Last week, the family got Covid. It was our first time. Covid made a convenient excuse for me to push off the job search, writing, new business plans and exercise. All the priorities that I justified will make me better, and in the process happier, this year.
It's easy to give in when your body is essentially saying "WTF is this" to a strange cellular interloper. That was the first few days. The rest of the time, I slipped once again into the role of a stay-at-home father because our daughter had to quarantine with us at home. We were asymptomatic, but those are the rules. I don't make them. And I don't really know who makes them, except it was in the school's handbook, which I had to dig through the byzantine system of email, online platform and web portals to find. Backend systems for schools? That's another story.
I want to record how I spend my days because it's one way to get rid of the shame. To name the thing that I'm ashamed of is to start identifying it and breaking it up, making it a part of who I am and dispersing it so I can move on. I'm deeply ashamed of being unproductive. Spending the day not moving towards some sort of goal brings a dread, a horrible feeling of being an imposter. Here I am, 40something, and I'm spending my days muddling about the house.
The shame comes from external comparison. As a child, it was drilled in me to be better than other kids. In both direct and passive ways, my parents shamed, cajoled and pushed me to compare my achievements, progresses, failures and thoughts to other people, and in some ways, the act of looking at others became an act of critically looking at myself. Shame is what's left when you've lost the core understanding of who you are.
It's hard, when I look at my peers on LinkedIn, leading companies, attending Davos, making millions. Social media flattens everyone into a profile, and I can't tear my eyes away from those profiles.
A week has passed, and I'm no closer to my goals. Stuck in a rut. Let's describe what that looked like.
I get up before my wife to prep breakfast. The dishes in the dishwasher have been cleaned from the night before. I make sure to empty the dishwasher before starting breakfast. I can't stand a cluttered counter. My daughter is into bagels & lox. My wife likes bagels with egg & bacon. I make breakfast to order and call them to eat. I make two coffees. My wife hurries with her meal before sequestering the office. She'll spend the day on calls, worrying over presentations and making sure the cogs are spinning in the same direction.
I clean sink, put the dishes in the dishwasher and wipe the table. I get water for the dog. It's about 9:30am. I give the daughter some downtime and shower.
I cajole my daughter to get dressed, pry herself away from her books, and go walk the dog with me. We spend the next hour on the hill, and I'm momentarily blissed out, watching the dog romp and feeling the feelings that I want to feel - abandoning any self-consciousness to be in the moment.
We get back to the house, a little out of breath, and then it's time to prep lunch. Fish sticks for the kid, sandwiches for the adults. Another round of prep and cleanup. It's now 1pm. I had wanted to exercise. I had set the alarm for 6am but snoozed instead. I am weak. I tend to do this. Yesterday I set the alarm for 5:30am, thinking that I will start a routine where I will write without interruption before the house wakes up. Instead, I sleep until 7am. And that's because I slept at 11pm, after watching Fast Furious X on Amazon Prime.
In between the cleaning and food prep, I spend fifteen minute chunks on Duolingo. It feels like I'm making progress on something. At least I'm learning French, for the day when we'll live in Paris, right? I also play Street Fighter on my phone. I used to play Call of Duty a lot. My daughter tells my wife that "dad is always playing the wrestling game". I tell her she doesn't see all the things that I do, but she's right. I'm stuck in this rut.
It's afternoon. I now have a few hours to work. I have so many things to choose from. I can figure out our family's investment portfolio. I can work on closing down my last company, if only so the IRS will stop sending me notices of laxed payments from a company that doesn't exist. I can write. I can always write. I can start work on 3-4 business ideas that can grow. I can make headway on distribution for Quicktalk. So many things. Not enough focus. I am ashamed.
I watch Youtube instead. The Clippers are fascinating to me. James Harden is a comfort for me to watch. I've watched James Harden for 11 years now. I switch between Youtube and Threads and the NYTimes.
I catch up on the news and figure that I should learn more about generative AI. I do not.
I see that my daughter is working on some puzzles. She has finished two and is working on the third one. She must be really bored. She is going through her closet to see if there's anything that she can play with. She has exhausted her books and Netflix shows. I feel sorry for her, and get her to go to the garden with me. Together, we turn over rocks and poke branches and look under leaves. We find what we are looking for. Two fat earthworms and one baby slug. She names the worms William and Wilbur. The slug is Maria. William and Wilbur and Maria joins Speedy, the snail, in our homemade terrarium. My daughter is now bored again. She retreats into her rooms with her puzzles.
My mom calls. She' worries for me, for how much housework I'm doing. I haven't told her that I haven't been working for a year now, because she'll worries more. I proudly show her the garden through FaceTime. The ginger she planted is now growing nicely, and I transferred them to a patch of earth that she signaled would be good. She approves. I show her the lemon tree, and she is excited for me. Freeze the lemons, she says. Make some lemonade. I already have a pitcher in the fridge, I replied. A few years ago, I would've have bristled at her suggestions, her reminders; now, I let her words fall over me like a warm blanket. I'm glad we share a common fondness for plants and growing green things. I show her my attempts and regrowing green onions in several pots. She thinks I did a good job. I point the phone at the windowsill and show her the basil plant. It was dying and now can you see the flowers coming out, I asked. That means it's getting healthy, right. She tells me to find some chopsticks to help the wilted leaves stand up.
After our call, I found some wooden takeout chopsticks and plug them into the dirt. I feel accomplished.
It's now time to prep dinner.
I think of how Taylor Swift was in the recording studio on New Years Eve. How she caught lightning in a bottle and worked her ass off to keep riding the spark. The shame starts to creep in.
I spend a few hours on dinner. I'm glad I don't have to go to the grocery store for the day. That would've taken up a few hours. It's dark outside. I call the family to dinner. My wife finally comes out of the office after my daughter and I have almost finished our plates. I clean my plates quickly, then go to sit on the couch with Duolingo. The dog comes and sit next to me. I leave the daughter to finish her food with my wife. I can't keep asking her - the daughter - to eat. It drives me crazy to take on this needling, pestering, role.
I'm in bed while my wife cleans up the kitchen. I am watching Inside the NBA. Then a few Youtube videos. There are several books that are half read on my nightstand. I now have about an hour of free time. I should write. I should start on those new businesses. I should work on Quicktalk.
I do not. I put my daughter to sleep instead, giving her a few minutes to laugh unashamedly, with abandon. We play pretend with her stuffies. I keep the door open as I say goodnight. I watch a few more Youtube videos before turning in for the night. The shame is next to me. Warm. Familiar.