Work and Love in Times of Pandemic
Taking stock when you’re all Zoomed out.
I have always taken pride in my ability to dig in deep and get work done, undaunted and quickly. This last month—and the physical distancing brought upon by the global pandemic COVID-19—has challenged my perception of myself. As an extreme extrovert, I thrive on the magic that happens when working with other people—in the flesh. An engaging meeting of the minds and hearts nourishes my soul, and I can typically then grind for hours straight, transforming those magical ideas or concepts into a written document, plan or proposal. But this pandemic is anything but typical.
I am grateful that I can work remotely. I recognize that so many cannot work, and that many others must work in person, despite great personal and family health risk. I am even more grateful that some of my work has been able to pivot in response to COVID-19. The Co-op Capital loan project I co-manage for Nusenda Credit has begun to provide emergency response loans, providing undocumented workers and Native American entrepreneurs access to much needed safe and affordable cash, and me the ability to feel purposeful in this crazy time. My beloved Encuentro team members have spent their days calling immigrant students to check in, provide resources and share encouragement and love.
But it’s still hard. I am Zoomed out. I find myself less motivated to look at everyone’s face through my computer. And for work that doesn’t feel urgent, even if it is super important, I find myself cutting deals with myself: One more sentence and I can check my Facebook. An actual paragraph and I can read a news article. An almost full day's work and I can have a drink. Sound familiar? … So how to make meaning of this? What is the gift that this time is telling me? Perhaps, that I am so much more than my productivity. That extraordinary times require shifting and changing. That not knowing when it will end is a lesson in acceptance. That I am incredibly lucky to have a safe, comfortable and loving home life.
I close my eyes and I breathe deep. I settle in so I can notice the silver linings—the Zoom Shabbat dinners and Passover seder I organized to satisfy my need for maintaining tradition, the window into my colleagues’ private lives and homes, the desire to make art and send letters to people I care about, the virtual “triple date” with my high school best friends and our spouses, and the generosity all around me and all around the world. I look at my children, playing together more than ever before, and listen to my daughter re-living her Unicorn birthday party, which was actually an epic drive by parade filled with love and homemade posters.
I allow myself to be happy and sad. I think about the underlying inequality, racism and health disparities that condemn communities of color and working-class people to be more devastated by this crisis than affluent white communities. I dig in and deepen my commitment to work for justice and racial solidarity, now and always. I remind myself that staying home—because I can—is a values-based decision for the common good. And then, I get back to work. Because there’s work to be done, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, cocktail by cocktail. I got this. You got this. We got this.