Practical Skills for Living in a Pandemic

Basic Cooking

Just…start with an onion and try not to burn it.

Coping with Isolation

People with chronic illness will go through many periods of isolation in their lives. That’s what happens when you are too sick, or weak, or fatigued, or in pain, to leave your bed or your home. Work is mostly out of the question, and even work from home will be interrupted by projectile vomiting at times. You’re lucky when a loved one shows up, because Tom cat doesn’t even want to listen to you talk anymore. Yes I am writing about myself.

Living in isolation requires significant mental health training and setting good boundaries. I’m sure there’s lots of other blogs that talk about that shit so you should probably google search it. Look into meditation, take lots of naps, set up zones in your home. Keep your bedroom just for sleeping and scoodilypooping so you can sleep better. Develop some routines. Make a spot for work that you can leave and have leisure time somewhere else, even if its a different chair in the same room. You have to trick your body into thinking that everything is normal.

Finally, learn to reach out with your peach out. Call a friend instead of texting. Yell at your neighbor across the street. Make jokes with the other people who were waiting for a paycheck last weekend and were totally broke when every other person was buying enough frozen dinners and hand sanitizer and you KNOW they bought up all the dried whole grains that I eat for every meal EVEN THOUGH it’ll be a last resort not a staple DAMN IT.

Embrace Uncertainty

You don’t really have another choice. Acceptance might eventually replace the crippling anxiety and compassion fatigue. You don’t have to go all the way to nihilism.

Mutual Aid

Organize the people you know to meet our material needs. Figure out ways to feed ourselves, fight evictions, keep utilities on, and otherwise take care of our basic needs. Build countervailing power through community organizing. Mutual Aid is about building the infrastructures for the world we want to live in today. There are many historical examples, especially those responding to natural disasters exacerbated by climate change and neoliberal capitalism. The trick is now how to do that while social distancing.