Pandiversary: a Letter to a Friend

 

Dear A., 

How are things? The world has become a strange place since I last saw you and now I sometimes feel like we’re all enacting a particularly dreary, drawn-out chapter from some author’s dystopian story. I’m not sure where you are in the world right now, but I know that of all people, you’d understand how I've been feeling.

This first year anniversary of the pandemic marks the first year out of many that I haven't taken a flight and the first year out of at least three that I haven’t moved cities once or twice.  This time last year I wouldn't have dreamt of staying home this long, but as we chased our own tails in lockdown we had ample time to witness life having a good laugh at what we planned for her in the last 12 to 15 months, didn’t we.

Ever since Covid sent the crazies around the world stocking up on toilet rolls I, like everyone else, like you I assume, had to stay put and it wasn't long before the nagging feeling that I wasn't doing enough started creeping up on me. A week before we were sent into lockdown I had decided to get a plane ticket to New Zealand to start working my way back to Australia, but had to pivot to emergency remote teaching instead. I had volunteered in a language school in Italy during the European summer in 2019, as you know, and it was my plan to gradually go back to teaching, but being thrown into the deep end like I was after years of hospitality jobs was not what I had imagined a smooth and pain-free career transition would be like.

As it turned out, planning lessons and sitting in front of a computer from morning to evening talking to people on Zoom from my old desk at home didn't seem as much of an accomplishment or as much fun as commuting to work,  being on my feet for 10-hour shifts, walking up and down, interacting with managers and co-workers, multitasking during rush hour, taking bookings and payments, performing cleaning duties on the go and talking to a hundred different people every day about food and drink menus, the weather, their coffee preferences, their day at work or their holiday itinerary, even my own background story, my accent, my plans for the future. 

We’ve always welcomed change in a way, celebrated it even, haven’t we. We’ve moved around changing everything time and time again, until the change was that there was no change any more. All of a sudden it was the same house with the same patch of green in the back garden, the same job, the same weak coffee, the same routine for over a year. What a challenge it is to not change! 

During lockdown, the feeling that I needed to do more and be more grew stronger and became relentless as the winter rolled on. The first couple of months of bitter cold were hard, I'm not going to lie, but then things started to get slightly better and then kind of OK, until they were fine again. But that feeling of underachievement would not loosen its grip, until one day I came across a talk by Dr. Paul Fleischman, an American psychiatrist and Vipassana (meditation) teacher. Such a great talk. It was about meditating in troubled times, here’s a nugget of what he said:

‘‘Inside of our nervous system are pathways to peace, wisdom, sociability and transcendent feelings that can guide us towards an excellent way of life. They are already built into us, and meditation is the teaching about how to activate and optimally use what we are born with as Homo Sapiens.

The first thing to remember when we confront a troubling time is that we are born with the ability to return to the feeling of peace. It exists inside of us. It is a product of the way the nervous system can be coded. And [...] our practice in meditation can help us constantly restore this feeling of inner peace.’’

I had given up meditation months before reading this because, in spite of keen efforts to sit down and quieten my thoughts, my mind was like a wild horse that wouldn’t stay still and kicked and head-butted me into quitting. I just couldn’t concentrate at all. That talk was the nudge I needed to start again. I actually spent some time at a meditation centre recently and as a byproduct of  two weeks of intensive Vipassana meditation the feeling that bugged me for a good while has faded into the background. Mind you, Vipassana works at a much deeper level than just soothing the agitated surface of the mind in the here and now and I would seriously encourage you to give this meditation technique a try, no matter if your mind feels like a wild horse rearing up or not (if you do decide to try, remember I said it was good, not easy!).

Anyway, I feel lighter from the neck up these days. Actually, I was driving to the gym yesterday and I realised it'll soon be a year since lockdown was first announced but the thought didn’t weigh on me, it just got me thinking about the things I did since I arrived back home, before and after the pandemic broke out. I made a mental list:

• Read all my travel journals from beginning to end and backwards.

• Started a blog with travel stories which I've updated periodically for over a year.

• Discovered that writing unburdens my mind.

• Signed up for the gym, which also unburdens my mind.

• Had a much needed, heart-felt, eye-opening and long-ass catch-up session with my best friend from my time at school and university.

