All the things I found helpful when dealing with my mild COVID case

As promised, here are things that my girlfriend and I found most helpful when dealing with our mild COVID cases, as well as some things I wish I’d known before getting sick and that I’d do differently if I could. (Note: I’m not a healthcare professional and you should not take the below as binding medical advice; this is a blog! Please talk to a healthcare provider about this stuff if you’re sick, and listen to what they tell you.)

Things that were quite helpful for us when we had COVID:  

Giant water bottles with straws. I was really having trouble staying hydrated in the first few days of getting sick, in part because I didn’t have a good drinking vessel. I knew exactly what I needed: the kind of no-fuss water bottle with a bendy straw that you get when you stay in the hospital. Two days later, these bottles arrived and they genuinely helped so much. Here’s mine ($6.10) and my girlfriend’s ($16.99) — aside from cold meds and a thermometer, this is the main thing I would recommend buying now. 

A neti pot and distilled water. I swear by a neti pot for allergy problems, and having a few neti pots helped so, so much throughout the week. There was a point early on when my sinus pressure was so awful, my bottom teeth hurt, and the neti pot was life-changing. Also be sure to get the distilled water for it in advance so you are ready to go/don’t get a brain amoeba from using tap water! :) There are a bunch of different types of neti pots out there; I prefer the plastic teapot style/think it’s easiest for beginners. Most come with the saline packets, but if you already have a neti pot that you use regularly, make sure you also have a decent supply of the saline ready to go. 

Putting a temporary trash can next to the bed. Early on, when I was burning through tissues at an alarming rate, I took a tip I got from UFYH and put a brown paper bag next to my bedside for used tissues, DayQuil wrappers, etc. It was so nice to have this! Nightstand tops get filled up (and gross) quickly when you’re sick, and it was a small thing that helped me feel a little better and less disgusting. 

A stick of men’s deodorant. From the very beginning of our COVID cases, we used a stick of L’Occitane deodorant to see how our sense of smell was doing; this ended up being helpful because it’s a strong and familiar-to-us scent. Also, because we were using it the entire time, we had a clear sense of how our sense of smell was waning day to day. I think a stick of Old Spice or any other men’s deodorant would work just as well, assuming you give it a few sniffs when you’re healthy. 

The thing my girlfriend and I both found is that when your smell and taste starts to go, it can be really subtle at first, and you can quickly forget what anything used to smell and taste like. Suddenly it’s like, Is this just bland or am I unable to taste it? Did these ground coffee beans always smell this faint? So my advice is to opt for things that are really recognizable to you. (At one point, after I felt like I had no idea what ramen is supposed to taste like, my girlfriend had me bite into a fresh cut lemon slice to see if I could taste that. When I didn’t really wince at it — I could sense “sour” but not much beyond that — we knew my sense of taste was in trouble.)

Slowing down, literally. I’m a fast walker and often move around my apartment at a pretty quick pace. That is...not ideal when you’ve got COVID and need to take it easy. I was good about staying put in bed, but I also forced myself to just move slower whenever I did get up, and to move at a much much much slower speed than I normally would when I started doing chores again. 

A daily vitamin cocktail. Every healthcare provider we talked to suggested that we take Vitamin D, Vitamin C, zinc, and magnesium. So did some friends, and my mom. It felt very, like, How did we not get this memo? So, that’s something I’d recommend buying today. (But please look to a healthcare provider for dosage info, drug interactions, etc.)  

Orange juice. Our friend Doug left us some orange juice (along with a few other things, including flowers!) when he picked up Chuck, and it was great to have. Drinking OJ definitely helped me stay hydrated, especially as I waited for my giant water bottle to arrive; LaCroix was just not up to the task. (Orange juice was also the only thing I could really taste for a couple of days there, so I found it very comforting.) 

Tea. Another thing several friends sent that was crucial to staying hydrated and feeling good; it was also good to have a mix of herbal tea (get peppermint, for nausea!) and caffeinated tea because we weren’t making coffee all week in the interest of taking it easy. 

Advil Sinus Congestion & Pain. This was a One Medical provider rec, and I ended up really liking it for sinus symptoms. Also, it only involves taking one pill, and the packaging is much easier to deal with than DayQuil. It’s very similar to DayQuil but lacks a cough suppressant, so it’s what I’ve been taking on days when my sinus problems don’t include much coughing.

Capsule. I’ve been using Capsule for prescriptions for the past year and have been really happy with it — they have great customer service, quick turnaround times, and are just genuinely helpful. They also now deliver OTC meds, so we were able to get things like DayQuil and NyQuil. (I also noticed last week that they deliver Plan B, which is a good thing to know if you’re having the kind of sex that could lead to pregnancy!)

Opening a window. Ventilation is a great way to help keep housemates safe if you’re sick, but even if you don’t do it for that reason, know that fresh air can be a very welcome relief if you’re in bed sick coughing and sneezing. When we finally opened the windows after a few days in bed, it felt amazing. We also put a fluffy Brooklinen quilt on the bed for the duration of the time we were sick (like duvet o’clock, 24/7) and being bundled under that with the windows open was very nice — the cheap version of, IDK, being in a hot spring in Iceland. 

Patient.info. This UK-based website was a good resource, with articles that get to the point in the way that, say, the New York Times does not. A couple we found helpful: Coronavirus: what are asymptomatic and mild COVID-19? and Coronavirus: what are moderate, severe and critical COVID-19? It was really useful for us to be able to see exactly where our symptoms fell on this spectrum when we were feeling worried. 

A natural way to drain sinuses. One night during Week #2, I was so, so congested — to the point that a neti pot wouldn’t even work on one side of my nose; I was just completely blocked, and my ears were starting to feel really terrible as a result. So I started poking around on YouTube for some kind of way to massage my face and ended up going with “Lymph Drainage for the Ears from Louisville Massage Therapist at MassageByHeather.com.” It worked wonders — like, within the first minute or two, I was already feeling relief. 

