Island of Isolation

Last year, near the beginning of the current pandemic brouhaha, I wrote this piece to help people I know deal with the change. I felt I was in a unique place to offer such advice because my family and I have some experience in this area, and had at the time already withdrawn on our own for about six weeks. I will add commentary in italics based on the experiences of the last year. I was fortunate and got to shelter with most of my family, in a place where we could enjoy it. This was not entirely by accident. Onward!

A good friend and fellow creative wrote a nice piece on how to train oneself to endure prolonged isolation. I want to say a couple things on the same subject that they missed or didn't elaborate on:

Work. Find some work to do. Pick a project, conquer it. Pick another. Repeat. Work is the best form of play when it is work you choose. Paint figurines, carve soap, design a dream home. With work goes study. Pick something, whoop its ass. Being slothful will eat your mind, body, and spirit until they are useless.

When you are faced with isolation, treat it as a new life. It may end sooner rather than later, but commit to the change; you can always change back! Half measures and what ifs will not serve you; they will bury you.

Boy howdy did we work! We built better livestock shelters, remodeled our spaces, tended our woods, trained horses, expanded our garden to epic proportions, studied new things, and improved our lives. We adapted our careers in the same way.

Play. Games, costumes, puzzles, coloring, active or sedentary. Do this when you feel fried by your work of choice. Joylessness will destroy what is best of you, guard against it. Celebrate holidays BIG, and make up new ones. Life is a goodness and should be celebrated often.

We embraced a new holiday for us called "Quaranteen" where we cosplayed post apocalyptic characters for a day. We had been playing a post-apocalyptic table-top role-playing game, but when that got too surreal (my character and I were both counting cans of soup!) we banded together and wrote and played a whole new game with a sci-fi premise set 600 years in the future.

We developed chess and poker tournaments, had massive LEGO build days, and turned to art and music often. Any reason was a good reason for a party and we had a lot of them, just us of course. We set up tipis and lodges, made brush shelters, and had movie nights!

Groom. Get dressed, comb your hair, put on makeup, experiment. Make yourself ready for your day, every day. Feeling good will make you feel better.

It was a time to play with decorating fingernails, and sewing new outfits. We tried new scents and soaps. It was time to go crazy with hair changes, and to try new fashion. I am back to my overalls, and while I never left them completely, I do now know that more loose "hippie" clothes are on my horizon. I really need to re-embrace kilts!

Schedule. Routine, routine, routine. Clocks and calendars are tools not enemies. Write notes, write letters, send emails, keep a journal. Time is a companion... do not lose track of it.

Awareness of time kept our careers going, and the management of it led to more pleasurable and productive life in general. Using the time away from the rat race taught us to value it more. It is unlikely that we will ever be as oblivious to time or its waste again. Time is the one coin we are born with from which we must buy all we need and want.

Time and again in my life, writing letters by hand has been rehabilitating, and that has remained true through this crisis. As a long time journal keeper, nothing changed. I did leave social media for almost eight months, and I wonder if I should have made it more permanent. What a time-suck it all is!

Exercise. Even us cripples. Yeah... I AM a fat, gimpy guy... who can climb mountains, carry burdens, swing a hammer with conviction... whatever you are up to, do it! Every day. Meditation is a great part of exercise. Come what may, feeding your mind, body, and spirit right will serve you, period.

Boiling life down to what was needful reduced stress a lot. Raising and growing the food that carried us through the summer, fall, winter, and back now to spring was so much healthier on both ends! More time working, less scrolling. More time playing, less time commuting. We got tons of exercise and fresh air, we embraced our philosophical roots, and prioritized our time in more purposeful ways!

Watch. Use the visual media to decompress, not increase stress. Get enough REAL news to get the info you need, use enough social media to be supported and offer support, then use the rest of the time to view with deliberation, view by choice and emotional need, not by habit.

I found that leaving social media made the most sense after awhile. As I have returned, my efforts have been to withdraw again from a main feature of modern life. Like a mentor of mine once said, "Television is like a garbage dumpster: you will find something valuable, but only after rooting around in filth and getting messy for hours on end." I feel the same way about a lot of social media.

We happily enjoyed watching movies from our collection, and we used online services to increase our explorations. We also have a library of thousands of books, and those were - as they always are - a big part of life.

Emote. Laugh, cry, breath, grump as need be, get it out and keep going. Think more, react less. Embrace reality instead of demanding it conform to your mood; it won't. Don't grind on others, and don't let them grind on you... instead develop honest boundaries and honest expression, with honest listening and honest empathy. Start by being honest with yourself, which is always the hardest thing.

Hiding from what was happening, suppressing the myriad feelings about it would have done us no good. I am angry, here now at what might be the end because so many people stupidly prolonged the pandemic selfishly, and interfered with progress towards resolving it. I am angry because despite all the significant efforts my family made, we were infected against our will, on purpose, by someone who had called it all a "hoax" until they got it, until their friends died from it. Oh, they are back to calling it that... and that enrages me! My heart and lung damage...

As I write this, I am recovering from my first Moderna vax dose. It is unpleasant. I was unfriended this past year on one platform by nearly 300 people- and almost the entirety of my main hobby and profession of the last decade - for even hinting at the reality of the pandemic. Wearing a mask where I live... well, if I wasn't 6'5" and a former defensive end... I would get hassled more. I have emotions about these things, so do my family members; we express them and help each other on our bad days.

Folks, keep it as normal as you can... and you know, if it was rough when it was "normal," do your best to raise a new normal from this brouhaha, rise like a phoenix into a better normal; now is your time. All things, ALL things are temporary, good or bad. Remember that. What was, may never be again. And not all of that is bad, nor is all of that good. It is what it is. Accept what you cannot change, change everything you can that you abhor.

"Normal" is overrated.

Life is a problem... a beautiful and simply complex one, of great brutal elegance. You cannot solve it in one bite, and much of it is baffling. Solve the parts you can, and that will help you solve the hard ones. Perspective creates rhythm, hear the life beat and drum along.

You are on a starship hurtling through the heavens... and wonders abound... which brings me to my final thought:

Wonder. Take a look at life as the artwork it is. Take it all in... the splatter pattern of the drywall texture, the grain of the wood... all your senses... the miracle that you are, that all is.

We made sure to live deliberately, never reactively or passively. I think that is good advice in any era, under all conditions.

We learned a lot about our friends, neighbors, and countrymen. While a lot of that was unpleasant, we can move forward with real data, and not wishful thinking.

For now, the pandemic continues. Horse training this morning, watered the orchard, building a new duck pond, building a better way for me to engage online... this afternoon I think we will paint stones like lady bugs and bees.

-- J.R.H.