Charlie once again putting the outright weird incomprehensible mess of my covid feelings into perfect eloquent words. Thanks man. As other Alex said, I love this newsletter
Reading this has helped me understand many things. During the initial months of the pandemic, I lost my dad, then my uncle and a family friend. I got sick with Covid, my dog got sick with a severe case of diabetes. My sister lost her dog. One of my closest friends is now a vaccine denialer, it's been hard to maintain the friendship. I've been feeling all the time like I've been waiting for something to settle, like I've been adapting to changes. But never felt that maybe, the right way to look at it is that I'm the one who's changed and what I'm adapting to is this new person. My whole world, the whole world has changed. Why wouldn't us change, too? This has been illuminating. Thank you very, very much. May you be well.
My fixation was with American Airlines and the perks of my AMEX platinum card. I could so relate to everything you wrote. But lucky you. You figured this out at 33 with a little help from the pandemic. I'm 73. Not sure what that says about me! Never going back again either though.
I'm different than I was during the first phase of the pandemic, when decisions were much more black and white. Now it is nuanced, risk calculations without enough data. Living in a state where many people aren't vaccinated and being married to someone with an organ transplant (and no antibodies from the vaccine), these calculations are just an effort by my brain to have some control, to fight back the sense of danger. I wonder if this is how my grandparents felt about polio.
Everything resonated in this. Right down to the travel from Santa Fe and those 6am delta flights out of Albuquerque an hour away. 😬 also read this while doing my peloton night ride because it’s one of the few moments in my day when I can just chill. Everything is different and I’m finding myself pissed off regularly by the people who are pretending it isn’t.
I have used bicycling (single speed MTB) as a means to process via self-flagellation in the past. I was in the best shape of my life. That was ten years ago. Then 2016 and the rest happened and now I'm 52 and at record weight. I put gears back on my bikes, but California is burning. There's no escape. At least there's still beer in this liminal world.
You're not the only one. My kid brother's widow (he died having achieved a million United miles as an international telecoms consultant) recently celebrated her next-to-last travel commitment, made pre-pandemic, and never quite cancelled. She's spent the last few decades traveling all over the country many times each year, teaching workshops and seminars in various fabric arts techniques, mainly weaving and garment construction. During the pandemic, she's found new fulfillment in embracing the virtual lifestyle. She's started a Youtube channel (with technical help from daughter, who has become full-time assistant), taught classes online, and plans never to go back to traveling.
The disillusionment you are experiencing over health messaging, vaccine distribution, disinformation and performative (did I use that word right?) displays of freedoming can be explained if you have the framing and vocabulary to posit a theory.
Charlie, the disillusionment you're experience might be coming from a belief that science, religion, etc., are on a treasure hunt to find a chest filled with Platonic reason in its purest form.
A sociologist or anthropologist would be having a field day right now studying our zeitgeist. Their disciplines would tell them that what we are witnessing is one of the central themes of their fields: Values systems are in conflict and competition.
What we are also seeing is that our values systems are speciating: Our political, organized religion vs. secularization, identity and metropolitan vs. rural tribes are coalescing around shared values while simultaneously diverging from differing values. This creates a feedback loop where values systems come into such sharp clarity that they will be incompatible and irreconcilable, necessitating conflict and competition.
Charlie once again putting the outright weird incomprehensible mess of my covid feelings into perfect eloquent words. Thanks man. As other Alex said, I love this newsletter
“The point isn’t that the pandemic made me a better or worse person but that it has made me a different person.”
So well stated. As someone who also made some big life changes in the past year and a half, I can relate!
I love this newsletter.
Reading this has helped me understand many things. During the initial months of the pandemic, I lost my dad, then my uncle and a family friend. I got sick with Covid, my dog got sick with a severe case of diabetes. My sister lost her dog. One of my closest friends is now a vaccine denialer, it's been hard to maintain the friendship. I've been feeling all the time like I've been waiting for something to settle, like I've been adapting to changes. But never felt that maybe, the right way to look at it is that I'm the one who's changed and what I'm adapting to is this new person. My whole world, the whole world has changed. Why wouldn't us change, too? This has been illuminating. Thank you very, very much. May you be well.
My fixation was with American Airlines and the perks of my AMEX platinum card. I could so relate to everything you wrote. But lucky you. You figured this out at 33 with a little help from the pandemic. I'm 73. Not sure what that says about me! Never going back again either though.
I'm different than I was during the first phase of the pandemic, when decisions were much more black and white. Now it is nuanced, risk calculations without enough data. Living in a state where many people aren't vaccinated and being married to someone with an organ transplant (and no antibodies from the vaccine), these calculations are just an effort by my brain to have some control, to fight back the sense of danger. I wonder if this is how my grandparents felt about polio.
I too used to have a fixation with my SkyMiles...
What I've been saying is: *I'm just so tired, and I don't know why.* I'm fairly certain you just explained it.
Everything resonated in this. Right down to the travel from Santa Fe and those 6am delta flights out of Albuquerque an hour away. 😬 also read this while doing my peloton night ride because it’s one of the few moments in my day when I can just chill. Everything is different and I’m finding myself pissed off regularly by the people who are pretending it isn’t.
I have used bicycling (single speed MTB) as a means to process via self-flagellation in the past. I was in the best shape of my life. That was ten years ago. Then 2016 and the rest happened and now I'm 52 and at record weight. I put gears back on my bikes, but California is burning. There's no escape. At least there's still beer in this liminal world.
You're not the only one. My kid brother's widow (he died having achieved a million United miles as an international telecoms consultant) recently celebrated her next-to-last travel commitment, made pre-pandemic, and never quite cancelled. She's spent the last few decades traveling all over the country many times each year, teaching workshops and seminars in various fabric arts techniques, mainly weaving and garment construction. During the pandemic, she's found new fulfillment in embracing the virtual lifestyle. She's started a Youtube channel (with technical help from daughter, who has become full-time assistant), taught classes online, and plans never to go back to traveling.
Well put. As others have said, thank you for articulating what is going on in all of us.
The disillusionment you are experiencing over health messaging, vaccine distribution, disinformation and performative (did I use that word right?) displays of freedoming can be explained if you have the framing and vocabulary to posit a theory.
Charlie, the disillusionment you're experience might be coming from a belief that science, religion, etc., are on a treasure hunt to find a chest filled with Platonic reason in its purest form.
A sociologist or anthropologist would be having a field day right now studying our zeitgeist. Their disciplines would tell them that what we are witnessing is one of the central themes of their fields: Values systems are in conflict and competition.
What we are also seeing is that our values systems are speciating: Our political, organized religion vs. secularization, identity and metropolitan vs. rural tribes are coalescing around shared values while simultaneously diverging from differing values. This creates a feedback loop where values systems come into such sharp clarity that they will be incompatible and irreconcilable, necessitating conflict and competition.