Reframe2
Look, I’m not a particularly superstitious person (this is a brazen lie) but I may have jinxed myself with my previous post, especially that last line, which I fear was interpreted by the year 2026 as an aggressive challenge rather than the enthusiastic invitation I’d intended.
My excitement about the year dropped down a steep hill just three days after that post, when I mentioned to Alan that the swallowing-900-razor-blades feeling in my throat was one I hadn’t experienced since the last time I had COVID back in 2021, and it fell once again the following morning when a positive COVID test confirmed that I had completely nailed the diagnosis of my throat pain.
(I’ve just realised that whole paragraph was one sentence, but I’m trying to spend as little cognitive energy on this post as possible; I’ve heard that resting in all its forms is a helpful way of avoiding Long COVID, so I’m refusing to spend my limited brainpower on editing today! I apologise in advance!)
There’s a well-known therapy approach called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) which boils down to this: how you think affects how you feel, and also what you do. It gets a hard time on my social media algorithms (when used in black-and-white ways, CBT can be invalidating and harmful), but I find the whole thoughts-affect-feelings-and-actions premise helpful, both at work and in my day-to-day life.
As I climbed back into my bed after the second line appeared on my COVID test, I considered, for a brief moment, thinking, ‘Well, that’s just great. I was all set for fun this year, but now I have nothing but boredom ahead of me.’ I could have spent the week moping in between all the naps and TV shows, and feeling sorry for myself. But I caught myself, and realised that this was actually the perfect chance to practice exactly what I’d set out to, which meant aiming instead to see my sickness as an opportunity to take care of my body and feel fine about doing absofuckinglutely nothing for as long as it took me to be well again.
So that’s what I have been doing.
I’ve said yes to all the things anyone sent me to do, like watching my friend’s kids competing in swimming championships that were streamed live on YouTube, and waving at them on the starting blocks and yelling encouragement as they swam, even though they could not hear me because they were underwater, and also in South Australia. I napped. I watched the latest season of Emily in Paris! It was bad!
I wrote out feedback for a friend’s PhD project and then felt like a proud preschooler when she told me, sounding slightly surprised, that I was quite good at editing. I napped. I watched the latest season of The Bear! It was excellent!
I could focus on how rough it’s been trying to keep COVID away from the rest of my family while sharing one bathroom and living in extremely close quarters with both children on school holidays, or on the fact that I missed my first day of work after a) remembering the correct return date and b) looking forward to seeing both my group and my colleagues, or on the number of days it’s now been since I was last able to cuddle Hazel.
But also! I submitted my votes for the Triple J Hottest 100! I reduced my email inbox to zero emails, and then the next day I did it again, twice! I successfully watched my way through my entire watchlist on one streaming platform, which means I only have six more streaming platforms to watch my way through before I’ve caught up on all the TV and movies I’ve ever wanted to see!
Not to risk jinxing myself again, but I think I’m over the worst of it now. My energy’s returning. This evening, I took the dogs to the beach, and enjoyed remembering how to drive my car, and moving my poor, crunchy knees again, and feeling the cool sea breeze on my sweaty scalp.
I walked the whole length of the beach feeling grateful to be out of bed again and to live so close to such beauty, and then, when I got to the end, I thought about how much I actually appreciated my bed and very much needed to lie down again, and then I realised that I had utterly failed to consider the fact that I did not have my regular amount of stamina or lung capacity and so probably should’ve turned around much earlier than I usually do. I very slowly padded my way back to my car, wondering for the whole time if I would collapse or throw up.
But I didn’t! I made it home fainting/spew-free!
And then I sat down and wrote this, which turned out to be both a fun and creative way to end the day.