What to do when the world stops
“So what I’m trying to say is you should text me back.
Because there’s precedent. Because there’s an urgency.
Because there’s a bedtime.
Because when the world ends I might not have my phone charged and
If you don’t respond soon,
I won’t know if you’d want to leave your shadow next to mine.”
What do you do when the world stops?
This morning was the first time I felt it lurch to a halt in my little corner of Seattle. The two local watering holes where I’ve gotten to know the bartenders over the past month closed down last night. The boathouse didn’t open this morning and it’s not going to open tomorrow. The coffee shop at the end of my street is still pouring but the tables and chairs are all gone – thanks for coming in, but please swipe your card and get out. No teammates to see in the pre-dawn half-light. No packed cafes to work in. No corner tavern where I can pop open my laptop in the evening and half-write, half-eavesdrop on the Tinder date going down two stools over from me. Nowhere to be alone, but still together.
It’s funny the things that give me a sense of control. And the things that rip it away. In almost every tangible sense, the escape that I was seeking a month ago and the environment I felt so good in up until yesterday are exactly the same. It’s a bluebird day out here. The running path is still snaking its 6.2-mile way around the lake. I have all the time in the world to read and think and write down what comes to mind. Twenty-four hours ago my friends and I were high-fiving on a summit in the Cascades, talking excitedly about when we could try for our next one and where to get a pint to celebrate this one. Today the mountains are right where we left them and the trailheads are open, just waiting for boots to start tramping.
But all of these things that even yesterday felt like agency – big moves and big choices and micro-spike-clad steps I was making to take my life back into my own hands – now feel like a trap. I don’t want to go up in the mountains for hours. I want to row my little boat off a dock I can see from my roof deck, but I’m not allowed to step onto it anymore. I want to pull off from my run with a mile to go because the guys I know at Fremont will pour me 3 ounces of their best dark beer to help me kick the last little bit home – but they won’t be there. I don’t want to think deep thoughts in my room this afternoon. I want to hang out with my friends in Truman’s kitchen and hug my mom on her birthday.
What do you do when the world stops, and you’re already doing exactly what you thought you needed to do to fix it? I’ve had this feeling before. When things went just haywire enough, all at the same time, to render life in mid-November unrecognizable from what it had been in early October. Clients disappeared. Routine disappeared. A place and person who felt like home were still there, right where I left them – but I couldn’t have them anymore. Coming out here to Seattle was what I could think to do to fix it. Part running away. Part starting over. A trial separation from a physical space to see if it did anything to help my head space. A geographic kick in the ass to see if it would get my interior world moving again. And it was starting to. I felt better. I felt more in control of feeling better.
Control - you can feel all of us grasping for it. Trying to eke out just a drop of it wherever we can. For some of us that means stocking enough canned goods and toilet paper to skip the next six months of Trader Joe’s runs. For others, it means posting memes that make fun of the toilet paper hoarders - if that level of preparedness is ridiculous, it’s unnecessary. Which means we’ll be okay if we haven’t done it. A couple days ago I was at the neighborhood pizza place, listening to a couple liquored-up locals talk about how overblown this whole virus thing was. The owner nodded her head in affirmation, joining them in a shot of Jager as she slid a pie into the oven: “Let those downtown assholes do whatever they want, we’re not going anywhere.” They’re closed today, too.
What do you do when the world stops – supply chains frozen, production halted, bodies confined to a few hundred square feet without a Peloton. Aspiring Olympians sitting on couches instead of a start line. Endless headlines and real-time updates that halt any real comprehension dead in its tracks. If the absence of control is chaos, how can we make any of this feel like a choice?
I’ve only been able to think of one productive thing to do so far. I’m charging my phone. And I’m going to text and call my friends and family in the hours and days ahead. I can’t be with a lot of them. I can’t get their new business pipelines moving or hand sanitizer delivered to their door. But I can let them know I love them. And I can tell them that they’re the people who have always kept me going. Especially when the world around me stops.
