Many people, including my friends and family, have already lost employment, don’t have their basic needs met, or are on the front lines risking their lives.īut now, more than ever, human contact and connection - virtual as it may be - can be a lifeline helping keep us all afloat. I have enough food, and shelter, and for now at least, a job that allows me to work from home. Sitting at home making FaceTime calls like there’s no tomorrow is a luxury I don’t take lightly. As my friend in South Philly texted me, “It’s like God pressed pause.” And, as silly as it sounds, it’s exactly like that.Īll of the career and life things I had been so busy about doing - and doing on a tight schedule, thank you very much - suddenly feel kind of pointless and inconsequential. The previous rules of etiquette - where a random FaceTime call is something I would absolutely ignore, much less inflict upon someone else - simply do not apply. When the world feels like it’s ending, everything is suddenly immediate. And the way I approach life feels different too.
I’m planning virtual happy hours for next Wednesday that feel recklessly far ahead. These days, six weeks ahead feels like a lifetime away in a world with a suddenly unknowable future. But, I realized, that modern life pace left little time when I wasn’t being productive: a barre class to make me stronger, an informative podcast to make me smarter, a lunch where I talked about my next story, a brief happy hour with friends where I would probably check my e-mail.
At the time, I knew why we were so over-scheduled - we were getting older, and our responsibilities (work, kids, time with spouses, after-work hustles) ate up our free time.