I work in a hospital. I continued to commute to work and do my job through all of the shortages and all of the uncertainty. I died a little each day I had to stop my then 3.5yo twins from rushing to hug me at the door so I could change, drop my clothes in the wash, and wash my hands before they touched me. Then they stopped trying. It was a year before I was greeted at the door with a hug. I knelt there crying the first time they did it again.
I saw all my friends doing all the lock down things and knew that society and employers would never make it up to those of us who worked through it all. We didn’t even get pizza parties because my hospital had a no shared food policy for infection prevention.
I walked past maskless protestors outside my hospital accusing of us every ludicrous talking point there was. For the first time in my career I questioned why I did it. Why was I risking my family’s health and my own to take care of THEM.
As long as you recognize that the thing to be mad at is exploitative labor laws that allow for “bare minimum to support yourself during these trying times” to be MORE than what you normally make.
Even a few months of introverts getting to connect with the meaning of life for the first time since childhood, wasn’t worth a few extroverts having to suffer a few months without the world catering to them.
I remember how awesome it was isolating in my private life so I didn’t share my heightened exposure with the people I loved, while I worked to transport people dying of covid from little podunk hospitals in towns that worked hard to pretend they didn’t need to change a thing to any port in the storm.
I remember then getting broken up with, because the people I loved also wanted to pretend they didn’t need to change anything while my work was filled with death.
Yeah. I remember what life is supposed to be like.
A lot of negative opinions on the tweet author here but there’s one thing I’d like to note. My own experience during the pandemic was much worse than my average life, it was depressing to keep staying home at all time, I got infected, didn’t get a proper medical attention for non-covid related stuff, etc. But after time passes the negatives look smoother and the positives get brighter, like that there were no useless meetings, much less pressure for doing stuff, and so on.
Also, I’m not sure that the author meant it to be ‘pandemic isolation was great’, more like ‘it has shown us that there are things to be done at home’. Although for medical and essential workers it rather was time when they barely got home at all, but if we get to spend more time at home without the pandemic, then they will not be overburdened, I guess.
You can tell who the introverts and who the extroverts were during the pandemic. For those that got to stay at home:
Extroverts: “My mental health is crumbling! I’ll never be the same after this. Literally the worst thing that’s ever happened to me!”
Introverts: “I just beat a handful of games in my backlog, read 4 books, started learning how to make Chinese food at home, and I just started learning Spanish on Duolingo. I’ll never be the same after this!”
I’ve historically been rather extroverted but has spent the last decade doing WFH and years leading up to the pandemic doing so without any of my previous friends group nearby. For me, nothing fundamentally changed, except for managers trying to pressure me into going into the office and be telling them “no”.
As an introvert, I did a lot of things like that. But the tendency to be online more during that time started to result in depression. I don’t have many friends but I do have close friends. Not seeing them kinda ate at me. Things still feel weird.
Based on my quick Google search, it seems like ambivert more closely resembles your situation than mine. I may in fact be a fourth thing, which doesn’t even have a name: ;_;
In case you actually care, you might look up what those terms really mean. It’s not always simple and takes some effort to understand your own nature. A lot of people don’t bother or care.
Otherwise the advice of not trying to label yourself too much is good.
Right? I don’t know what those people are smoking but it’s cool to be able to meet my friends a few times a month and grocery shop normally. Being stuck inside too long makes you go funny in the head.
Ah yes, “everyone”. I’m not even in healthcare, but as an “Essential Worker”, I got to be exposed to the the virus before a vaccine was available as well as extra work, abusive people, and anti-vaxxer blame. The entitlement…
Yeah… except I lost my job and the government where I live gave no help to anyone. It seems good to live in the imperial core and get free treats from the government to stop you from revolting.
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