5-4-3-2-1. This technique was a Sally recco for dealing with catastrophizing, and it helped a lot with the uncertainty and anxiety of having COVID. 

Muting the term “COVID” on Twitter for a week. I did this after a tweet about a young healthy guy dying of COVID popped up in my feed, and I really recommend doing it after a positive test. 

Finally, my best advice is that, if you can afford to, it’s a really good idea stock up on stuff while you are healthy. We had a lot of what we needed on hand because we bought it last fall, and I’m so glad we did; it made everything less stressful and less painful. We had DayQuil, NyQuil, Advil, Tylenol, Mucinex, tissues, saltines, a thermometer, and neti pots. We did not have distilled water, packaged ramen, popsicles, or any of the recommended vitamins, which meant we had to get them delivered — so add things like that to your cart now if possible.

Things that were...debatable:

Pulse oximeter. This is something we got mixed advice on from the different healthcare professionals we talked to; we ended up using the one we bought last summer (and apparently the city of New York will give you one as part of the care package they offer everyone who tests positive). This NYT article is a good background/explainer. Personally, I found it very stressful to use the pulse oximeter often, because the numbers do fluctuate a lot, and ours occasionally told me my heart rate and oxygen was so low I would have been fully dead...only to give me a completely normal reading 10 seconds later. (These devices can apparently be less effective on people with dark skin, so maybe that played a role — it’s hard to say.) Ultimately, I’d say listen to your doctor’s recommendations on this one, and maybe set limits for how often you’ll let yourself check this number. 

“Deep yoga breaths.” This is another thing that a bunch of healthcare providers recommended, and I feel mixed about it. On the one hand, I don’t doubt that taking big breaths is good...but on the other hand, yoga breathing isn’t the easiest thing in the world, and not being able to comfortably do very many big deep yoga breaths in a row stressed me out (even though I think I was breathing pretty OK overall) which then gave me anxiety. So I guess I’d just say talk to a healthcare provider at length about how to best check to see if what you’re experiencing qualifies as “having trouble breathing” and about how many deep yoga breaths you should expect to be able to take comfortably.  

Things our friends did that rocked:

Our friends were wonderful and supportive in so many different ways, one of which was sending food. This was great because we had like zero energy for doing anything beyond warming things up in the microwave. If you are sending food to a friend with COVID, I’d recommend choosing something that’ll keep for a couple of days because 1) their appetite might wax and wane quite a bit, and 2) if they get a lot of food from friends, it’ll be nice to have things for later in the week. We truly appreciated everything we got, but the bagels and cream cheese, matzoh ball soup, tea, ramen, and boxed mac and cheese were standouts. Also, consider sending sweets — we could taste those better in general, and they brought a bit of joy and delight during a really rough week! And I have to give a shoutout to Spoonful of Comfort, which Sally sent us; it’s delicious, and the packaging is so charming. Also, having a full meal of soup, rolls, and cookies after days of being sick felt extra special.

In terms of checking in on us, our friends did a mix of things; Sally did morning and evening vibe checks which made sense given how often we talk and how close we are. Other friends checked in every few days, which felt like a conscious choice to avoid bombarding us, and which we also appreciated. And others waited patiently to be updated (and I tried to make a point to update them regularly because I knew they wouldn’t want to bug us). But if you’re sick and struggling with lots of people asking you how you’re doing or giving you not-helpful advice, it’s really OK to set boundaries! And maybe think about using IG close friends or something to that effect to share info with multiple people at once, or appointing one or two people to update the rest of the family/friend group. 

Also don’t be afraid to lean on friends to help you with research! It’s very hard to research basic things about COVID without also getting, like, terrifying info that’ll make you think you’re going to die within the hour. I definitely asked friends to look into things a couple of times for us, and they were happy to research and relay info to us.  

Things I would do differently if I could: 

View allergy and sinus symptoms as possible COVID symptoms. There are so many Venn diagrams on the internet that lay out the differences between allergies, sinus infections, a cold, the flu, and COVID…and reading them made us think we were probably fine. Two separate healthcare providers also thought we were fine! It ultimately didn’t matter because we chose to get tested, but I gotta say...do not sleep on sinus or allergy symptoms! (I’ve also been hearing from other people who had COVID that they also had sinus symptoms.)

Get tested earlier and/or go to a testing site that offered rapid results. This wasn’t the biggest deal in the world because we weren’t going out and doing things or going to work in person, but getting tested earlier definitely would have saved us some stress on Tuesday and Wednesday. (Like, I don’t think I would have felt the need to obsessively check for my results on Saturday or Sunday because I wasn’t very sick at that time.) We also were sicker by Tuesday, meaning trekking to get tested and standing outside waiting was more unpleasant. And we *just* managed to beat a big snow on Tuesday; had we waited any longer, getting tested would have been considerably more difficult. You just never know what the next few days might bring, and I don’t think putting off a test is a good idea if you have the time/means/transportation/ability/etc. 

Also, I thought that all of the H+H sites in NYC did rapid testing, but that wasn’t actually the case, and the website was a little confusing to navigate, especially on mobile. In hindsight, I wish I would have looked into finding the closest site to me that offered rapid testing while I was healthy so that I knew exactly where to go when the time came. So that’s something to look into now! (Also, I’d seen so many New Yorkers recommending the city sites over private testing at places like One Medical because the city sites were said to be considerably faster. So even though we didn’t get same-day results, I am still glad we did H+H. In any case, this is all the kind of stuff to pay attention to right now!) 

