This Is Us
Quarantine Has Forced Me to Confront How Little I Care About Myself
My sustained lack of motivation has forced me to question what that motivation was made of in the first place
There are no unknowns when I step out of bed. I will enjoy my first sip of coffee. I will comb through emails I don’t care about. I will refresh Twitter too many times. I’ll plan to go for a run. I won’t. I’ll work as much as I can until my lack of motivation snowballs into futility, then continue refreshing Twitter until the phone rings and the wine is poured. I no longer have the attention span to watch a show or read a book so I talk to friends until “bedtime,” the illusion of a schedule, at which point I return to Twitter, now slightly unhinged, browse an ex’s feed until 3 a.m., then shut off the light and hope for the best.
The things that used to keep me alive — by which I mean make me feel like a human, with a mind and a body living in a world — are gone. The energy of a New York street, the laughter of friends around a dinner table, the buzz of an off-the-cuff flirtation, the high of a long run, the feeling of nailing the arc of an essay, the doing of things.
I can’t seem to show up to any task other than the essential…
