October 8, 2020
A personal story, told in three “nothings.“
I grew up a homeschooled child until age 13, to two loving parents who were dealing with the Great Recession at the time—needless to say, we didn't go on vacations. I had no real complaints, but nothing happened each day. Six days a week were generally quiet, at home and on the internet. My father worked remotely, my mother was a homemaker, and my brother homeschooled too, so things were deeply stable.
After a while, I hated this. My version of “rebellion” at the time was to insist on attending public school, which I did the following years for grade 8 and beyond. I was bullied pretty badly my first year, but was too engrossed in the world to care; all of a sudden, unlike my earlier life, things happened to me every day! Who cares if some of them were bad? I was thrilled to be in any situation where anyone else was interacting with me, unless they were literally punching me. Consequently, I either had or was assumed to have so little social awareness that I was routinely picked on, insulted and stolen from. Again—and I know how weird this sounds—I didn't care about those things at all. Subjecting a pathologically curious person to deep isolation has strange effects.1 So I went to school, made my group of lovable misfit friends, got bullied on by the jocks and future stoners, and went home every day to recount the day without dwelling on the bad parts.
I realized immediately as a high school freshman that the sense of humor that I had been so proud of in middle school didn't work anymore. And it was all I knew. In October that year, barely two months into high school, I earned a junior varsity spot on the debate team. I had an aptitude, but no speaking experience and severe stagefright. The day I was assigned to my debate partner, Valerie, I remember that I wasn't conscious enough of my own speaking voice to even talk loud enough for her to hear me, and she uttered the timeless words “you really need to work on your speaking voice, dude.“ Further, the team had a coach I didn't get along with: she had a sardonic sense of humor which I deemed inappropriate for children. In her mind she was playful, but it cut me to my core. One day I complained about this and she threw her hands up, exclaimed “I'm an equal opportunity insulter!“ and turned back to her desk, which helped nothing. I forced myself through it and apparently developed some actual skill because I became the first freshman in school history to qualify for the National Tournament of Champions. The following semester I proceeded not to go because the school wouldn't sponsor me to go and my parents couldn't afford it. The joy of forward motion broken, I descended into ennui, settled into my insecurities and quit halfway through the following year after accomplishing nothing else. The whole time, I built some raw speaking skill through feigning confidence, but didn't really improve the stagefright or learn all that much about the politics and history I spoke about in competition.
With no other outlet, I then began writing poetry. Every day, sometimes for hours, I would hunch over my desk and distill my feelings into verse. I learned a lesson, true at the time but a bad heuristic: my poetry was better when I dwelled in my sadness and insecurities. Having just unceremoniously quit my only extracurricular, I gave up on achieving anything except maybe whatever dopamine I could scavenge from improving at poetry. I went on like this through an abusive relationship with an older girl (culminating in an ugly shouting match when I was sixteen) and, rather traumatized by all of it, I decided to graduate from school early with no plan in particular.
Just beforehand, a group of friends from debate (including the coach, interestingly) began to attend poetry slams downtown each Tuesday. Around the same time I developed friendships with my then-English teachers and began to feel like writing might take me somewhere, so I set a goal for myself: I would perform at the poetry slam and get a standing ovation before the year was up. I continued to write sad stories in verse until I came across some unusually poignant criticisms of my father. He and I had our issues during those days—I was scrawny, unconfident and fairly ungrateful at that time, and our relationship suffered—so I used that. I got on stage and declared that I “didn't feel home at home.“ It was a half-truth, but popular: I got my standing ovation. I even performed it again later that night for a video camera, although I never saw the footage. The tone of the poem stuck with me, and having achieved my goal I lost all visible motivation to write poetry. With absolutely no outlet I felt motivated by anymore, I began to act visibly depressed at home: staying silent during meals, avoiding eye contact and expressive body language, and the like. Everyone noticed. A short time later, after forcing myself to write and self-publish a chapbook I was really quite proud of, I stopped writing altogether.
In the span of two years, I had retreated from everything important to me. I thought this was the right thing to do because I needed to reinvent myself, but I made myself and my family sad. My pessimism and aimlessness permeated the rooms I walked into at home, but my brother had worse problems so I didn't want to draw attention away. It was an unhealthy time when I once again felt like I was still homeschooled—like I was still in the big nothing—with no way out. When I graduated high school after my third year, I had two stellar letters of recommendation for English programs, decent speaking experience (although I didn't value it at the time) and a job at my local Best Buy, but still no excitement about the future and no plan.
Primarily due to boredom, I began to consider changing my identity drastically. I thought about sexuality and gender, going to professional school instead of college, or joining the military. I changed my planned college major at least three times, all the while frustrated by my own indecisiveness. I thought about all these radical changes and followed through with none of them, but got into running for what had been the third time. It stuck a little better. My self-assessment was that I had too much time to think and nothing to do, or at least nothing to do that would impact the lives of other people. Through this entire period, though, I don't think I quite understood how to frame the problem, or even that I was sad. I could sustain a conversation with anyone and think I was cheerful, but learned later that very few people around me during this time ever thought so.
I began from the big nothing prior to public school: nearly zero exposure to the world, no social skills and no plan—and I loved every minute of my time out in the world. Then my mindset deteriorated and I ended high school, my all-too-brief foray into excitement, at risk of returning to that same big nothing. It was terrifying.
Thankfully I got into my second-choice college and the first two years saw some stability. I had a much better romantic relationship than my high school one; although it still ended after the first year, it went well enough for me to right my trajectory. Something about being a depressed, lonely kid didn't cut it in adult-relationship world where I reckoned I was. When the relationship ended after a year in school, I literally wrote down all the problems in my life and all the things I wanted to improve about myself. I wrote an overarching goal I'll always remember: “become worthy of sustaining a wonderful little romantic relationship,“ and I set out to work through the list.
