I miss my friends…

In the depths of winter, I usually miss sunshine, summer dresses, and sandals. This year, I can add friends and socializing to this list. I have made a conscious effort through these social distancing months to keep up my friendships and adapt my “normal” socializing to our “new normal,” but my best efforts have gone to the wayside thanks to frigid temperatures. 

Case in point 1: Book Club. This evolved from being in person monthly (for the last 6+ years) to becoming Zoom book club for a couple of months (not great) to evolving to outdoor Book Club (lovely in warmer weather), to no Book Club (it’s too cold). 

Case in point 2: Cocktails and dinners with friends. By the end of last April, Zoom happy hours stopped being fun for me. While outdoor dining and patio cocktailing were the highlight of my summer, I now think of them as an opportunity to “après ski in the city.” Not all of my BFFs are up for this type of frigid entertainment, and even for the bravest, outdoor dining means meals are shorter, and there is no lingering at the bar for four hours. 

I miss my close friends. 

I also miss those friends with whom I have “weak ties,” as explained by Amanda Mull in this recent article in The Atlantic.

I miss Lori, the American Airlines gate agent at the New Orleans airport, with whom I am on a first name basis and who gives the best hugs. I miss Bernard, the bartender and master entertainer at Thunder Burger, whose mimosas are my favorite (a dash of Triple Sec is his secret ingredient). I miss my Sunday football watching friends Liz (Patriots) and Mike (Bills), and Stacy (Eagles) and Jeremy (Steelers). I miss Andy who always greeted me with a huge smile when I walked in to the SoulCycle studio. I only know them by their first names, and I miss them dearly. 

Mull explains this well: “The psychological effects of losing all but our closest ties can be profound. Peripheral connections tether us to the world at large; without them, people sink into the compounding sameness of closed networks. Regular interaction with people outside our inner circle “just makes us feel more like part of a community, or part of something bigger,” Gillian Sandstrom, a social psychologist at the University of Essex, told me. People on the peripheries of our lives introduce us to new ideas, new information, new opportunities, and other new people. If variety is the spice of life, these relationships are the conduit for it.”

As we hopefully return to bars, restaurants, gyms, airports, and each other’s houses over the coming months, I will never take moments with friends, close or not, for granted again. To end on Mull’s words: “As we begin to add people back into our lives, we’ll now know what it’s like to be without them.”

Some of My New Sanity Rituals

Business has slowed drastically. My inbox is full of COVID-19 update emails instead of “normal” emails, so even “office work” is different. 

My meetings have been postponed and my trips cancelled for the foreseeable future. No trainings, store visits, events, or conferences for days. 

I have been home for 9 days straight. 

This is not my “normal life,” and I must rethink my days and my rituals, to ensure that I don’t think of every day as “day” (instead of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday etc), which I must admit I am guilty of. 

I am not there yet, but I am trying. Here are some of the things I have implemented (some new, some similar to what I did “before”) to stay sane during these insane times. 

  • Waking up between 4:30 and 5 am on weekdays (my normal wakeup time). 
  • Making a weekly game plan on Mondays as I usually would, focusing on prioritizing projects I have not had a chance to work on over the past six months. 
  • Listening to Yo Yo Ma daily in the evening (on Instagram). 
  • Skyping weekly with my sisters during the weekends (instead of monthly). 
  • Defining Wednesday as vacuuming day. Given that we brought our cat to Georgetown, my husband just gifted me a new Dyson mini vacuum which is perfect for cat hair. Did I mention how satisfying vacuuming is? 
  • Being super strict about my eating and drinking. I am still not drinking three days per week (although last week I slipped and only made it two days) and am very aware of the “COVID-19” and eating with awareness to avoid gaining weight.  
  • Notwithstanding the above, ordering takeout from my favorite restaurants to support them as best as I can. 
  • Doing 100 sit ups every day. 
  • Taking advantage of the many (free) webinars that many publications and associations are offering to discuss the current crisis and how to do business during such times. 
  • Ensuring that at least two evenings per week involve no “TV.” 
  • Listening to a Master Class per day (so far, I only did this once this week though). 
  • Doing virtual cocktail hours and lunches and dinners with friends (oh friends how I miss thee…).  
  • Reading. I am still finishing The Only Plane in the Sky, the timing of which I can’t decide is scary or fortuitous, following which I plan on reading mostly fiction until “life goes back to normal.” 
  • Reminding myself of all of the things I have to be grateful for, including my husband, my health, my home. 

What are you doing to stay sane? Please share! I need more ideas…