Archives for March 2020

Everyone’s shifting. We’re finding new ways of working, finding resources, staying in touch with friends. It can be a high stress situation. In such situations, I often have a tendency to hold up in my room, focus on work, and forget to be in touch with people I care about.

To counteract this I have a mental checklist (not a perfect system) of my people. The family and friends that I need to check-in with, even if they aren’t checking in with me. Some are daily, some are every few days, some are weekly. Especially in times like these, I make sure to go through my list.

If I leave it to the momentum of the day, I’ll forget. I don’t want to. It’s important to remember that we are fundamentally relational beings, and do what we can to maintain our relationships. Besides, we never know how much a simple “Checking in…” might mean to someone.

Have you been in touch with your people lately?

That’s the whole deal.

Last week, among the many school closings, one principal said this:

“We’ll never know if we over-reacted, because nothing will happen. We will only know if we did too little.”

That’s the point of an overreaction. Overreactions are corrections that go beyond what is perceived to be needed. A normal reaction is assumed to try to match the initial action. Serve and volley. Attack and block. If someone gets angry, we think of trying to manage the energy and de-escalate the anger.

Over-reactions go beyond this. Serve and spike. Attach and 5x attack. If someone gets angry, we overwhelm the energy with 10x the anger of our own. These overreactions are shocks to the agreements we normally hold in games and relationships.

Sometimes we need to overreact. We need to change dramatically to shift the momentum of situation. We will never know if the overreaction was actually and overreaction, because the dangerous outcome we are trying to prevent would not come to pass. Instead, in hindsight, the overreaction would look like the appropriate response.

This is not a time of small measures. Go big and stay home.

Many of us have lived lives that are based on certain assumptions. These assumptions, such as immediate access to edible food and drinkable water, are in turn built on huge systems that are exceptionally intricate and intertwined.

Current world events are testing these systems. In the middle of such a time of these how can we begin to plan for greater unknowns? Here’s a quick check-list that I use.

1. Think about what can be done right now (don’t beat yourself up for not being better prepared).
2. Get back to basics. What do you actually need? Food, shelter, clothing, hygiene, source of energy, other essentials?
3. Resources – find trusted resources (I like finding people I can trust) to compare notes with.
4. Use your imagination – the unknown is just that, unknown. Your imagination is your greatest tool to play out possible scenarios and plan for them.

I’m not a preparedness junkie, but having parents who lived through a war changes your perspective a little. In cases such as these, it’s okay to seem like you’re over-reacting. The goal is to never have to put the plan into place – better to be prepared, than not.

Seasons happen. By now many of us will likely be gearing up for more extreme measures of social isolation or are already dealing with cabin fever. My grandmother used to say, “Step by step.” She wasn’t even a tap dancer, but she got it.

She understood that every day would bring its own challenges. That each day was an opportunity to live well in that day. She understood that we should meet that day. Each day in its own time. Step by step, day by day.

Thinking this way may keep us from having to bear the full weight of the larger (maybe unanswerable) question of “when will this end?”

Keep your eyes and ears open to what’s around you. Meet the day. One day at a time.

I’ve been taking this time to rediscover and experiment with my daily routine. For the past 18 months I’ve had an office to go to, classes to teach in studios, and desk work to accomplish.

Now everything is happening in one room, from one place, and time feels like an open book. I’ve tried having a daily routine in the past, and have continually failed to hold on to any. Here are some things I’ve learned.

Having a daily routine is an ongoing experiment, especially for those who don’t have “regular work hours.” Everyone is different and your daily routine should be suited to you – when do you feel most creative? when do you have the most focus? I feel most creative in the morning or evening, and have the most focus in the afternoon.

So, this is what my current experiment looks like:

Mornings
8AM-9AM Wake up, breakfast
9AM-10:30AM stretch, workout
10:30AM-12PM creative/long-term work

Afternoon
12:30-2:00PM Communications – emails/phone calls/new letters
2:00-3:30 Task-list and production

Evening
4PM-5:30PM Writing
5:30-9:00PM Food, Friends, Conversation, and mind wandering
10:00PM Sleep

I don’t know if this is going to work, but I’m going to try. Here’s to having the time to focus and experiment with this more.

Some of us are well into a week if not more of social distancing and isolation. There will be many of us who have found the transition to working from home (or just being at home) challenging. I saw this list a few days ago and thought it a good reminder for those transitioning to work at home. The whole list is below, with some added reminders of my own.

1. Decide on a place to work. Make it comfortable.
2. Decide on the length of your workday, and set hours.
3. Try to minimize distractions while “at work.”
4. Remember to eat (Set a timer to help you remember)
5. Remember to move around (Set a timer to help you remember)
6. Get showered and dressed for work.
7. Use work as an opportunity to step out of the news cycle.
8. Not getting any work done? Take a break, reset, and continue.
9. Anticipate stress if both you and a partner or roommates are home. Talk it through before you reach a tipping point.
10. Try to set reasonable goals per day.
11. Cut yourself some slack.

Remember, with the added stress of a major transition and quite a few unknowns, it is even more important to take care of your health.

My parents lived in Beirut, Lebanon for the first three years of the civil war before finding their way out. When talking to them about our current situation, they talked about how their experience in the war seemed easier. At least there they could hear where the bullets were coming from, and make adjustments. Sometimes we just need to find a way of knowing. In our current scenario seeing some data* might help.

Here is a link to a website that a developer made to track global cases. The site uses data from BNO News, CDC, and WHO.

Here are two articles from Medium that use data to model the potential spread of COVID-19.

1. Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now
2. Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance

Something I keep in mind as I watch these numbers is that data is only as good as the measurements being taken. In this case that means the amount of tests being done, which varies country to country.

Resources are key in changes times. To know that you have access to food, shelter, etc., gives one a particular kind of peace. Over the past few days many resource lists have been shared from various organizations in various fields. Being someone who lives at the intersection of industries, I’ve compiled them here.

LaGuardia Performing Arts Center – Artist Resources
https://lpac.nyc/blog/2020/3/21/artists-resources

National Endowment for the Arts Resource List
https://www.arts.gov/covid-19-resources-for-artists-and-arts-organizations

ASCAP – A set of resources for music makers
https://musicunitesus.bandzoogle.com/home

I also have a list that I compiled last week. It includes some free offerings from arts organizations, things to remembers, and ideas for caring for the more vulnerable among us during these times.