The beginning of my quarantine was sudden. It started in the middle of March and nearly every day since has felt exactly the same. My day planners, to-do lists, photographs on my phone, and hours logged on Animal Crossing say otherwise, but as a people, we have collectively existed in a state of unknowing. With no idea when this pandemic will end, we’ve reached the point where the past five months feel more like an abridged year with compressed and confusing experiences throughout.
Somewhere in that time, something occurred that felt a long time coming: I became uncertain of my value and self-worth.
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Like so many others, I’ve had the unenviable position of becoming unemployed during this pandemic, but not due to it. I cannot “go back to work” since the company that I worked for doesn’t exist anymore. In the “Before Times,” I would have written it off as a simple set back with mixed emotions. People such as myself had reasons to be cheerful in the past: the world was open and full of possibilities!
Previously, most of us never had trouble finding work and our time spent on unemployment was typically brief. Unfortunately due to the pandemic, with many businesses closed or laying off employees, people are now finding themselves needing to rely on unemployment insurance longer than they expected or wanted to.
My daily routine for the first few months involved sifting through listing after listing on job boards, selecting the right resume, writing the right cover letter, applying for what best suited me, and…generally not receiving a response. If I got lucky, I received a rejection letter, but even that wasn’t common.
I felt a palpable sense of existential dread that was difficult to shake, even when I exercised, went on walks, reconnected with friends and acquaintances, had fun and tried to rediscover my passions. During many nights it nipped at my heels and followed me, waiting, and always finding the best time to strike: like when I tried to fall asleep.
Unable to turn my brain off, I was forced to face a barrage of questions:
“Who are you?”, “What are you doing?”, “Weren’t you supposed to be something else?”
If I dreamt, sometimes I would have vivid dreams about working at my old job: unsatisfied but being offered a wage and bonus to keep life affordable, health benefits, a 401K, and paid time off. A millennial wet dream if there ever was one. When I woke up, the questions would follow and one morning I asked back:
“Who am I? What am I worth? Do I even have any value in myself anymore?”
* * *
The answer to my questions came shortly thereafter: I had fallen into a trap of my own making. My value was being defined by productivity and what I was doing for money. In the past few years, I’ve experienced life events that have changed my lifestyle and added their own anxieties. By allowing those anxieties to take the forefront, I tried to permanently solve my problems by chasing money and felt unable to focus on passions that made me feel fulfilled.
After talking with some fellow graduates of the class of 2010, who are, arguably still feeling the pain of the 2008 recession, I found out that others had experienced a similar realization. They had come to misunderstand who they were and had defined themselves not by their actions, thoughts, or passions, but by their jobs.
This realization was a tough pill to swallow and was just as upsetting as it is enlightening. However, I firmly believe that when something breaks, it opens up the opportunity to replace it with something that does work and will ultimately benefit you.
* * *
My realization immediately triggered a memory. It was of an exercise I had read about on the now irrelevant humor/satire website Cracked.com.
The basic premise was that you were asked to think about what tasks you did after work and write it down as a list. Next, you were asked to think about the person you wanted to be or what you wanted to achieve in your life. Then, you’d review the list of actions to see if they reflected what you claimed you wanted, and then you would quickly realize that your list of activities is what actually defines you.
If I were to use this exercise against myself based on my pre-COVID-19 life, I could list the following as after-work activities:
Listen to podcasts while sitting in a line of traffic on the highway.
Spend time with my wife and cats.
Eat dinner.
Make a light attempt at being creative (sometimes).
Do something to entertain myself before going to sleep.
Conversely, the list of what I wanted to be included a writer and an illustrator. Quite the opposite illustration…don’t you think? Predictable puns aside, a creative life is a far-reaching endeavor and I started to think about it long before the pandemic.
When I was younger, I had the same goals and still paid my bills by working unsatisfying jobs. However, unlike in recent life, when I arrived home I was focused on honing a worthwhile skill by practicing and creating new works, making moves, or creating opportunities to further a creative career. Essentially, I was experiencing the joy of creation and deriving value from that.
As such, I re-evaluated my current values against what I wanted them to be and thought about what my younger self would have to say. While I can never go back and be my younger self, I can at the very least look at my past actions, learn from them, and move forward with my current wisdom and skills. For instance, I now have a better concept of time management and a work-smart, not-hard mindset!
I’ve also been actively starting to consider why I choose to do the things that I do. Instead of looking at my decisions as a chance to grow and develop, they’re often transactional and sometimes feel one-sided.
One thing is for sure, whether it’s seeking money from a job or craving “attention” for your efforts (especially on social media), treating any decision like it’s a transaction will make you seem disingenuous and that can take a toll on your psyche. We’ve been warned time and time again that no one should ever do anything “just for the money,” and while there isn’t anything wrong with making money, we should always have a better reason behind our decisions.
On that same note, money isn’t the most valuable currency. Money is helpful and it makes life easier, but it is a fickle variable and is never constant. Time, though finite, is constant and we should always value how we spend our time. Time well spent offers a better self-worth ROI than a salary or hourly wage ever could.
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While it’s good to have come to this realization, I need to recognize that the world is still in a time of extreme upheaval. To try and make a complete one-eighty and become the productive person that I want to be during this time is the equivalent of trying to get my life back on track over the course of a single Sunday. However, I can, at the very least pick and choose my battles, consider the value of my actions and take steps towards valuing myself and having something real to offer.
If I don’t, my alternative is an anti-comedy sketch that I used to show my co-workers to help them feel better: the story of landscape company CEO Eric Haden who had material wealth, but hated his life. He had no significant other, his diet and general health were bad, and he took his anger out on his employees and his office environment. A perfect example of what happens when you don’t value yourself and how that can trap you.
The bottom line is this—that example is no way for anyone to live their life…and certainly not the way I want to live mine.
If you enjoyed this piece, please follow Brenton Barnes on Twitter @brentonsquared.