Making the Best of COVID: Re-Evaluating My Habits by Renée Gendron (@ReneeGendron)

My brain broke during the second month of self-isolation. There was a tipping point between a grey and miserable spring, the heightened societal anxiety about COVID, and me trying to complete a first draft of a novel that was a struggle. I went from writing 3,000 semi-decent, unpolished, words in an evening to 500 garbled words. 

I’m a big picture thinker. I like systems, processes, and patterns. It’s one of the reasons I write ridiculously long series—they have long arcs, nuance, and complexity. 

When you look at systems, they atrophy. They are built up (think of a new car), they hit peak performance (within the first two years of the car’s life), and then they start to decay (need maintenance until they are no longer repairable). 

During COVID I learned that principal applies to thoughts, as well. How I was approaching writing prior to COVID had run its course. My performance peaked and then declined. 

COVID gave me time to rethink. Prior to COVID, I viewed myself as a fantasy romance and historical romance writer. I never touched contemporary because I write stiff dialogue. 

I switched genres. I gave it a shot. I was surprised at how well the words flowed. If I say a small Canadian town in 2020, you have at least a vague idea of what that means even if you’ve never been to one. 

If I say, the Chaslise of Aliepi is needed for the Ritual of the Third Moon, well, that requires world building. A few sentences here, a few sentences there and pretty soon I’m in the long grass of world building and info-dumps. Then I need to go back and hack that down to two lines. Not having to world build allows for a completely different thought process. Without having to do that much front-end editing, the words flowed better.

Don’t get me wrong. I love writing fantasy romance, historical romance and alternative history romance. And when I grow up, I will publish books in those genres. 

By switching genres, I changed what I had to think about to get the words on the screen. That simple change unblocked me. I was back up to my pace of one complete (but better draft) in one month’s time. 

Routines are patterns that work well until they don’t. Like everything else, they atrophy and no longer suit their purpose. 

I changed the routine of my local writer’s club. For almost 10 years, we’ve met once a month to discuss a 10-page contribution of a member. We’ve done a few social things together, but our purpose remains focused on the writing. 

Well, during self-isolation, we started having a social meeting through an online chat program two weeks after our “writing meeting”. It’s expanded our relationships, we laughed when there wasn’t much to laugh about in the world, and we’ve continued with the online “writing” and “social” sessions. 

I’ve re-evaluated other patterns in my life. I’ve extended by one hour how long I sleep. Most of the time I sleep the entire hour. Sometimes I wake up one half hour before the alarm goes off, but those extra thirty minutes were something my body needed. And I didn’t know it needed it. The extra sleep has had tremendous benefits on my concentration and overall energy levels. 

I experimented with my schedule. This spring was particularly cold and grey and made exercise in the morning difficult. I switched to doing some in the afternoons and that gave me a boost to see me through the rest of the evening. With the summer, I changed my schedule again, to take advantage of the sunlight and exercised in the morning.

There were a bunch of small things I did that sapped my time and mental strength. I switched when I did laundry so it flowed better with my day. I found simple recipes I can make so I’m not always eating tuna from a can or salami. By simple recipes I mean frying peeled shrimp, buying pre-cooked rotisserie chicken and eating with it kale, and no-bake baking. It’s a bit of variety, enough to make each day different. 

What did I learn because of COVID? I re-learned the importance of re-evaluating my routines and habits to ensure they were working for me. 

COVID or not, I refuse to rot. 

You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. —Marcus Aurelius

If you enjoyed this piece, please follow Renée Gendron on Twitter @ReneeGendron. ‬

Fill Your House With You by U.L. Harper (@ulharper)

My wife and I decided we needed to get the hell out of our house. 

The bathroom is so small, you need to turn to the side to walk between the bathtub and the sink. Once on the toilet, you can rest your elbows on the sink. It’s the only bathroom in a three-bedroom house.

There’s no privacy in the backyard, which wouldn’t be a big deal except for the horror of the broken-down cars parked in my neighbor’s yard. It’s like living next to a cute little junkyard. And the neighbors across the alley always have their music too damned loud at too late an hour. 6 am to 11:30 pm, it’s the same thumping. 

When the pandemic hit, we were trapped. Two-year-old, upset anxious wife, and me, chillin and frustrated. 

The steps to the upstairs bend and sound like they’re splintering every time we trek up them. All the rooms are too small. Even the doorways are too small. We had to get rid of furniture because the items wouldn’t fit up the stairs or through doorways or in the bedrooms. 

When COVID-19 hit, I was laid off, but my wife was instructed to work from home. She feared losing her job because my daughter would not let her be, and in that room with the computers and desks, there’s no air-conditioning. Adding that to a super cute kid wanting to draw on everything or have a tantrum during Zoom work calls, is nuts. 

What I learned from quarantine life is that you must love where you live. You have to fill your house with you, rather than just stuff that represents you.

As the pandemic rolled on, I’d hear about all these people who needed to get out of their houses; they felt claustrophobic. Wouldn’t it have made sense that when the pandemic started more people would have felt relieved that they could stay home and be with their families? Maybe they realized they didn’t have homes; they just had houses with stuff in them. 

My family was having a hard time finding good energy to place in the walls. It wasn’t only us with this problem. I heard of mass divorces, at first, specifically in China, then friends started texting me, telling me their relationships were ending…after twelve years, after fifteen years and so on and so on. 

One day my wife asked a huge question: What happened to that hammock I had promised? Before she was done asking the question, I was ordering one online. Then the veggie garden started to produce food. I had no idea cucumbers bloomed flowers. I put up a tarp across my back fence if for no other reason, to rediscover my backyard. We invested $20 in a pool for the girl. 

I read in the hammock.

Come to find out, my daughter loves to dance. We do it in the garage to the generic beats of the Casio keyboard. She loves it. We dance in the living room, spin in circles out back. I try to teach her about growing veggies, but she’s not quite three and truly doesn’t care, and I truly don’t know anything. It’s just growing. Everybody, everything; all of us. She more wants to get in the pool.

I recently started back to work. Had to find a new job. Honestly, it sucks more than I can express in this post because now I like being home. I like coming home. I like that we’re here, and although we’re still planning on moving, we’re going to miss the energy we put into these walls. We’re going to miss the noisy steps. I’m going to miss that first garden I ever did, and I’m going to miss watching my daughter water it. 

The only way to have a home is to be there. You can’t just stop by and wander in it. You need to be there. You know what I think, I think there are people out there truly upset and probably ashamed that they don’t have a home, although they have a house or an apartment or condominium or whatever it is. I’m not sure if money can buy a home. Although, that rowing machine I got…Worth it. 

If you enjoyed this piece, please follow U.L. Harper on Twitter @ulharper.