In for the long haul

As the weeks of quarantine drag on, I read about people who are ploughing determinedly ahead with big projects: reading War and Peace, learning a new coding language, or writing their novel. Those people are steady of purpose, patient, disciplined, and determined – temperamentally suited to the long haul. I admire and envy them, but I’m not one of them.

I think of them as like geese, who gracefully migrate enormous distances twice a year. Me, though — I’m more like a chirpy little chickadee. I dart (figuratively) from branch to birdfeeder, snap up a mouthful of seeds, and flit back to my branch. I like to watch from the margins; I prize my safety and privacy.

I don’t mean to put myself down. Chickadees are cheerful, cheeky visitors to the feeder in our back yard. Likewise, my personality has strengths I’m grateful for. (Affection, intelligence, and enthusiasm spring to mind.) Once I learned how to find the right conditions for my personality, I happily taught at the same school for twenty years and have stayed happily married to the same man for nearly thirty. So it’s not that I can’t go the distance; it’s that I need great views and picnic stops to sustain me along the trail. Duty can keep me working at dull responsibilities during crises, and I can muster enough self-discipline to accomplish boring tasks for short spurts. But stoicism is not my forte. After a push of a few hours or days with no break, I get tired. Then I start to whine.

Years ago, I learned how not to blame myself for not being strong and stoic. I was in my mid-thirties, teaching college and not coping well with being a junior faculty member in a department whose senior members lobbed grenades at each other without caring much about the effects on vulnerable young faculty. In tears, I confessed to my therapist that I just didn’t seem to be tough enough for that environment. Grace paused for a moment, then said words that marked a turning-point in how I think – not just about myself but about others, too. “Even the toughest plants,” she told me, “are tough only in the environment for which they’ve adapted. In the arctic, there are lichens that can live for a year under a layer of ice and snow. In the desert, some cacti can thrive despite months of drought. They’re extremely tough. Yet if you were to re-plant them in the heart of a tropical rain forest, neither the lichen nor the cactus would survive for long.”

Those were wise words, and — along with her reminder that I’d negotiated my way through graduate school just fine — they’ve helped me formulate my objections to well-meaning mottos like “Bloom where you’re planted.” (How about if we said instead, “If it’s possible, seek out a spot where you can flourish”?)

But even without blame entering into the equation, my personality is simply not well suited to long, dull projects. Yet according to the latest predictions of scientists, the world is still a long ways from any widespread, effective tests, treatments, or vaccines for Covid-19. People like me, who are at somewhat high risk for complications from the virus, may have to protect ourselves for months. Maybe years. So perhaps it’s not surprising that I’m finding the waters a little choppy these days.

I have a regular routine, which includes walks, an online class, Zoom chats, checks to charities, and so forth. These sensible activities certainly do buoy me up. And there are bright spots in every day. (It doesn’t hurt that I’ve got a nice home and smart, funny husband.) Even though a wave occasionally breaks across the bow, my little boat is not in danger of getting swamped by depression or anxiety.

I’m managing. And maybe managing is as good as it gets right now. But.

But if this virus is going to be around for a long time, I would like to do more than just get by. (That doesn’t necessarily mean being productive. It does mean that I would like my life to feel vivid, rich, and intense again.) What I don’t know is this: with my personality, and with this pandemic going on right now, is it possible to do more than get by? Or do I have to just hunker down and accept that the storm will take a long time to blow over? I don’t know.

Help me out here. How are you holding up? Are you able to do more than get by? (If so, how?) As I stumble toward my own hypotheses, I’d love to hear yours.