There's loads of advice out there about self-isolation, when to wear masks and when not to, washing your hands for 20 seconds (or if you want to live dangerously, 19) and other ways to deal with the Global Pandemic. It's all useful and me, I'm just staying in my house, writing and sleeping and eating whatever's in my kitchen or occasionally ordering in. I've often gone for several days at a time like that so this isn't a total disruption of my life…yet.
Everyone's talking about how to maintain your health and that's fine, but I think we need some pointers on how to maintain one's sanity. We have this problem and I always think that the first step towards dealing with a problem is getting a good read on exactly what the problem is and — very important — just how big it is. Coping with small problems is a very different thing from coping with the big ones. When I look back with some perspective on problems of the past that I've handled well or not handled well, I generally think the "not handled well" ones went that way because I misjudged their size.
Small problems are problems you can often make go away entirely, sometimes with one clever or perceptive solution. I've even made a lot of small problems go away by realizing I didn't have to do anything; that they'd just burn themselves out and go away on their own. Or sometimes that they weren't really problems in the first place. My problem was that I thought they were.
Big problems often require multiple solutions along with the realization that you may not be able to make them totally go away for a long time, if at all. Sometimes, you must accept that you can't make them completely disappear because that's just not possible. You have to learn to live with them for as long as they endure (occasionally, forever) and minimize the damage. And one way they do damage is to occupy our minds; to make us spend so much time itemizing all the negatives and possible dire chapters ahead that we forget the positive things we can do now.
Remember: It's real easy to imagine horrible, catastrophic outcomes that could happen…but won't. You can spend a lot of time worrying and getting your stomach tied up in a knot the even Houdini couldn't undo, imagining horrible, catastrophic outcomes that could happen…but won't.
I'm trying to find the right balance for the current crisis. I can't not follow the news and I can't not talk about it with friends who call. I can also do way too much of that and I think in the last few days, maybe I have, spending too much time thinking and talking about what I can't do instead of what I can. I can't invent the perfect vaccine but I can finish my part of an issue of Groo.
I am not suggesting those two are in any way comparable in importance or in service to mankind. One of them — I'll leave it to you to decide which — is a wee bit more beneficial to all, or at least me.
What's going on in the world now is all so unprecedented in our lives and we aren't seeing nearly enough calm, informed leadership at the top. I absolutely understand that this thing caught a lot of people unprepared and they don't have a manual full of rules that will tell them what to do in this situation that has never happened before. But us living with this 24/7 in our heads and ulcers ain't helping.
There's a bit of advice that most of my close friends have heard from me, in some cases many times. I deliver it so often that I'm amazed that in the 7030 days I've been writing this blog — that's the actual number — I've never delivered it here. But I haven't. I just searched this site for "steer manure" and I didn't find a trace of this advice so here it is…
Imagine one day your doorbell rings. You open the door and there's a masked stranger holding a huge bucket of steer manure. Before you can stop him, he hurls the contents of that bucket into the middle of your living room, then runs off cackling with glee…
…leaving you with a living room full of steer manure. At this point, there are two things you can do about it…
You can cry and moan and curse and spend days telling everyone you know about the horrible thing that was done to you and how it's so unfair that that asshole masked stranger did to you and what you're going to do to him when you get your hands around his throat and you can feel very sorry for yourself and mad at a world in which any old masked stranger can come by and just dump a heap of steer manure in someone's living room and why doesn't someone stop this kind of thing? And then, finally, you can clean up the steer manure.
Or you can just clean up the steer manure.
You have to do it, now or later. Why not do it now before it really starts smelling up the place? You might even find a constructive use for all that steer manure. Spread it on your lawn. Or get a mask and dump it in the living room of someone you don't like.
Some people love to play the victim card and talk endlessly of how unfairly they've been treated and how awful they have it and how you should forget about your life and feel real sorry for them. I guess that can be fun at times but it doesn't get the steer manure out of your living room. Only getting the steer manure out of your living room gets the steer manure out of your living room.
That's my advice. Find that sweet spot between being alert and managing your life in the current pandemic emergency…and letting it define your life and upset your entire being and pre-empt things you could be doing. A certain amount of thinking ahead is essential and if you'd done enough of it before, you wouldn't be panicked about running out of toilet paper right about now and trying to use only one square of it at a time. ("How could I have known I'd need to wipe my butt in March?")
I'm struggling to find that middle-ground myself. I'm not sure exactly where it is but I know there is one and I need to be there. It's someplace between living like Howie Mandel and waiting for the government to come around and start passing out Soylent Green.