Better document my symptoms during the first week. I was ultimately able to remember everything that happened the first few days, before I tested positive, because I was paying such close attention...but then I kind fell off for a few days right after we got our results. Those middle days in bed just really blended into each other! It wasn’t a huge deal to not have that documentation, but it was also easy enough to make notes in my Day One journal app each day after that, and to note what meds I had taken and when so I could stay on top of everything. Honestly, I think it’s worth it to start making notes from the get-go; it doesn’t take much effort, and it’s really helpful to be able to communicate this stuff to a doctor, especially in an emergency situation. 

Never take zinc on an empty stomach. Doing so made me *instantly* feel like I was going to be very sick, and actually made my girlfriend throw up at one point. 

Sleep more. Even though I wasn’t getting up as early as I normally would, I was still setting an alarm every morning for...no good reason, in hindsight! A friend of ours who likely had COVID last spring said he slept for 12–14 hours a day, but because I’m not much of a napper, I think it would have been wise for me to sleep more at night.  

Expect to be sicker longer. In talking to other people who have had COVID, it sounds like it’s not unlikely to take 3–6 weeks to recover...and I can say that it’s definitely taking longer than two weeks to feel better! During the third week, I was still waking up with sinusy symptoms every morning that were bad enough to necessitate meds, and I still felt very low-energy. In hindsight, I would have just planned that I’d need two full weeks off of work to rest and recover, and would maybe even have taken a couple days of the third week off.

The Wednesday of the third week, after putting in a normal workday with lots of editing, I did a few chores and was fucking wiped. This very soothing and validating article (which I read while fucking wiped) encourages folks recovering to not do too many “thinking activities,” like emails and planning things. I ended up taking that Friday off to extend the long weekend and rest more, and I think that helped a lot. It’s only right now, just past the four week point, that I’m feeling somewhat normal again, and I'm still taking it easy and trying not to over-extend myself. 

If you get COVID and are fortunate enough to be able to take PTO, I’d recommend taking a little more than you think you’ll need, and think about padding your time off with another day or two to be able to do any chores/tasks that piled up while you were sick (knowing that you shouldn’t expect to do a full day of chores on, like, Day 11; see also: move slowly). It’s also good to have a little time to simply process what it means to be sick with COVID, because it’s fairly overwhelming, and that has been a delayed feeling in our case.

If you can’t take time off work, or can’t take much, or have to go back to a job where you’re going to be on your feet all day, I still think it’s good to know that it’ll likely be a while before you’re at 100%. Clear your calendar outside of work to the extent that you can, ask for help to the extent that you can, and just be as gentle with yourself as possible.  

Also! Being sick longer means you’ll likely need more meds than you might expect, so keep that in mind when stocking up, and make sure you have enough if multiple people in your household are sick. 

Don’t put things off that you can do now. Look, if you’re worried you’re going to die, you might not care about whether your bedroom is tidy...but if you’re anything like me, you’re capable of vacillating between thinking you’re going to die and wishing your bedroom was tidy!!! The thing is, having some household chores done really does make it easier to recover and function, and you definitely shouldn’t be doing chores while sick. 

All this to say: do what you can to avoid waiting to refill necessities (from prescription meds to dog food to trash bags to toilet paper) until the last possible minute, try to always have clean socks and underwear in your drawer, keep your gas tank relatively full, make a pot of soup and freeze it, etc. Have a plan for what you’ll do if you get sick (including figuring out where you’ll get tested and what doctor you’ll call for a follow-up appointment). Figure out who might be able to take care of your pet if you’re sick/can’t leave your apartment, and put together a doc with instructions for the pet’s care while you’re healthy and able. We didn’t have everything we needed when the time came, but I can’t overstate how relieved I was to have the things we did have. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. ✨

🍑

Positive

My girlfriend and I tested positive for COVID two weeks ago; we got tested on the morning of Tuesday Jan. 26 at an NYC H&H site, and got our results on Wednesday evening (Jan. 27). We both had mild cases (technically speaking) and are doing OK now, but we aren’t back at 100% yet, and are definitely still sicker than we’d like to be/than you might expect. (BTW, here's a list of everything we found helpful when dealing with our mild COVID cases.)

Here’s what the past couple of weeks have been like. 

Where we got it

We truly don’t know how we got sick. My girlfriend barely leaves our apartment; I leave it daily to take Chuck out, which makes pinpointing a specific day when I could have gotten sick difficult. My route outside through the building is very brief: down one very short hallway, down a flight of stairs, past two elevators, down a corridor and outside — it probably takes 90 seconds, tops, from door to door. I rarely encounter other humans (I wait for people to exit if I hear voices) and I definitely don’t encounter unmasked people at close range. Whenever we leave the apartment, we’re always wearing masks that have filters in them. (I think we started double-masking a day or two after I likely got infected, and our better masks only arrived this weekend.) We haven’t been in any businesses in months.

To give you an example of how much we’ve avoided any sort of contact: at the end of December, our car’s battery died and needed to be replaced, so we had it towed to the nearest dealership and when it was ready to pick it up, we made the 90 minute walk to Queens to avoid public transportation or an Uber. If we order takeout, we put the food in the oven before eating it to be extra careful, and we let groceries sit (either in our entryway or in fridge drawers) for a day or two before using them. We haven’t done masked or unmasked hangouts or anything that even comes close to the CDC’s definition of “close contact.” In the timeframe in which we would have gotten infected, we hadn’t even checked the mail. 

So, right now, our best guess is that I got it taking Chuck outside — maybe someone coughed or sneezed unmasked in the hallway, and I had the unfortunate luck to walk through it a minute later. (Surface transfer seems unlikely given our rigorous handwashing practices and the fact that I wear gloves out now that it’s winter. It’s also pretty rare in general.) It seems quite possible that the more contagious variant had something to do with it, and a lot of people in our building don’t appear to be particularly cautious. (Last night, for example, two people on our floor, including our next-door neighbors, were hosting parties.) I don’t know how I got COVID, and I’ll never know. It’s frustrating, given how cautious we’ve been, but our caution likely also kept me from getting sicker or getting sick sooner, which matters a lot.

