Unsociety Notes: Catnaps and Letdowns

On Monday, I watched a clip on Twitter of American gymnast Simone Biles taking off her sweatpants while doing a handstand. (To clarify: she was doing the handstand, not me. [That probably didn’t need clarifying.]) It’s not as inappropriate as it sounds. Instead, it was an impressive feat of balance, strength and perseverance.

My Monday feat was repotting a plant.

Monday was a holiday. I’m working full-time from home, so the word “holiday” still has some meaning to me. Given this, I should have filled my bonus day with activities, chores and sundry celebrations of free time.

But no. In addition to the repotting, we sowed potlets of vegetable seeds and set them in the window of what’s become my home office. Besides that, I read, walked, watched TV, spent too much time on Twitter and napped with the cat.

It’s the cat’s fault. I was merely reading in a prone position when Ollie, as she’s inclined to do, attempted to crawl on top of me. She would crawl inside me if she could. I allowed her to settle in the crook of my arm, where her sedative properties immediately took effect.

Permission to nap is one of the takeaways from Month 1 of unsociety. It’s a time that paradoxically combines stir-craziness and laziness. We all suddenly have time on our hands and feel we should be taking advantage of it to accomplish great things. Instead (and I don’t think I’m alone in this), I feel overwhelmingly lethargic. This leads to feelings of inadequacy, made worse by videos of over-achieving families performing full operettas. Inadequacy leads to funk, funk to fatigue. And the catnap cycle continues.

Deb and I have two quasi-adult children at home, so we don’t have the stress of homeschooling that other parents have. Instead, we’ve been playing games together and watching movies. Over eight nights, we watched all the Harry Potter films, which I had never seen (nor had I read any but the first book). My summary: Hogwarts is an abysmally administered school with severe liability issues.

Mostly, though, we’re eating. So much eating. Lunchtime keeps getting earlier and earlier. For some reason, we are going through an inordinate amount of mayonnaise. Ice cream has been had.

A lot of the time I find myself just wandering around the house, unable to focus on a single task for any length of time. It’s hard to concentrate even on reading. Some days I’m upbeat, getting my work done, only to have my mood quickly crash. For whatever reason, Thursdays are the hardest. I’ve begun to call Thursday “Worstday.”

If ever there was a novelty to this pandemic, it has quickly worn off. People are tired of thinking about it, hearing about it, reading about it (sorry). Everything that could be said about self-isolation/working from home was said weeks ago. Zoom jokes are so March 2020.

Some of us are safer and less at risk than others. As I said, I’m still working, as is my wife. We’re going to be okay. Not everyone is as lucky. But I think what every single person has in common is disappointment.

The play I was rehearsing: cancelled. For Christmas, I bought my wife tickets to her first opera, something she has talked about for years: cancelled.

Abby was disappointed she couldn’t see her friend’s new kitten. James recently won the Garth Smith Team Player award for the Bishop’s University men’s basketball team and, instead of receiving it at an athletic banquet, learned of it via Instagram. I mention this because it was probably disappointing for him, but mostly I just wanted to brag a little.

Whether it’s missing sports and theatre or not being able to see friends and wee animals, disappointment is a sense of loss, and with loss comes grief. Maybe it’s not the heartbreaking grief of losing a loved one but it’s no less real. Added up, and you can be excused for feeling sad and tired, for not living your best life even with all this time on your hands.

But I’m thinking this is not entirely a terrible thing. We’ve become accustomed to having everything and right away. Young people in particular have never truly experienced want. If nothing else, this crisis is giving us perspective on the privilege most of us live. They say things may never be the same, that there may never be a return to “normal.” But maybe the new normal will be an appreciation of everything that is truly good, like health, naps and, of course, Simone Biles taking off her pants.

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On a perkier yet Elizabethan note, I have a piece at Points in Case today: The Collected Chase Scenes of William Shakespeare.