I wrote my last blog post on Leap Day – February 29, 2020. It was my usual somewhat-insightful-and-moderately-self-absorbed, upbeat, tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek commentary. It’s now almost ten weeks after Leap Day – and the vast majority of my time between then and now has been spent in the comfort of my lovely home, working away at my same job, cooking healthy dinners, working out regularly in our home gym. You know, normal stuff. Ordinary stuff. Comfortable stuff.
Except despite being gainfully employed, healthy, perfectly safe, and surrounded by all of the creature comforts a girl could possibly want, nothing about the last eight weeks has been normal. Or ordinary. Or comfortable.
Because now there’s this thing called COVID-19.
You know, that microscopic little disease-causing organism that went and changed the world before anybody knew what was happening?
Now, I like to think that being raised on a pretty steady diet of the rural Midwestern “keep a stiff upper lip” ethic made me physically and mentally hardy. I’m no sniveling, spineless, whiney-ass crybaby. Of all people, I should be the least affected by all of this COVID-19 nonsense. Of all people, I should be the one to suck it up, knuckle down, put on my big-girl panties, and approach the next however-many-months I have to stay inside my home with aplomb – relishing the extra free time to read a book, or play the piano, or have fun wine tastings over Zoom with friends I don’t get to see very often.
Yep, I’ve done all of that. And I do find joy in reading more and commuting less. But once every couple of weeks or so, I still find myself curled into the fetal position on the floor under a blanket. Losing. My. Ever. Loving. Shit.
It’s now early May. Under normal circumstances, this time of year, I’d be thinking about Memorial Day and our annual trip to Wisconsin for a long weekend. I’d be putting out some feelers to people about a possible summer event at Ravinia. I’d be practicing with my concert band for our July 4th concert. I’d be starting to conceptualize a fall vacation. My life has a rhythm to it. And rhythm is very different than “routine.” Routine is repetitive motion – muscle memory, if you will – and actually, my routine hasn’t changed all that much. (Even if it had, that’s okay. I’m used to disruption in routine. I welcome it.)
But the rhythm – the underlayment of my routine – has become erratic and unbalanced. I can’t make plans. I don’t know what June will look like. I don’t know whether I’ll be playing with my concert band at the July 4th fireworks. I don’t know whether there will be July 4th fireworks. I don’t know when I’ll see my parents or my friends in person again. I don’t know when I’ll see the inside of my office or grab a cup of coffee with a colleague again. The rhythm has been disrupted, even if not the routine, and it’s deeply unsettling and uncomfortable and chaotic.
(I know, I know. This all sounds an awful lot like First World Problems.)
But while I totally get that so many people have it so much worse, this quarantine experience feels to me like this: picture it; you’ve gone to a bar to check out a Led Zepplin cover band (remember when that was a thing people could do? That was pretty cool). The band is slaying Immigrant Song, but midway through it, the John Bonham wannabe behind the drum kit starts having a stroke. This guy is a pro – he’s doing his best to keep it together, but his right side won’t cooperate. His kick drum beat becomes unsteady and erratic. His grip fails, and he drops a stick. He keeps hitting the drums, trying to restore order, but he’s lost his internal metronome.
Now, the band knows Immigrant Song backwards and forwards. They’ve practiced it a thousand times. It’s routine – muscle memory – but without the underlayment of that consistent, driving drum beat, the band doesn’t have a rhythmic compass. And without it, even though the rest of the band keeps playing the right notes, the whole thing turns from music to mush.
For the last eight weeks, I’ve felt like my internal drummer has been having one long, unending stroke. And even though the rest of my internal band is still playing the right notes, my drummer is just flailing about and making noise. It’s chaos. Mush. An irregular heartbeat desperate to be shocked back into its normal rhythm. And the cacophony, the dissonance, is pounding in my head all the time.
Hardy, incurably upbeat me knows that this too shall pass. My drummer will recover. Or maybe he’ll just learn to play with one arm – it’s been done before. And if he doesn’t recover? Well, there’s plenty of music to be played without a drummer at all. Maybe not the hard-driving rock beat I’m used to, but something softer. Sweeter. More beautiful. After all, Mozart didn’t need a drum kit.
Either way, it’s music I don’t know yet. And until I learn it, you’re going to find me every now and then lying on the floor under a blanket losing my shit.
Lawyer At Lunch 