The end of March usually brings with it the earnest beginning of the new tour season here in Boston. In past years, I’ve actively looked forward to this shift back into things. When I was working at the chocolate shop in the winter, I was always excited for a change of scene, and 2018 and 2019 found me feeling rested and ready to dive back into the fray. The beginning of March 2020 found me feeling more trepidatious. I felt almost as though I had walked a very long way with a heavy backpack on, stopped to catch my breath and ease my shoulders, and was then contemplating the daunting need to pick up that bag again and retrace my steps. I knew I would enjoy myself once I was out there. I’d get back in the groove with some new stories to tell, and I’d have fun with it. But I was dragging last year. I was dreading being away from home. It’s so very nice and cozy here. And then, lo and behold, I was told I wasn’t allowed to leave. And there was that, bringing with it this whole host of new thoughts and anxieties to consider. 

Not wanting to leave home is nothing new for me. I was the kid who actively did not want to learn to drive. I was not ready to leave for college, and while I was there I spent as much time as I could fifteen minutes from campus at Grannie’s house. I like to nest. I like to be quiet. I enjoy the (mostly) peaceful company of my two fuzzes, and now that I have Dylan, I enjoy the comfort of his companionship, whether we are actively doing something together or each engaged in our own activities side by side. While I was in school and in theater, I spent a long stretch of years hardly ever at home for any length of time. The same was true when I was working at the chocolate shop alongside my tours. Full days, nights, weekends. And in the height of the season, there is little time to simply be still without thinking about what is coming up next—the cons of freelancing in a seasonal business. I’ve also spent a good number of years in situations where my living space could feel very unsafe, which certainly adds to the attraction of having a safe and cozy home in which to be at home. Mostly, perhaps, I am anxious. I hate self promotion and conflict of all kinds and routinely feel that vibrating weight of anxiety settling onto my chest at the prospect of going out into the world and engaging directly with people. Even knowing I’ll likely be fine once I begin, that anxiety is daunting. Like having an ominously writhing hundred-pound weight sitting in front of my door. Some days I can simply scoot it aside and go about my day, and some days I have to pick it up and carry it around with me. Certainly in the face of that, sitting here in my chair with my cat on my lap and a cup of tea at my elbow is the easier choice.

 I have also found, in my years here in Massachusetts without a dishwasher, that I like washing dishes. I like doing laundry and puttering around the house. These are soothing tasks I can do at home while listening to a book, and when I’m done, I can physically see the results of my work. (I similarly got great satisfaction in my adolescent years mucking out stalls and, when I was slightly older and first working in theater, hauling instruments and equipment around.) I like baking for people (and cooking too, though I’m less good at that). You would think, therefore, that a mandatory, indefinite quarantine period in the comfort of my own home would be a truly delightful prospect. And in a way it was and is. The problem I find myself facing now is that, like so many in the face of pandemic, I’m out of work. I am extremely fortunate to have some savings, a partner who has a job he has been able to start doing from home, and lots of interests to keep us occupied here, but I now find myself in the odd position of contributing to our shared home primarily with the puttering housework I like to do. Part of me is extremely grateful, and part of me is terrified. If I am not working, who am I? If I am not actively contributing to our household finances, do I risk becoming faceless and nameless and fading away? I don’t think so. I hope not. But I worry. And there’s that. 

When this whole thing started, almost a year ago now, I had already started to consider the possibility of finding a little freelance work I could do remotely. Something that would make it possible to take a lighter tour schedule during the season, ease the drought of the winter months, and lighten the strain of job-hunting if we decided to move out of the city (another half-formed dream we’ve discussed more seriously during this long and winding year). I wish I could say I seized the opportunity to switch gears and productively used the past ten months to build a thriving new hustle in the digital world, but that is not the case. Instead, in March and April, I watched in horror as one by one the gigs I had already booked for 2020 cancelled and vanished from my calendar. Then I waited in trepidation to see if and when we’d be back at work, both looking forward to and dreading the prospect of jumping back into the fray after a prolonged hiatus. When things did begin to tentatively open back up again in the summer, Dylan and I, watching the trends and fearing the inevitable COVID resurgence, made the choice that I would continue to avoid work in tourism during the pandemic, and I relaxed a little into that decision, my unemployment checks, and a little part-time remote work from Northeastern. As the limbo continued to stretch into August, I finally sat down and got to the work of trying to switch gears, only to find myself increasingly anxiously distracted as November’s contentious election neared. That first week of November brought on the kind of anxiety I hadn’t felt since the winter of 2016-17. Then the holidays arrived, and then the dawning of a new year and the continuation of the parade of horror-inducing, history-making headlines.

 
Despite the very real distractions of global pandemic and domestic political meltdowns, to say I’ve made no progress would be a lie. I’ve made some. In fits and starts. I’ve made career decisions and laid good groundwork, taken up a hobby, gotten lots of exercise, and kept the dishes and the laundry and myself mostly clean in between my long bouts of video game playing and doom scrolling. But the worship of “productivity” and the stigma (in this country in particular) against those who rely on “the kindness of strangers” (and the government) are firmly lodged in my psyche along with a host of other pestering little neuroses, and the longer this drags on without my having achieved new gainful employment, the more that anxiety niggles. Even though we are alright—healthy, together, housed, and fed. Even though this whole thing has caused us to seriously examine shifting in a direction that will make us happier in the long run. Even though. I continue to wrestle with my own preconceptions, expectations, and anxieties. But I suppose the wrestling is a part of the process. And it certainly passes the time! Someday, fingers crossed, this will all be in the past. In the meantime, I can just keep moving forward, in fits and starts, examining the discomfort and taking tiny steps towards the world I’d like to see on the other side.