Physical symptoms

The first sign that something was wrong was Friday night (Jan. 22), when I did three (3) mild, dry coughs. Then I coughed mildly all day Saturday, probably a few times an hour. I also had a really itchy mouth and nose; I’d had two bad allergy moments during the week (on Tues and Thurs) that seemed pretty clearly tied to my kicking up a bunch of dog hair and dust, and our apartment felt especially dusty overall, so it made sense to me that I was still experiencing weird indoor allergies. I felt a bit low-energy but not awful. I took it verrrrry easy just to be on the safe side — no workouts or walks or anything like that. I also took my temperature throughout the day and it was normal. 

On Sunday when I woke up, my tongue felt a bit weird, and suddenly I had the thought, Oh no, is this me losing my sense of taste and smell? so I immediately went to the bathroom and smelled some deodorant and tasted the mint toothpaste; everything was fine/normal. It made me think that the sensation in my mouth was likely itchiness (especially because my nose/ears were still itching a lot). Throughout the day Sunday, I coughed a bit less than Saturday, but my cough wasn't all gone. Around noon, I managed to get the last drops of my usual prescription allergy nasal spray into my nose and I felt WORLDS better within an hour, which made sense to me given my allergy symptoms throughout the weekend. I took it easy again all day, and had a remote One Medical appointment that night. They refilled my nasal spray and didn't seem at all concerned that it could be COVID; they said that I had likely inhaled dust or some other allergen, and that’s why I was having an ongoing reaction.

That Monday, I woke up feeling pretty fine/normal — maybe a little slow moving, but nothing noteworthy. I think I coughed two or three times during the day. But around 2:00 in the afternoon, I had another bad allergic reaction feeling all of a sudden — I was super sneezy, really itchy, etc. This isn’t wildly uncommon for me, though it’s usually triggered by outdoor allergens. I decided to take the rest of the afternoon off of work because I was just really dragging ass. My allergy meds weren't doing much for me at this point, and I also started taking Advil because I had a headache. As the night went on, I felt low-energy with a lot of increasing sinus pressure and congestion; I was congested enough at that point to have to start breathing through my mouth.

The most concerning thing was that my girlfriend woke up Monday feeling…off. She felt really fatigued and had body aches from her back downward; it was bad enough that she took a sick day. By Monday evening, we both had symptoms that were identical to all the symptoms of allergies/sinus infection on every website we looked at (and we looked at...many websites) as well as cold symptoms, so we went back and forth between thinking we had COVID and thinking it was something else. 

Around 10:30 that night, I looked at my girlfriend, who had been feeling progressively worse (she said her legs felt “like someone had taken a hammer to them”). Suddenly she went from looking sick to looking BAD — there was absolutely no color in her face, and she was really weak. She had been taking her temperature all day — we both had — and it was still normal, but this was the point where I started to feel really worried. Around 1 a.m., she woke me up and her skin was hot to the touch; throughout the day, I’d been putting my hand on her forehead to see if she felt warm, and every time, was kind of like, I don’t know what I’m feeling for here??? But at that moment, I was like, Oh, I don’t need a thermometer to tell me that this isn’t normal. And then a thermometer confirmed that her temperature had indeed spiked (I believe it was 100.4), which was really alarming and upsetting. 

The next morning, her fever was gone, and she had a remote appointment at 7:30 a.m. with someone from OneMedical, who diagnosed her with sinusitis and prescribed an antibiotic. Their general attitude was kind of like, Sure, you can get a COVID test if you want to… I think because our contact with people was so nonexistent. They didn’t even say it could be the flu. At this point, we just wanted to know for sure as soon as possible, so we drove over to the nearest H&H site as soon as it opened and got tested for the first time ever. 

We both felt pretty bad throughout the day on Tuesday; my nose started running a ton after we got home from our testing appointment, and I went between having a really runny nose and feeling really congested. (I went through nearly an entire box of Kleenex from Tuesday to Wednesday.) I had a lot of sinus pressure and itchiness in my face, and overall felt like I had a really bad cold. My sense of taste and smell was fine, but was also not AMAZING due to all the congestion. We just tried to drink fluids and rest (we both took the day off work), and both used our respective neti pots a couple times to relieve the sinus pressure (which helped a lot), along with taking DayQuil. 

Wednesday was another day of feeling crappy. I felt like I had a bad cold or sinus infection: stuffy nose, runny nose, bad congestion, headache, some coughing, etc. I also got my period, which is fucking criminal. I was trying to stay optimistic because sinus pressure wasn’t listed anywhere as a common COVID symptom, but it was just impossible to say for sure what was going on, or to think we would be spared getting COVID when things are so bad. We finally got our test results around 5:50 p.m. on Wednesday night, and had both tested positive. 

We each had separate appointments with different providers at One Medical that night, and I talked to my aunt, a nurse who has been working with COVID patients since last March. A lot of similar themes emerged (and we heard the same stuff the next day from the person who called us from the city): treat the symptoms; rest and take it very easy; take zinc, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, and magnesium; take deep yoga breaths; and look for signs that things were getting worse. The main thing we were told to look for was trouble breathing; the person I talked to at One Medical said that it’s OK if you’re out of breath because you got up to do something around the house, but if you sit down and still can’t catch your breath, that’s a problem. (We also heard mixed things about using a pulse oximeter, but did end up using ours to monitor ourselves.) 

Right after the results came through, we told our families and friends about the diagnosis, and made arrangements for our friends Doug and Nathalie to pick Chuck up (no-contact) to watch him for the duration of our isolation. Saying good-bye to Chuck was hard; it was just one of those moments when things felt very real and very sad. We also missed him a lot while we were sick. (Meanwhile, he thrived at Doug and Nathalie’s.)