• Got tickets to see two DJs in two different provinces within the space of two weeks, which meant I had to jump on at least four long-distance buses for journeys of about 7 to 10hs each way.

• Started teaching English online to local and international students, which didn't really feel like work because all the sessions took place in the lounge with the dog at my feet and I was barefoot/in sleepers every time.

• Opened Tinder, got bored and deleted it to free up space in my phone after reminding myself it never really worked for me, except in Sydney, Australia, where even Tinder activity was prolific.

• Had a minor surgical procedure done and went under anesthesia for the first time. Also confirmed that the mere odour I associate with aseptic, pastel-coloured hospitals weakens my knees like nothing else does.

• Coloured mandalas.

• Had a bizarre experience when I passed out (for the second time in my life) at a friend’s and woke up as if from a pleasant dream, even though my head was on the floor among sizeable, dangerous-looking shards of glass (had blacked out trying to take some fresh air by sticking my head out the sliding glass door to the balcony and my dead weight had subsequently (and very inconveniently) fallen on the glass, smashing it to pieces but miraculously missing all the pointy bits that could have stabbed me).

• Gave my friends the freight of their lives while having a near-death experience lol (didn't get a single scratch or bruise from the fall or the shattered pane but, regrettably, my friends' nerves were wrecked after having to untangle me from the window courtain I ended up wrapped up in).

• Had a (unexpected but welcome) thing with someone which lasted the warm-and-earthy-food, couch-cuddles-wine-and-Netflix season.

• Took up half a dozen online professional development courses and finished two of them.

• Took up a self-directed online Italian course and downloaded graded readers in a (moderately successful) attempt to start teaching myself.

• Got my driver's licence (for the first time ever…) on the second attempt, because I forgot to fasten my seatbelt before starting the car the first time round, and they failed me before I could understand what had happened.

• Travelled 11hs to a meditation centre to sit a 10-day Vipassana Meditation course in complete silence and then went back again as soon as they reopened after lockdown to serve as a kitchen hand on another edition of the same course out of the loving kindness of my heart (I'm being silly here, but that's how it works and I volunteered).

• Slept in a tent for 10 days straight for the first time in my life, which made me develop a fervent devotion for a pocket torch, use a bush as a night toilet, get ‘heavy rain on canvas’ sounds live,  and generally share the grounds with creepy-crawlies like the good old spiders, scorpions, giant black ants, and several specimens of a huge stinky bug called ‘chinche molle’.

• Went on a break with friend/travel sister I. (twice), thus managing to meet up with her at least once a year even during pandemic times.

• Trekked up 5.000mts worth of mountains in the Sierras de Córdoba, including the Uritorco, but didn't see any evidence of UFO activity (they allegedly landed in the area a few decades ago leaving a circular burn mark on the side of the mountain).

• Stayed more connected than usual with friends from across the globe and even managed to arrange video calls with people who were each in a different time zone.

• Gave myself up to drama and unattractive crying once or twice.

• Reread The Hobbit and The Picture of Dorian Gray and loved each word and relished in each metaphor, more than the first time I picked them up, years ago.

• Had random surges of gratitude towards and appreciation for friends and people I've learned something from in the past few years and thanked them in silence throughout the year.

• Adopted a cat and went from being a dog lover to being a dog and cat lover. Also attached more meaning to the saying 'Curiosity killed the cat'.

• Read poetry to my mum, went hiking and camping with her to places around my hometown I didn't even know existed AND stuffed my face with her food all year round.

• Celebrated my birthday with my dad, shared good wine with him on numerous occasions  and ate more asado at his than in the last seven years abroad.

• Fell asleep just before midnight on Christmas Eve.

• Did not catch the virus so far.

Those are the highlights. Not too bad, I thought, for a time of pandemic in the circumstances that we've experienced it on this part of the world.

What about your year, how have you been holding out? Have you discovered any new abilities, any new strengths or weaknesses of yours you didn't know were there before? (I suppose we had never been confronted with a pandemic and so couldn’t really know what we ourselves were like during one). Have you bought insane amounts of toilet paper for no reason or baked the hell out of all the bread you could store in your pantry? Have you lost it at any point or has the pandemic not affected your life in any noticeable way? 

I hope another year doesn’t go by before our next takeaway coffee date. Watch a good sunset for me if you’re still by the beach and write soon.

*tight hug*

Victoria.