By Sydney Sainté
I have absolutely zero-percent idea what is happening.
When this blog piece gets posted, Los Angeles will have been in soft-yet-mandatory quarantine for roughly six weeks. We are all inundated, so I won’t burden you with my unemployment stresses or regurgitate general statistics and morose headlines. It’s been weird, to say the least.
What I will share is what I’ve discovered, about how I was living before. There is a lot of talk of people itching for daily life to “go back to normal” - listen, the things I would DO to get someone to give some love to these half-bleached coils? Crazy, irrational things. Or, you know, to be back at work, earning. But about two weeks into this, I realized I am averse to going back to life as it was. I guess it depends on your ‘normal’; some of us are privileged to have had an incredible quality of life pre-COVID. My life before was quite bearable, but I do not miss being constantly exhausted and battling small bouts of depression. I had a full-time job working at one of the best restaurants in the city, plenty of supportive family and friends, a career path that was meandering but clear, living paycheck-to-paycheck but was able to start paying off loans and things. I was working hard, not smart and I was miserable.
Part of this is due to the external pressures of our modern world; pressures predicated on social media presence, clout and the culture of the curated Self. Don’t get me wrong, I love updating the folks in my life about what’s going on, I live for a topical GIF or a smooth and sexy filter as much as the next influencer. It has both emboldened us to put ourselves out there, while bulldozing authenticity and vulnerability. But the fleeting, addictive wave of validation? Not as healthy. The comparisons, the jealousy, the hype, the materialism? Not welcome here. Because your definition of success starts and ends with you.
I’m on furlough from my job, which is scary. And yet it is a gift to have over thirty-five hours per week back. What caught me by surprise is how much of my LIFE-FORCE has returned. Before this, I’d typically set out to complete a lengthy list of daily tasks, planned down to the hour. I genuinely expected to have enough time to go to yoga, write ten pages of dialogue, do a self-tape, call my Grandma in South America, eat lunch and clean the bathroom - then I’d trot off to work, bright-eyed ‘n’ bushy-tailed for my eight-hour dinner shift only to get up the next morning to cheerily do the same, if not more. SPOILER ALERT! Things NEVER happened this way and by the end of the week, the task-list having doubled in size, my frame of mind would be ruined. My inner go-getter knocked out. I was struggling to live up to my own absolutely ridiculous expectations.
Fast-forward to now. From the start of quarantine (so mid-March?) I have started a weekly virtual play-reading series, meal-prepped, worked out 4-5 times a week, woken up before 10am and gone to bed before midnight (except for some late night True Blood binges), played with my son (my cat Kenny), spoken to everyone in my immediate family more in this March/April than the past six months AND found a new apartment for my upcoming move. I’ve even met a few potential lovers!
Bottom line: I am finally. Getting. My shit. Done.
Why now, you ask? Because I can. Because my energy reserves are restored, my “mojo” or lust for life flooding back in. And now, I’m mostly just pissed off. At how much time I wasted, living in the toxic narrative that the only obstacle in the way of my running into a full-throttle thrive was me. That I was actively failing, getting left behind. Waste of brainpower to think that way. And I don’t know why it took the world stopping for me to clue-in to how clueless I was.
Of course I wasn’t getting everything done before: I was too busy setting intangible goals, inventing unrealistic deadlines and falling into my own traps, making it next to impossible feel any sense of accomplishment.
But in Quar? Swaddled in blankets of time and with limited external contact, we are able to see our lives clearer, if we stay still enough. There is an odd liberation in this void of uncertainty. These are extreme and troubling times, people are suffering, death is all around us. Perhaps the bright side is the universality of how drastically our lives have changed in two months (albeit at different levels of privilege). Maybe your version of getting shit done is similar to mine, maybe you’re on your WFH flow, maybe you’re beating back demons or learning new skills or sitting and staring at the wall, trying not to panic. Doesn’t matter. There is no right way to be in this. Try to remain as present as possible and wade through the discomfort of not knowing what comes next. Do that and you too. Will get. Your shit. DONE.
I know it can feel oppressive. Channel the energy! Turn off the news, sit in the sun, tell everyone you love you love them and give a helping hand wherever you can. It’ll make you feel lighter, I promise. And let’s not go back. Let’s go forward, together.
My sincerest condolences to those who are in mourning, my utmost gratitude and encouragement to those on the frontlines of the most serious health crisis my generation has lived though to date and my sympathies to those who are feeling like they are in open water.
But remember, all you have to do is start swimming.
Sydney is a Caribbean-American, LA-based performer, writer and filmmaker, who can't stop eating and genuinely believes art can save the world.
