What have you lost while staying inside?

[petra]

A commiseration post for today. Feel free to skip it if you're not in the mood for negativity.

Having to stay inside means we're all losing things we once had, or could have had. What have you lost to the forces that make you stay inside? How do you deal with the grief surrounding those losses?

Comments

[desireearmfeldt]

Live theatre and live roleplaying. Also seeing friends and family in person, of course, but it hasn't been long enough for me to actually feel that lack yet.

(All the extraverts are flipping out and scheduling online social events to make up for the change. For social-but-introvert me, this means a sudden rush of new and different events, organized via FB where I only am in the first place due to fear of missing out, and skewed towards people less close to me and less compatible in their social style.

On the other hand, more bonding with spouse, and I've been doing some one on one socializing and can arrange more.)

[petra]

I think one-on-one socializing sounds like a good plan, and I should arrange more of it in my life. I'm not extroverted enough to need the large groups of people, but I miss seeing other people's faces. I love my spouse dearly, but having a variety of people in my life is a luxury I miss.

[desireearmfeldt]

I find video chats -- or good old fashioned phone calls (remember when friends used to talk on the phone? Or maybe they still do but I basically stopped decades ago) -- can feel very connected and fulfilling.

[petra]

Most recently, I have lost my job to COVID-19, as well as my chorus and my dance team. They will all come back again when things go back to normal, but these are losses I've sustained before when I was disabled by illness. Losing them again means I've lost a lot of the direction in my life and the differentiation of my days. I keep reading guidance on how to maintain focus without the external forces that used to govern my weeks, but it's been hard to implement any of the advice.

I don't really know how to cope with these losses yet; on some level I feel like I'm just waiting for normality to reassert itself, rather than facing the new normal of mostly-empty days and not seeing people. I didn't pose today's question as an expert, but rather as a fellow traveler, trying to find my way through the maze of new experiences. I've lost what I've lost this time through no fault of my own, and I didn't even have the choice to keep doing things while I was deeply impaired, as I did last time I lost parts of my life.

If anyone has some hard-won wisdom on this subject, I would be grateful for it.

[desireearmfeldt]

Would you find it helpful to have one on one more sustained interactions with friends? I personally find I cannot live by social media chat alone (ever).

[petra]

I think that would be helpful, yes, but the more serious problem is that I can't get my butt out of bed and stay awake. I don't have any obligations, and my body and brain seem to have taken this lack of external requirement as a reason to sleep more than 12 hours a night. If I have to be up and doing things, I can, but the second the obligation goes away, the urge to sleep comes back. It's extremely frustrating.

[desireearmfeldt]

I often find when I'm in depressed/don't-wanna mode that social obligations I have to show up to can motivate me to get moving, and that interactivity can get me operating normally (while I'm actually doing it, at least).

My brain is not your brain, of course!

[petra]

That seems like a reasonable thing to expect of oneself. I need a standing coffee date at 8:15 or so to get me started, which seems like a lot to ask of my friends when they're all dealing with this pandemic in their own ways.

[desireearmfeldt]

The trick is to find someone who also needs a kick out of bed. :)

(Myself, I'm trying to start work promptly in the morning rather than getting in the habit of frittering away what would otherwise have been my commute time.)

[petra]

I feel pretty strongly that commute time is allowed to be your time, but then I'm not working, just fritterin'.

[desireearmfeldt]

True. But morning is my brain time, so if I can start early and end early, I'm likely to be more productive.

[cynthia1960]

Being able to see live music; this is one of the things my wife and I dearly love to do. What makes it worse is knowing how the livelihoods of everyone connected to music have been demolished. One of my best friends plays music for theater groups around the South Bay now that she is retired. My niece and nephew have a very new dream pop band that have been getting some good gigs. My favorite radio station, KEXP in Seattle that I stream, plays lots of independent and world music that I love.

[petra]

One of the things I've been doing is remotely attending streaming concerts and buying things from the groups. I know it's not enough to support them, but it's better than nothing. I'm sure the same thing has occurred to you, too.

[cynthia1960]

Yes, we are checking out the streaming concerts! It helps.

[desireearmfeldt]

It seems like a lot of musicians have been live streaming concerts lately -- not the same, of course, but worth checking out?

[cynthia1960]

Oh yes, there are good ones.

[althea_valara]

I'm a homebody, so I rarely left the house even before this happened. I feel it's not affecting me too much.

But, I had been talking with my therapist about getting out more, and had gone to a meeting of the stitch club at our local library. I had a good time, and was looking forward to going to it again, but then the library closed. The Stitch Club was also going to have a yarn swap, and I had been looking forward to getting more yarn (my stash is getting low) so am missing that, too. I had also been signed up for a class at the library on a service called Lynda, which is a skills-building... app? website? I'm not sure which it is. Obviously that was cancelled as well.

I'm doing fine without these things because I had just barely started getting into them, but yeah, it IS a loss. Probably the weirdest thing right now is that my therapy sessions are by phone now.

I also had had tentative plans to get together with a friend this month for a knitting lesson, but we can't do that now. Sad.

[desireearmfeldt]

I have friends who have been trying knitting-and-chat sessions over webconference, I don't know if that might work for you?

[petra]

I had been going to a yarn crafts meetup for a while too, and that has closed with the library.

I'm sorry your classes were canceled. They may not be big losses, but there's still the opportunities you don't have right now.

