Journalist and novelist Molly Jong-Fast calls herself “a pandemic-shutdown champion.”
I sit in my apartment day after day, week after week, focused on getting through the next few hours and not allowing myself to worry too much about, or even think too much about, the future. For this superpower, I have to thank Alcoholics Anonymous.
An older fellow in one of her AA meetings used to say he lived “in a day-tight compartment.” He only concerned himself with the activities in the current 24 hours. Back in March the author had to quarantine for two weeks but didn’t think of it as two weeks:
I thought of it as one day and then another day and another. The two weeks passed, but the pandemic did not. So I continued to live “in a day-tight compartment.” I still do. Every night at 8 p.m., I attend my Zoom AA meeting. Every morning, I think, Today I won’t drink and Today I’ll stay home and not contract the coronavirus.
Ms. Jong-Fast says she’s as obsessed with getting back to normal as everyone else is…
“…but I try not to worry about when that will be possible. I’ll lose it if I think in terms of hanging on until there’s a vaccine. Some people may find it helpful to tell themselves, It’s not forever. It’s just a few months. In my experience, though, when there’s no firm deadline for the end of an ordeal—and no one really knows when the pandemic will end—it’s better to focus on getting through the day. Life isn’t lived two weeks from now, or two months from now. Life exists in the moment and nowhere else.”
She knows this winter will be “one of the hardest, saddest winters of (her) lifetime. We all know it.”
“But it’s not winter 2020; we don’t live in winter 2020 until we do. All any of us have is right now. The only time we can possibly occupy is this moment of this day, and today I can drink my coffee, not my vodka, try to get my teenagers to talk to me, and do the next right thing.”