The overarching goal helped me build a sense of purpose behind all the little things I felt I needed to do to better myself. Without that goal, perhaps I wouldn't have so easily connected the necessary personal work to a different, and better, vision of the future. In any case it was enough to make me feel like I was capable of forward motion. I joined student groups, became more social, went to parties, dated around a bit, pursued my interests in tech and video games and reconnected with a group of high school friends who formed a Slack team to keep everyone in touch. That Slack team continues to be the center of my social life to this day.
I reconnected with another high school friend, Mark, who would later establish a twice-weekly workout routine that became the cornerstone of my entire life. By the beginning of my final year, I was dating a thoughtful, smart, and kind girl, was appointed to the university's honor council (a relatively prestigious group, drawing around 30 people out of a student body of 60,000), changed my major to economics, conducted undergraduate research, earned nearly two minors and improved my GPA from around 2.5 to 3.3. It was the high school story with a happier ending: I was ending on a high note instead of descending back into a low note.
My life from then to early 2020 was far from perfect—the aforementioned relationship also failed, I underperformed at my first job and learned how to have a panic attack before moving back in with my parents and yet somehow getting into deeper debt living there than elsewhere—but I carried with me a great deal of lessons, a robust self-confidence that I felt I forged in the fires of hell, in some sense, and a boundless ambition to improve myself. I thrived out in the world: taking risks, challenging myself, getting out of my comfort zone and following my passions. I knew one thing at least: I was never going back to the big nothing that I had visited twice before. If nothing else, I had always kept my feeling of joy from being able to participate in the world.
I grew well into adulthood until I turned 25. That's when the world stopped. Two days before the COVID-19 lockdowns started in the US, I remember listening to a podcast by Sam Harris which began “I know these things to be true: The novel coronavirus is much, much worse than the flu…” He had an epidemiologist on his program that day and they spoke about the types of social distancing, mask-wearing measures that would be necessary. He discussed closing schools and introduced the idea of managing hospital capacity. He explained that nobody knew the true death rate, nor how one would vaccinate against it, and said that no one had successfully vaccinated a coronavirus before in any way analogous to a flu shot.
I cannot describe the sense of fundamental dread that this imposed on me. I had a work trip to Kansas City and was listening to this podcast episode on the plane the day I departed from home. That trip should've been enjoyable, but I spent all of it terrified instead; not because I thought I would get the coronavirus and die, but because I was afraid that the government would take drastic measures to stop it from spreading and that my life would come screeching to a halt.
Unfortunately I can't say that I was wrong. My then-girlfriend and I saw our social lives grind to a halt. We just got into bouldering but couldn't go to the gym anymore. We couldn't eat out anymore and had to manage our meals and time quite differently. Obviously, at first we were both terrified to leave home in general, too. I was notified by my employer of a drastic pay cut and impending layoffs. I avoided the layoffs by the skin of my teeth but lost enough pay that discretionary purchases ceased completely. Plus, the time together caused the relationship to deteriorate as well—we learned things about each other that we didn't like so much and had little opportunity to get away. Then, necessary career developments along these lines compelled me to move to New York City and the relationship's fate was sealed.
Suddenly, I was in a new city with my life's trajectory completely different and, again, with no plan. Not wanting to lose my feeling of forward motion again and surrender to another big nothing, I created a new goal: rather than waste my time in New York or accept something mediocre, I would get a damn good job so I could at least secure my finances for the future. I interviewed for a few months and didn't settle, finally accepting a job only when it felt like the perfect fit. Phew, I thought, I avoided the big nothing. Unfortunately, idle hands are the devil's playthings.
With my finances secured, my career going well and no responsibilities outside those things, my sense of ennui returned in full force. Outside my job, which was priority #1 on all counts, I felt absolutely no imperative to work toward anything: a vacant apartment with no furniture and no need to furnish it because nobody comes over in COVID world; a mostly-closed city where I don't know very many people, and the few people I do know are unemployed, sick or trying to leave the country; a set of unachievable or irresponsible hobbies, like going back to bouldering, attending a concert or reestablishing a rhythm of tourism-related travel; myriad more.
I worry that others who are less experienced with these big nothings are faring worse than I. For almost everyone, I suspect, 2020 has been the first year in which they have ever felt so disconnected from the world. I know how unstable the mind can be in such a void—a blank canvas is no one's friend when it's cast over an entire city—and I fear that my generation will be made forever bitter in consideration of this time that the world stole from us. For many, the world stole their career, or their university life, or the ability to see their friends and family, be it temporarily or permanently. My heart breaks for all people in this situation, which is most of the people I've ever known. Beyond concerns about myself, this is the deepest melancholy I have.
Speaking personally again: as best I can remember I felt this way for at least a month before it got any better, and this is where I am now. The ennui has subsided, somewhat, as my new job has given me some more complicated work to look into, my personal life isn't totally stalled anymore, I've found one or two things I can do in the meantime and I've built a home workout routine. But for someone like me, who remembers all too well the long stretches of big nothing that made me feel empty and powerless to make my life matter, a responsible end to this bizarre COVID world can't come fast enough. My biggest fear is another long stretch of time devoid of value, characterized so fully by the ancitipation of something else. Given my unrelated career, I can only watch and wait as clinical trials spin up for the vaccine candidates. Perhaps sometime next year I can revisit this post and be pleased at society's progress, but for now I am indeed stuck in a state where that's all I can look forward to, and this part of the story sucks.
I take care not to speak as though my parents ruled with an iron fist. Not so: they were kind, caring and supportive of my decision to go to public school (and thus enter the world de jure) once I properly convinced them it wasn't a fleeting compulsion. Unlike many things from over half my life ago, I remember these conversations with my parents well. ↩
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