Last week, I spent more time in my coworking office than I had any week during the pandemic. It was exciting and scary, not because of any additional risk of exposure to COVID-19, but because I had finally decided to stop renting it.
Just as with many big decisions in my life, I can list several good reasons that I chose to give up the lease.
But the most important one, the exciting and scary reason, is that going to my office doesn't fit with our life right now, and I don't see that changing soon enough to justify the rent. This realization is scary, because wow, I love having a space that is utterly my own. The realization is exciting, because it's a milestone in seeing our life for what it is, here in this 2021, rather than what I had hoped it would be.
At one moment during the move, walking through an alley I've walked hundreds of times, I gave myself a pep talk. “I am doing this because of my values. I am doing this for the right reasons. This is one season in my life, and if I want an office again, I will get it.” And, remarkably, I listened to myself well enough to get into the building and start doing the packing that I had decided I needed to do.
This past month has been full of moments like these, where I am proud of myself for doing hard things and making space to enjoy wonderful things, even amid this pandemic that can still leave us with so much anxiety or depression or both.
Earlier in September, I happened upon the phrase “pandemic flux syndrome.” In an article for The Washington Post, social psychologist Amy Cuddy and writer JillEllyn Riley describe the concept, and it's a lot like what it sounds like—a collection of the chaotic ways we're feeling in response to this chaotic time.
The article describes several distinct psychological phenomena that Cuddy and Riley say fit under this trend they've been seeing. Reading the descriptions felt cathartic. They used the deliciously accurate phrase, "prolonged liminal state," and they point out how we've been collectively denied the fresh starts that we keep longing to have.
They quote Katy Milkman, a business school professor at University of Pennsylvania, who says, “Clearly demarcated fresh starts give us renewed motivation and help us pursue important goals. But for most of us, that clear fresh start hasn’t materialized [during the pandemic].”
Reading this, I realized that without intending to, I had created a fresh start by moving out of my office. I had been holding onto that physical space, wishing I could get back to using it regularly. And then, finally, upon receiving the small push of a planned increase in rent, I decided to let go. Instead of bemoaning my inability to restore the future I’d imagined, I'm choosing to own the life we have right now.
Interestingly, Cuddy and Riley's article mentions how we might feel the urge to make big changes in our lives to create a sense of control. Other articles with these authors or Instagram posts by others about the idea of pandemic flux syndrome have cautioned readers against making drastic changes. I've seen friends, especially mom friends, wonder, too: how much of me wanting a change is just this strange time, and how much of it is really me?
I get where the folks who warn against big changes are coming from, but I also think it's useful to look at discomfort with our situation as a signal from ourselves.
My way of knowing the difference between desperation and intention has been to compare the change I want to make right now to how I've felt about it before. In August, when I weighed the choice to leave my office, I knew that it was an idea I'd had percolating for some time. Though I wasn’t always consciously thinking about it, it wasn’t a spur of the moment grasp for stability, either. It was me finally feeling motivated to do something I'd previously been scared to do. The reasons had been piling up, and I finally had enough motivation to overcome my inertia.
The confidence and hope I’ve felt since the move have confirmed that it was the right choice for me. By moving out of that office, I am starting to turn my pandemic pause into a detour.
Wherever you are in your own pandemic detour, I wish you luck in deciding what's next.
Mentioned in this issue: “Why this stage of the pandemic makes us so anxious” by Amy Cuddy and JillEllyn Riley in The Washington Post; and an example of a related advice piece.