There Are Two Americas Now, the Sick and the Bored
The art of balancing immense grief with a rich indoor life
A month ago, I had plans. I had a calendar filled with events I looked forward to: a friend’s DJ set, a reporting trip to the Pacific Northwest, a dinner party with my cookbook club. I was feeling burned-out from a dating life that seemed to be going nowhere, but energized professionally. While on the shortlist for the kind of New York-style journalism job that rarely occurs out here in Los Angeles, I remember thinking, It’s going to be a career year. Now we’re all stuck inside, and millions are filing for unemployment. And that journalism job has evaporated, too.
It has not been difficult for me to hunker down. As a freelance writer, I’ve worked from home for the majority of the last decade. I am also single and childless, a combination of usually frustrating factors which for the first time ever has placed me in an enviable position in that I don’t have to worry about taking care of anyone else, or God forbid, homeschool them. Other than my new, exclusively two-dimensional social life, the day-to-day fabric of my life today does not look so different from my life last month — or even last year. I continue to live alone in a 600-square-foot studio apartment filled with things that I love, with lots of art on the walls and thriving…
