Seven blessings that got me through the pandemic

My daily walks on the same seaside trail, summer and winter, have been essential.

As of today, I am fully vaccinated.

The pandemic is not over yet, but my life is changing. For me, the “lockdown” phase is ending. I can start doing things that I haven’t felt comfortable doing in over a year, like flying in airplanes and eating in restaurants.

This has me reflecting on all of the blessings that have made my small, restricted pandemic existence feel more expansive, joyful, and free. At the very least, they distracted me beautifully from my mundane reality. Below, I share a few.

Coffee.

I’ve never been much of a coffee drinker, though I love it. I’m very sensitive to caffeine, and I prefer to leave consumption for special occasions.

However, on that first miserable March day of online school, staying at my parents’ house for what I believed would be a week but actually stretched into ten, my dad offered me some coffee. I took it, in a tiny mug from my childhood. It was warm and comforting. A few sips gave me the energy to make it through a grueling day filled with uncertainty.

Since then, I’ve had some weeks when I don’t have coffee at all, and some weeks where I have a little every day. I had never made coffee at home until this winter, when we got a French press. This spring, we upgraded to an Aeropress. The ritual of making coffee is pleasant and relaxing. The coffee itself is delicious.

Throughout the pandemic, there has been so little to look forward to, and the news is often bad. A little bit of coffee brings a tiny bit of joy and pleasure into the slow, boring days.

Tom and Lorenzo.

I started reading tomandlorenzo.com years ago when they did episode-by-episode analyses of the costume design of AMC’s Mad Men. I never really thought I was interested in fashion, but these two Philly bloggers got me hooked through their witty, incisive, and never cruel commentary.

From TLo, I've come to understand why famous, pretty people don't necessarily want to look pretty all the time. I know more about the way in which pushing the bounds of fashion carries risk, and the pros and cons of taking that risk. I've also learned that the bearing of the wearer—their ability to "work a look"—really matters. Some people can handle fashion that is more difficult to pull off, and some of us cannot. I’ve learned that the fashion is inextricably linked to the person wearing it. What’s more, an outfit might have a historical, sociopolitical, or artistic context that goes far beyond aesthetics. I didn’t expect lessons in semiotics from a fashion blog, but I relish every one.

During the pandemic, the world of fashion slowed down. There were months and months with no red carpets and nothing but pajamas. That didn’t stop me from stopping by Tom and Lorenzo’s site every single day to read what they had to say.

Tom and Lorenzo were forced to cancel their book tour in March just as the lockdowns began. At least their book was named one of the top books of 2020 by NPR. I hope they get to have another shot at a tour. I’m always rooting for them.

Hobbies.

For the first couple of months of the pandemic, mostly what I did was work and stare off into space, sometimes going for a walk. When the weather warmed up, my mom and I played some driveway tennis, using overturned chairs to mark the dimensions of the “court” and patio tables as a makeshift net. But as pandemic life became the “new normal” and my husband and I returned to our own apartment and city, I experienced a resurgence in the importance of my solitary hobbies, clinging to them fiercely and devotedly until I cycled on to the next one.

For June, it was filmmaking and video editing, plus tennis. In July, it was knitting and sailing. August brought crossword puzzles, which kept me busy for a couple of months in and around moving to a new house. In October, I learned to crochet and picked back up on my knitting, both of which carried me through to the end of the year.

In December and January, I made time for playing music and we played a lot of board games, most notably the cyberpunk-themed Netrunner. By mid-February I was obsessively learning French. Somewhere in April, gardening took over as my primary pastime, and here we are.

Without my hobbies, I don’t know what I would have done. Simply put, there would have been nothing to look forward to. I’m eager for a post-pandemic lifestyle of travel and seeing friends and family, but I’m glad to know that I can survive a more circumscribed existence.

Harry Styles’ NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert.

I don’t know why YouTube’s algorithm brought this up for me one spring night in 2020, and I don’t know what made me click on it. I knew and liked exactly one Harry Styles song (the T. Rex/Beck pastiche “Carolina”). But I did click, and I guess YouTube knows me better than I know myself. I was hooked from the first notes, in gorgeous four-part harmony.

