Wall-Staring Time
Everything Happened has an essay about how she pulled her kid out of soccer so she would have time for going to the gym. She riffs on a familiar tale: you add one activity and that grows into many activities, and suddenly your weekends and afternoons are packed and you have no time for wall-staring. And I need wall-staring time.
She perfectly sums up how it feels to restart activities after the pandemic: “We were having to get ourselves places, ‘all of a sudden,’ and how do I put this undramatically… it felt like a creeping, shapeless asphyxiation. A gas leak.”
I used to have a lot of energy. I did a lot of activities. And a lot of work. And saw friends. A lot. And now, it feels like too much if we have to leave the house on both days of the weekend. If I don’t have 24-hour pyjamas time somewhere in there.
How am I still this tired 19.5 months into this?
4 comments
The getting kids everywhere is a lot. I don’t go to the gym, because I’ve never been to the gym, but I do feel like I’m tapped out and grumpy a lot because I feel like I’m always doing things for other people. I think the pandemic is taxing us in ways that we can’t measure … we’re always thinking, calculating, calibrating … everything takes more energy than it did before, and so YES of course it makes sense that you’re tired 19.5 months into this!! <3
I find myself having to drive my child everywhere all the time. I am getting tired of it, and I don’t usually mind driving places. I still have plenty of time for wall-staring. But I’m still tired of always having somewhere I need to go after months of not going anywhere.
I’m exhausted too. It’s the emotional toll of still being in a pandemic even if now we leave the house sometimes. And I think it’s also because no matter where we have to be or get to be, it’s never carefree. It’s always a calculation of risk. That’s exhausting.
“How am I still this tired 19.5 months into this?” Because you are 19.5 months into this, that’s why!
People here in NZ are complaining about COVID fatigue etc since delta got loose in August – and we’ve had it easy. I keep telling them they have no idea, as I think of you and all my overseas friends who have been dealing with these issues for so long. That constant calculation of risk that Beth mentioned – it must be energy-sapping. Be gentle with yourself!