From there, we just hunkered down and rode it out. We were told to rest and to not take a day of feeling good as license to start doing chores or anything like that, which I think is good advice. We spent the entire duration of our isolation in bed watching The Sopranos and Real Housewives of New York, coughing and blowing our noses and taking meds and drinking fluids and mouth-breathing and doing frequent symptom check-ins and temperature checks. Our cases were similar but different; my girlfriend’s had more highs and lows (and she was sicker than I was), while mine was more consistently medium-shitty. I also was two days ahead of her in terms of symptoms; for example, I lost my senses of taste and smell first and then, two days later, hers started to go. 

Even though our cases were technically mild, they weren’t a walk in the park by any means, and we’re both still sick, and sicker than you might expect two weeks after catching something cold-like. Both of us still need meds (DayQuil or Advil Cold & Sinus) to treat our symptoms. (Our senses of smell and taste seem to be returning though, which is a relief.) I’ll do a separate post with the things that helped us the most/things I wish I’d known, because that was the kind of thing I wanted to read when we got sick, but I was also afraid to go looking for too much information, lest I give myself a panic attack.

Aside from the physical symptoms, we were dealing with major anxiety and fear that things would take a turn for the worst at any minute — something we’d been reading about happening for the past 10 months. Every time I’d think, OK, I’m not feeling so bad, I’d start to wonder if it was the last day of my life, if I’d already been outside for the final time in my 35 years. I was glad I’d updated my will (a long overdue task I’d been putting off for a while) at the beginning of January so I didn’t have to do it while sick. My girlfriend and I set alarms every night to wake up and check on each other. It was incredibly dark and grim and the kind of thing that really separates COVID from every cold or flu I’ve ever had, even if the symptoms were ultimately pretty similar. 

My girlfriend and I were lucky, but for no apparent reason; other people our age, similarly healthy, have not been as lucky. It’s really difficult to process that. As I lay in bed, I couldn’t help but think about Dez-Ann Romain, a healthy 36-year-old high school principal who died in April. I never saw surviving COVID as a sure thing. I still wonder if there are long-term effects lurking.  

Final thoughts

We’re so close to being through this pandemic, but it’s not over yet, and by all accounts, everyone’s behavior for the next few months matters a lot, especially as the vaccine rollout lags. “We are in a race against time, and the virus appears to be gaining an unfortunate ability to sprint just as we get closer to the finish line,” Zeynep Tufekci wrote in The Atlantic five weeks ago. And just this week, I read this in a different Atlantic article: “At the same time, the more transmissible B.1.1.7 strain of the virus is becoming more prevalent in the U.S.; early evidence suggests that it may harm young people and women more than the dominant coronavirus strains do. The strain will eventually dominate the U.S., Andersen told me: ‘It’s not an if; it’s a when.” 

I was in bed, sick, when I read that indoor dining is re-opening at 25% — on Valentine’s Day, so people can propose, Governor Cuomo joked (?????????????). I was in bed, sick, when, a few days later, he said that the calls to vaccinate restaurant workers as part of that were “cheap, insincere discussion.” (He has since reversed course, but it doesn’t change that he thought that and said that.) I felt such white-hot rage in that moment. Every time I think about it, I feel sick to my stomach. 

I cannot overstate how normal and healthy I felt the days I would have been the most contagious. I had plenty of energy, I worked out, I ate and slept normally — nothing seemed amiss. If I was doing outdoor dining or seeing a few close friends or family members unmasked, I absolutely would have done it when I was super contagious without a second thought, especially given how cautious we’d been in the weeks and months before it. 

It’s really difficult to conceive of not knowing what is happening in your own body at a given moment, or to believe that you could be contagious when you don’t seem contagious or sick at all. It’s even harder to believe this if you’re not doing things you deem risky...and I don’t think most people are doing things they deem risky; I think most of us are doing things that fit our personal definition of “safe.” We’re doing the things we’ve been doing for months now, the things that, for whatever reason — and lower case numbers can play a really big role here — have seemingly kept us safe the whole time. But that is the reality of this virus: the day you got infected might not be obvious or knowable, and by the time you know you’re sick, it’ll likely be too late for you to protect other people. 

Literally everyone we told we had COVID had the same reaction: “You guys are the most cautious people I know.” While I know that might make it seem like getting sick is random and happens no matter what you’ve been doing, thus, Fuck it, let’s go out to dinner, I don’t think that’s the right takeaway here at all. To me, it’s that the more contagious variant is spreading and we don’t know how dominant it is, but we do know that case numbers are still really, really high around the U.S., and everyone who can needs to lock it down. Look at being safe thus far as a gift, not a guarantee.

Duvet o'clock

For the past month or so, my girlfriend and I have been throwing an old quilt over the duvet to turn the “office” back into an apartment when we’re done working. The quilt is not particularly stylish, but it’s really cozy, with a distinct pink and yellow pattern that looks extra warm in the lamplight. I have a phone alarm set to go off every weekday at 6 p.m. so we don’t put off duvet o’clock (or work too late). After we put on the duvet and reset all the pillows, we change from day soft clothes into evening soft clothes. Then we move her computer monitor from the desk to a TV tray we set up at the end corner of the bed so we can watch anything we’re streaming on a bigger screen.

Between the quilt and the “television,” the apartment feels really different in our off hours — it has a “my mom made my bedroom extra cozy for me while I’m home sick” meets a “we’re rearranging the living room for a sleepover” vibe.

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How to start and keep a journal during a pandemic (or any time of major upheaval)

Since the coronavirus started spreading through the U.S., I’ve seen a lot of people telling others that now is a good time to start and keep a journal. Which… sure, yes, if you want to!