Then, when I saw the band, I basically swooned. That had nothing to do with Harry Styles; no, it was the fact that the band included three young women, playing guitar, drums, and keyboards.

When I was a kid, it was very rare to discover a female musician who was an instrumentalist. Women tended to be singers and dancers, often scantily clad. Gradually, I collected the exceptions to the rule: Bonnie Raitt. Emmylou and Joni. Mo Tucker. Christine McVie. Tina Weymouth. Chrissie Hynde. Kim Deal of the Pixies and the Breeders. D’Arcy from Smashing Pumpkins. When I started playing guitar at fifteen, I didn’t personally know a single girl who played, so I taught as many girls as I could—a practice which continued for the next 20 years or so.

And now, here I was, watching this fabulous band that would have dazzled and inspired me as a kid. Well, they dazzled and inspired me now. Feeling just like the music-obsessed teenager I used to be, I watched this short set over and over, and listened to it while I worked.

Times have really changed, and it’s no longer unusual for girls and women to play in bands. But people playing music together in close quarters has become all too rare. Jamming with others has been one of the things I have longed for the most during the pandemic. Watching Harry and company last spring, I could, just for a little while, feel that joyful feeling, almost as though I were in the room with an instrument in my hands, too.

Akimbo.

In 2020, my businesses moved online, but one organization that I was involved in didn’t change at all. Akimbo went right on providing online workshops for people from all over the world who want to contribute good things to the world through their work and art.

In 2020, I participated in two Akimbo workshops and coached two others. 2021 is on track to be another Akimbo-heavy year. I’ve collaborated with people from all over the world and made lifelong friends. Learning online, together, can work, pandemic or no.

There was nothing to be sad about when our distributed team from Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Australia, and the United States had to meet on Zoom. We’d been meeting on Zoom since before the pandemic began. This is how things have always worked at Akimbo.

Life at Akimbo has continued normally throughout the pandemic. Every day, I log on for a couple of hours, participating in-depth conversations that are challenging, enriching, and illuminating. It’s hard work, especially during this time when I often feel depleted. But it’s the one place I can go that hasn’t changed, and that is magical.

Hamilton.

I was late to the party here. That’s because, even though I was a voice major in college, I’m not much of a musical theater or opera person. I hate how everybody over-enunciates whatever they’re singing. I hate how attempts at contemporary music end up sounding corny and square. I fall asleep sometime during act two every time. But when I finally watched the Hamilton movie in the summer of 2020, starved for culture and connection, I opened myself up to its Revolutionary-era (and Obama-era) world.

It did take three or four sittings to get through the whole thing (a luxury that theater-goers don’t have). Breaking it up that way, I didn’t sleep through any of it. My husband and I started listening to the soundtrack, most notably on a roundtrip from Maine to Georgia. That’s a lot of hours of Hamilton. The more-than-200-year-old story of ambition, vision, romance, camaraderie, betrayal, tragedy, and loyalty was soothing, entertaining, cathartic, and a welcome distraction from the stresses of a cross-country move during a pandemic.

The complexity of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s lyrics and book, paired with the richness of Alex Lacamoire’s score, rewarded repeated listening. Over the weeks and months, I learned to rap and sing along with the cast and picked up new nuances in the musical themes. I learned to play a few of the songs on the piano, wanting to deconstruct their harmony and structure. I was inspired by the depth of Lin’s vision and the brilliance of its execution, brought to life by an incredible team.

The absurdity of the fact that Hamilton exists is inspiring in itself. If a musical about the life and times of America’s first treasury secretary can become a worldwide sensation, anything is possible.

You.

The through line—the one thing in my routine that hasn’t changed since 2019—is showing up here five times a week and writing to you. It has given me a sense of purpose and connection when nothing else could. It has helped me work through problems and make sense of what was happening in the world. I’m grateful that you are reading. In a time of such upheaval and trauma, it is magical to be able to communicate and share ideas and feelings with people from all over the world. Thank you for being here.

How about you? What has helped you to make it through this difficult time? Has anything surprised you? What have you learned about yourself? I’d love to hear.