Well. Wow. The world. Need I say more. I’m not going to hold-forth on the zeitgeist. There are a lot of other good writers doing that. I’m going to draw from my own limited experience and cautiously offer some insights and share my own guidelines, in the hopes that you might find a thruline, something to tether you to the mast in this storm.
1. Keep charity with others. This is the small, humble bond with each other we all share, a tacit nod to the other’s dignity and humanity. It’s not a grand thing really, and social media can provide you an easy laser knife to sever it. Be careful. Don’t give in to the informer culture. Stay away from the stranger’s eye and protect your friends as well.
2. Write a letter to yourself to remind yourself of what you value and what you generally need to do to keep sane. Because sometimes it all feels like dross, and you can’t trust your feelings right now. Put it somewhere you can access it easily.
3. Take a shower every day (or a bath). Moisturize with something a little more than you can technically afford. Wear deodorant, if that’s your thing. Those who wear makeup—take it off at night, ok? You’ll feel better about yourself. Don’t fall asleep in your bra.
4. Download the Good Housekeeping daily, weekly, monthly, yearly maintenance lists and try to follow them. You won’t complete everything, but it will be better than nothing, and you will feel guilty about the things you don’t do, so you’ll eventually do them, even if not on schedule. That way the rats won’t eat you and your house won’t be condemned by the city. Unless they’re doing something sneaky like trying to declare underprivileged areas as “blighted”, totally screwing minority property owners. But I digress.
5. Lay out your clothes and iron them for the week ahead. It’s sock weather! Get those together. Nothing makes one feel more hopeless than being sockless. Stretch, one of my homeless friends (now gone) told me this, and actually gave me a pair of new socks, because he noticed I frequently was without them.
6. 12 minutes at least of Zen a day. You can’tfind it? 5? Every other day? Not a Buddhist? Just make sure you are silent and still for a few minutes each day. Then fill the rest up with whatever you want.
7. Eat vegetables. Blecch. But yes, you must. Water, too. 8 oz every 2 hours. Ok?
8. Checklists. I exist on checklists. Because with the schedule I work, my brain is too fried to distinguish my right from my left. I have a checklist for what I need to go to work (badge, pager, glasses, hair tie, mask), what needs to go into the gym bag (deodorant, tennis shoes, earbuds—if I ever go back to the gym again once this cursed plague has recedes). Give your brain a rest.
9. Pay attention to the people you love. Listen to them. Look at them. Take their calls.
10. Objectively, even though you may not be “feeling” it, you know what you love, right? We are only made up of a sequence of minutes. Grains of sand in one pile or the other. Put your minute/grains in the love piles. Love what you love.
11. Figure out your sanity essentials and try to get them in. ZEWMS are mine—Zen, Exercise, Writing, Music, Study. Don’t get all hinky about them and feel guilty if you can’t get them done daily. Roll on, my friend.
That’s my half hour.