Good luck finding ways to get together with your friend virtually!

[fred_mouse]

I'm going to miss a wedding, Worldcon, and my state's annual SF con. The latter is going to hit Youngest harder, because they have been to one every year of their life, and they were hoping to get to 20 before turning 20.

Youngest is losing a lot more -- training has stopped, the ice-rink is closed. We have no idea how far this is going to set their team back. All competitions are on hold until more is known, and the national training camp that this was the only year Youngest was likely to be able to get there has also been cancelled.

Middlest was having a year off uni, so has lost dance class. Eldest's uni has completely rearranged the semester, and has said that exams will not be running in the standard manner. Both have pretty much lost all of their face-to-face social time.

[petra]

It sounds like you have a houseful of people coping with various degrees of success. I'm sorry for your losses and I wish you all the best in dealing with them.

[fred_mouse]

Thanks you. I'm so thankful that this isn't Youngest's last year of high school. I really think they would be spiralling into depression if that were the case.

And that we're all reasonably good at entertaining ourselves.

Since I was a stay-at-home Before

[jesse_the_k]

...the most piercing loss has been my swimming thrice a week at a local pool. The pool is part of a rehab center -- average swimmer age 64 -- so many high-risk folks. It closed on the 16th.

In addition to missing the magic of weightless, almost painless, movement I realize that the undressing/dressing chatter was a pleasant level of interaction I didn't realize was important.

Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?

Oh, the library. My local branch was an easy 10-minute trip, and nothing is so peaceful as being surrounded by books.

Re: Since I was a stay-at-home Before

[petra]

I'm sorry you lost your pool. That sounds like quite the blow. And then losing the socialization on top of it, too.

I don't even go to the library unless I need to -- but I often need to for emotional support reasons, and being unable to be there hurts, so I sympathize with that hard.

Re: Since I was a stay-at-home Before

[jesse_the_k]

<3

The good news is I realized it was about to happen, and mindfully experienced every possible drop of my last swim.

Libraries are very safe spaces for me because anything is possible. I might get the energy to finally read any of thousands of books! I could discover the origins of albalone! I could meet a newcomer and intro them to our city. I could cook up an obscure question and reference would demonstrate how they answer it. Or I could lounge by the magazines and gobbble up People and We.

Re: Since I was a stay-at-home Before

[petra]

Taking a mindful swim sounds extremely therapeutic. I'm glad you got fair warning and were able to do that.

You have summed up how I feel about libraries very well. They're just chock full of things that might happen and stuff I might learn. When I get in the library-going zone, I have a terrible time limiting myself to only the books I'm sure I'm going to read. That seems like a betrayal of all the books I might possibly read, if only I get the right kind of inspired.

Re: Since I was a stay-at-home Before

[jesse_the_k]

That seems like a betrayal of all the books I might possibly read, if only I get the right kind of inspired.

Oh! I used to struggle with this and then I turned 60. I realized that I'd never get to all the books on my TBR and that's okay. In the Before times, I'd spend a couple hours a couple times a week sipping samples of interesting books and not checking them out. Tasty!

Re: Since I was a stay-at-home Before

[petra]

I've already hit my "I will never read all the books I want to read" but I'm still working on "and that's okay." I like the idea of sampling books and not checking them out very much.

Re: Since I was a stay-at-home Before

[jesse_the_k]

I look forward to the day when we both can try it again!

Re: Since I was a stay-at-home Before

[fred_mouse]

Ooh, that sucks about the pool. I haven't been in months, but of course, now I can't, I really really want to swim.

Re: Since I was a stay-at-home Before

[jesse_the_k]

In three short months our lakes will be swimmable if the pools haven't reopened. That doesn't seem an impossible amount of time to wait.

Re: Since I was a stay-at-home Before

[fred_mouse]

In theory the beaches are still open. In practice, there are so many people there that the local media have been doing shaming news reports. We'd have to find somewhere quiet. And our state has just gone to no movement between regions, which means that we can't get to many quiet beaches. I'm promising myself a bath if I get 40 hours of work done this week (2 days done on target, I think I'm in a routine)

[starshipfox]

I've been really struggling with the loss of swimming too. I have fibromyalgia, and it helps a lot to be in the water -- I wish I was back there. It's hard to have no idea when I'll be able to go back.

[jesse_the_k]

I feel you — another fibromite. There’s nothing quite so wonderful as the life aquatic!

Given that we begin swimming, it’s odd that returning to the water requires such extensive infrastructure.

[starshipfox]

I guess nobody could stop me from leaping into the sea, but the cold is so bad for my fibro it wouldn't be very helpful for me overall. It is a shame that swimming takes so much infrastructure.

[starshipfox]

The things I'm missing feel really unimportant, but it's still hard. I'd been saving up for, and looking forward to, a two-day trip to the spa for my birthday. I had a really emotional and difficult birthday last year due to some family issues, and I was really looking forward to the opportunity to go to a thermal spa and get a massage -- I have chronic pain and both of those things help SO MUCH. I feel disproportionately sad about missing out on that. Otherwise, it's mostly little things -- book club and going out for coffee and writing in the library -- stuff that gave life shape.

[petra]

I think we don't (didn't) put enough value on the little things that gave life shape until they were gone, so I don't think the things you're missing are unimportant. They're part of the fabric of everyday life that's been disrupted.