When I was working on Dot Journaling, I read a ton of academic writing about diaries throughout history, and one of the things I learned is that people are drawn to keeping diaries during times of major change. (Also, fun [???] fact: when I went to Bookshop to search for Dot Journaling earlier today, I noticed a section called “Perspective on Pandemics” on the home page, and the first book listed was the diary of my arch nemesis, Samuel Pepys.) Journaling is also a good coping mechanism and way to process feelings. And when things are changing super quickly, formerly solid concepts like “days of the week” seem utterly preposterous, and your brain feels overloaded and foggy, it’s safe to say that you’re probably not going to remember things as well as you might want to.  

That said, it’s hard to do much of anything right now, and journaling shouldn’t be another chore or source of stress during a highly stressful, chore-filled time. So with that in mind, I thought I’d share some low-key ideas for keeping a journal during a pandemic (or any bad time), if you’re so inclined.

Use whatever journal you have and will actually use.

Now is not the time to search for the perfect notebook; it’s the time to make do with what you have and will actually use—a notebook you bought but never used, a legal pad, a spiral notebook, Google Docs, an app, whatever. Make things as easy on yourself as possible right now. 

Simply save all of your to-do lists. 

A to-do list is usually a very good snapshot of what matters to you at a given time, and that’s definitely been true for me during our current situation. If you keep a separate work notebook and home notebook, it might not be a bad idea to combine them and just keep one (as so many of our work lives and home lives collapse into each other). And if you keep a single undated running task list, you might want to think about making new lists each day or week so you can add a date for context. 

Also think about adding things like Zoom calls with friends or nice things you’re planning to do at home to your to-do list; even if these don’t feel like tasks, they are still things you did and very much paint a picture of what your life is like right now. 

If a to-do list doesn’t seem like it “counts” as a journal/diary, consider that this is actually very much what diaries looked like until the late nineteenth century. It was only fairly recently that the more “I” centric, “here are all my thoughts and feelings” diaries became the predominant way we conceptualize diaries. Historical diaries actually looked a lot like dot journals, format-wise. (Also consider the fact that “diary” is the word Brits use for what most of us in the U.S. would call an agenda or planner.) 

Save all of your receipts in one place or write down your purchases. 

Your to-do lists cover how you’re spending your time; it’s also a good idea to note how you’re spending your money. You could either add purchases as they happen to your to-do list each day, or keep a running list for the month on a separate page. 

Keep a recipe diary.

I got this idea from my friend Emily, an NYT Cooking editor; she said she got it from Jenny Rosenstrach, who has been keeping a recipe journal for 20+ years. By the way, it’s not too late to do this — Emily’s starts on 3/12, but she told me she put it together a few days ago “based on photos in my camera roll basically.” (BTW, here’s how to search your camera roll by date.)

Just write down what a day in your life looks like right now. 

You can either do this in real time or do it later, writing out what an average day’s routine looks like right now. Make note of what time you’re getting up; what you do first, second, third, etc. each morning; and all the new chores that are a part of your daily life. You could also do this once a week or every few weeks to track how things are changing.

Remember that journaling doesn’t need to involve writing a lot of feelings in full sentences.

When I’m recapping my day in my journal, I use dashes to jot down quick notes instead of writing in full sentences. (I also keep the dash format if I want to do full sentences.) Doing it this way is way lower lift and basically removes the mental hurdle of “Ugh, I have to sit down and write.”  

If you just want to brain dump/cope, consider doing morning pages.

Here’s a guide I wrote about morning pages few years ago. 

If you want a lower-lift/less frequent option, you could email yourself or add to a Google Doc once a week. 

You could use a format similar to my weekly newsletter — what you read, cooked/ate, listened to, bought, watched, etc. And if you want to flesh out your email with more personal thoughts or notable moments from the week, you could do that too. 

Just put together one big March recap.

If you’re feeling like it’s too late to start keeping a journal, you could do one big entry for all of March. I actually did this the other night, using my Google calendar, planner/to-do lists, texts, and camera roll. I was able to date all the events that felt significant (for example, February 27 is the day my girlfriend listened to an episode of “The Daily” that really scared her and so we started sanitizing our hands a ton when we were out in public) and a put together a pretty accurate record of how we (and our friends, and our workplaces) were thinking about the coronavirus and changing our behavior day-to-day throughout March.   

Be a teeny tiny bit less vague than you might naturally be. 

As someone who has kept diaries for 20 years, I can tell you that you won’t remember important context as well as you might think you will in a couple decades, even for things that feel super significant as they are happening. This isn’t a huge thing to worry about, but if you’re journaling with Future You or Future Historians in mind, I recommend it. You don’t necessarily have to write “Today I read an article in the New York Times, a newspaper, which I accessed through the app (application) on my iPhone”... but you might want to do small things — like, say, add, “(neighbor)” or “(restaurant)” next to a person’s or business’s name.

Or don’t, if doing this is too much work and would stress you out!!! 

Remember that a journal or diary can look like anything.

Photos, texts, receipts, calendar invites, memes, tweets, articles, playlists, emails…these are all excellent records of what is happening in your life right now. You don’t have to start tagging stuff or make a huge effort to collect everything in a single place right now, but it’s not a bad idea to be a little more mindful of retention right now. Things that are dated and searchable, like your personal email or calendar, will be there in a few years, but think about what won’t be super easy to pull up later (like work emails or texts) and find a low-key way to save/find them. 

Know that nothing is too mundane or small to be recorded.

It’s easy to operate from the mindset that journaling is a Serious Endeavor, especially during a pandemic. I think that belief is mostly rooted in the parts of history — and the lives — that we’ve been taught to believe matter. 

