of part of the anxiety of going back to “normal” is the uncertainty around how to mourn all that was lost. Can totally see how my perspective could come across as thick atm. Thanks for calling me on it.
Transitions are definitely hard, no matter how much you’re headed in a great new direction, but my god, I for one am so ready to go back. I am going to be so appreciative of every inconvenience other people present: the sweat and heat of the bodies on the train and the annoyance of jockeying for space; the interminable wait at a restaurant everyone else missed, too; the rudeness from the stranger on the street who’s just having a bad day; the coughs in the concert hall your neighbor just couldn’t contain — I will just be so glad to be doing things TOGETHER again that I am already preparing to react with gratitude to each and every moment of pettiness and insufferability that the upcoming reunion of humanity will bring flooding back into our lives. I mean it: what a blessing to be sharing space again! For all the minor and multifarious indignities it entails - it will be so much better to be together than to be apart.
It makes me bitter seeing articles like this, coming from people who never had to continue to work in person during the pandemic, in packed offices, doing home visits, transporting clients in small cars (one of the highest risk activities out there), still running in person groups, knowing that people who quit their jobs were sitting at home with their families getting paid more than I was, hearing that the state might cut our wages because of the economic impact. All of the risk, none of the relaxation. If you'd rather be on the couch at home than in a bar, maybe have better boundaries and just do that instead of wistfully appreciating a killer pandemic for intervening on your behalf?
Like I say...I'm pretty bitter about it. Been seeing this take a lot, and it just does not resonate.
I appreciate you sharing this! I think you’re spot on—it’s tone deaf to romanticize an event that has taken so much, that many have not been able to appreciate or relax through—and yet I still feel the feelings I expressed in the email. It’s one of the many contradictions I’m feeling at this time. I by no means meant to belittle your relationship to the pandemic or the immense amount of privilege it takes for me to even write something like this. I also resonate with the sentiment Anne Helen expressed in the piece of part of the anxiety of going back to “normal” is the uncertainty around how to mourn all that was lost. Can totally see how my perspective could come across as thick atm. Thanks for calling me on it.