But the things we do every day — the people we talk to, the things we eat and buy, the clothes we wear, the art and entertainment we consume, the traditions and rituals and routines and trends we create and take part in — aren’t background noise. They are, in large part, what life in a given culture at a specific time is. And no one can know, in the moment, what is going to be “interesting” in 10 or 20 or 30 years, or even what we’ll personally wish, a week from now, that we had recorded when we had the chance.

So if you think that the way you’re spending your days right now — FaceTiming, creating or acquiring masks, getting creative with beans, watching TikToks — doesn’t “count” or matter enough to be remembered, I would encourage you to let go of some of the biases that might be influencing your thinking. “Normal” people’s experiences are extremely relevant to our understanding of history. But also, you don’t have to keep a diary for big picture reasons. You can just…do it for yourself, because you feel like it.

I’ll leave you with something Charlotte Forten Grimké, a black teacher and anti-slavery activist, wrote in her diary in May of 1854: 

“A wish to record the passing events of my life, which, even if quite unimportant to others, naturally possess a great interest to myself, and of which it will be pleasant to have some remembrance, has induced me to commence this journal. I feel that keeping a diary will be pleasant and profitable employment of my leisure hours, and will afford me much pleasure in after years, by recalling to my mind the memories of other days, thoughts of much-loved friends from whom I may be separated, with whom I now pass many happy hours, in taking delightful walks, and holding ‘sweet converse’; the interesting books that I read; and the different people, places and things that I am permitted to see.” ✨

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How to feed yourself when your appetite is non-existent

Image: Manki Kim via Unsplash

I’ve seen a few tweets in the past week that said something to the effect of, “Wow, I thought I was a stress eater but now I am simply no longer hungry????” and each time, I was like, WELCOME. This happened to me a few years ago and it was legitimately shocking — before that, I sort of thought that forgetting to eat or not having an appetite was an urban legend, at least as it applied to me personally. Turns out, it’s not!

If you, too, have suddenly found that food has lost its appeal, or that you are forgetting to eat whole meals, or that certain foods make your stomach turn, you’re definitely not the only one. Here are some tips that helped me, and that might help you, too:

1. Set reminders to eat.
   Without a commute or coworkers — or when super distracted by the news or a personal trauma — it’s really easy for morning to bleed into afternoon and 4 p.m. to become 9 p.m. without my really realizing it, so I’ve been relying on phone alarms in the past couple weeks to help me maintain a routine. The biggest struggle is lunch, but I’m doing my best; a noon reminder is actually quite helpful.

2. Try to eat or drink something at meal times.
   It’s very easy to look at what you’d been planning to make for dinner, realize you have zero desire to eat it, and sort of shrug and give up and shuffle back to bed. But it’s a good idea to not totally give up, and instead think about what you can eat or drink in that moment. Maybe it’s just a banana, or some Graham crackers, or a cup of milk; that’s fine. It’s literally better than nothing!

3. Look for shelf-stable items and frozen stuff.
   The big problem I had after losing my appetite was that I’d buy groceries like normal…and then the fresh stuff would go bad because I had no interest in fruit or vegetables or even meat. Given that fresh foods aren’t terribly easy to come by right now, you might already be doing this. But if not, remember that frozen broccoli, fish, bread, waffles, potatoes, and burritos exist. It’s always good to have the option for a decent full meal available should your appetite change suddenly.

Here are some fairly gentle meals to consider:

• Toast! Toast with butter and cinnamon sugar + cozy tea is my favorite.

• English muffins with PB (this once sustained me for…a while)

• Simple quesadillas (tortillas + shredded cheese + sour cream and salsa on top)

• Frozen pierogis with a little butter and sour cream

• Frozen dumplings

• Baked potatoes with butter and sour cream (add Annie’s canned chili on top for something more filling)

• Annie’s macaroni & cheese

• Old-fashioned (or instant) oatmeal with peanut butter and blueberries (thawed from frozen)

• Spanish rice + black beans or pinto beans

• Lemon butter pasta

• Chickpea pasta

• Soylent (I like the original flavor, personally)

Finally, remember that when you’re Dealing With Some Shit, it’s OK to eat the same things over and over and not really change up your diet much. Obviously a balanced diet is ideal in the long run, but during a high-stress time, your definition of “healthy” is simply going to change. If you simply can’t stand the thought of eating kale or salmon right now, that’s…fine. Eat whatever feels nourishing-ish and gives you the energy to get through your day, and trust that your appetite will return again eventually. ✨

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How to be laid off

Folks, Terri is back! Today she’s here to offer some good practical advice for surviving a layoff. —Rachel ✨

Image: Kiyana Salkeld / Just Good Shit

Back in January, I got laid off from my job along with Rachel, our entire team, and 200 or so other coworkers. I’ve been working in media for the past seven years and have watched the industry shift and shrink. I’ve witnessed layoffs happen around me, both at work and to my close friends, and yet when it happened to me, I was completely floored. As in, on the floor crying in shock.

I don’t know if anything could’ve prepared me for the sting and multiple stages of grief that accompanied losing my job — the numbness, the confusion, the anger, the hurt, the bargaining, the desperation — but I do know that being laid off is an incredibly specific state of being. It’s also probably different for everyone who experiences it. Some people are relieved, some quickly pivot to the next thing, some people have had something like this happen to them many times before and already have their go-bag packed. But for me, and a lot of people I’ve talked to (turns out, LOTS of people I know have been in similar situations, especially in the past six months), the experience of being laid off and the time that ensues generally follow the same outline.

So, should you find yourself in that boat, here are some tips that helped me survive my layoff:

1. Take time to absorb the shock.
   Even if your layoff wasn’t unexpected, moving from a reliable schedule of spending most days feeling productive with the same people to...not...is a major life change. I tried to fend off the Bads by networking and setting up freelance opportunities literally the day after getting laid off. A week later, I had a full-on meltdown right in front of CVS because I was feeling like a part of my identity was gone. I’d loved my job. I led with it during small talk; I cherished the work I did and still look back on it with pride. Instead of gradually acknowledging this truth by letting it seep into my consciousness, I’d try to shoo it away. As a result, had a big old “Come to Jesus” cry on the phone with my mom in public that, blessedly, the citizens of New York let me carry on in peace. (I do love New Yorkers.) After that, I gave myself a weeklong break from any kind of work/job searching, which helped a lot.

2. Also, unfollow/mute/cut your former employer out of your life if you need to.
   Losing your job is like going through a breakup! Especially if you worked somewhere that has a big social media presence! Seeing them continue on as normal can infect still-fresh wounds, so just block them out for a while. You can always re-follow later, or ask trusted friends to give you only the most important highlights. After a while, you might realize you don’t even care about them anyway.

3. Realize that you will probably deal with constant guilt.
   I was not prepared for the crushing waves of guilt that happened every time I stopped doing anything job-related. With a lot more “free” time, it’s easy to feel like you need to spend all of it looking for and applying to jobs, networking, doing side gigs to scrape together money… anything that feels “productive.” And yes, job hunting really is a full-time job. But! You still need to, like, clean your home and bathe and maybe even go read a book for pleasure in a coffee shop. There is literally nothing wrong with doing any of those things, even though it feels like a violation of some kind of rule. Not being on a regular work schedule means you can very easily do worky-type things all day, but if the circumstances allow, try to avoid that. Because I was lucky to have a good enough savings and severance to augment job-related stuff with more less goal-oriented tasks, I was able to create some rules and guidelines to free myself of guilt. Maybe for you, that means you get one (1) matinee movie for every three jobs you apply to, or maybe that means carving out nap time every day because you need it. The guilt of not doing “enough” never truly goes away, but accepting it and telling it that it doesn’t need to define your laid-off self helps.

4. Start making a daily schedule.
   You’ll be doing a lot of the same things over and over: You’ll send a lot of introductory emails, spend an equal amount of time willing certain emails to pop up in your inbox, wash endless dishes, spend countless hours alone (a nightmare for an extrovert like me), and become invested in the personal lives of daytime TV personalities. A schedule helps with the monotony and with the guilt.

5. Figure out your lunches.
   One of the most thoughtful things someone asked me after I got laid off was, “What have you been eating?” Turns out, feeding your stupid body thrice a day is really annoying! At least when I was working, lunch was provided twice a week, and on the others, I could run out and buy something. But alone in my apartment without a steady income, I had to...make?? Food?? I’m not a great cook and I have a tiny-ass kitchen, and every time my stomach grumbled at 1 p.m. I cursed the human digestive system (and my former employer lolololol). I ended up making a lot of toast. There were many fried eggs in there, too, along with many bowls of Corn Flakes and simple dishes like chickpea pasta and lemon butter pasta. I usually love eating, but during the long, lonely days, food was sustenance, and comforting meals like these were manageable and filling. All you need is a few go-to meals to make lunchtime a little less awful.

6. Accept that paperwork for health insurance and unemployment fucking sucks.
   Figuring this out was so stress-inducing that I asked my friend at one point if it was even worth collecting unemployment (it is, but getting money has hardly ever been less fun). Don’t beat yourself up if your heart is racing and you feel sweaty by the time you’re done with these tasks.

7. Don’t be afraid to tell your loved ones what you need.
   When I’m struggling, I need to talk and let it out and just be with people. Pretty much everyone in my family and friend groups showed up for me in a massive way after my layoff, presenting their shoulders to me when I hadn’t even asked for one to cry on. But some people thought I needed space or that I didn’t want to talk about it or that I was doing fine. I had to say, “I am constantly grieving, but this is what I need from you if you want to be there for me.” And you know what? That’s OK! Some people needed the nudge and were relieved to be told what to do in a weird and awkward time. It’s an incredibly vulnerable, raw thing, but I’ve felt closer to my friends and family than ever since getting laid off because I was open with them.

8. Lean into activities, if you can manage them.
   Since getting laid off, I’ve become obsessed with crosswords and the New York Times’s Spelling Bee game, tracked my Jeopardy! Coryat score, and done many jigsaw puzzles. I have not, however, become a gym rat or a master baker like I said I would. I only had the bandwidth to do so much, and I’m happy I was able to hone a few new activities during this shitty time. (Related: A case for having activities instead of hobbies.)

9. Lean into the good things that accompany being laid off that you might miss when it’s over.
   Since being laid off, I’ve had weekday lunches at hard-to-get-into restaurants and spent quality time with friends who’d also lost their jobs. I’ve easily scheduled midday doctors appointments. I’m a terrible sleeper, and my new loosey-goosey schedule has been so generous to my restless nights. I’ve seen my parents a lot more than usual, and forgotten about Sunday Scaries (although they’ve been replaced by constant existential ennui, so…). I’ve gotten to spend some gorgeous spring days outside while people with jobs are stuck at their desks. I watched all of Fleabag and rewatched many old episodes of The Real Housewives of New York. I’ve traveled and felt more spontaneous than I did on a constricted, 10-6 schedule. Being laid off isn’t all bad, but I’d be lying if I said it was easy to enjoy these perks unreservedly (see: guilt). I know that when I start working a regular job again, I’ll wistfully remember that chunk of time when I didn’t have to set a morning alarm. But I also know those things are small, cold comforts in an epically terrible time. Know that it’s OK if you can’t summon much gratitude right now. ✨

Terri Pous is a writer, editor, two-day Jeopardy! champ, and an Aries. She loves abbrevs, reality TV, obscure facts about the US presidents, and the 🥴 emoji. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @terripous, and on sidewalks @ petting every dog.

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