I am not, of course, a psychologist, so all I know about the title topic is the effects that the pandemic has had on me and on some of my friends, judging by what they tell me rather than what what I observe—or rather am unable to observe since long-term contact with friends and acquaintances is now verboten.
I'll just describe, then, the changes I've undergone, and ask readers to chime in. Now I know that people who are already fairly isolated, like those who live way out in the country, might suffer fewer effects than those who are constantly interacting with others, for some people crave solitude. But I doubt the pandemic has spared even those souls. I am also perfectly aware that anyone who hasn't caught the virus, and especially those who are still alive, can't beef that much, for we're still here.
Consider this, then, a description rather than a complaint: some anecdotal data on the effects of a lockdown on one specimen of H. sapiens.
The most obvious symptom I note in myself is an increase in impatience and peevishness. I have little patience with those who are talking to me, especially if I sense a monologue, and I want to get off the phone almost as soon as I start talking to someone. It seems to me that people are talking at greater length, which makes me antsy. But I am not sure that this perceived increase in loquacity is real. It could be my imagination. And, at any rate, such impatience is not my normal behavior.
I have grown more intolerant in the past few months, and have to reign in anger quite often. It even comes out as a form of attenuated road rage, in which I find it hard to tolerate bad drivers. (In the last decade I've consciously developed an accepting Buddhist-like attitude towards driving.) Someone suggested that, in general, people's inability to control their lives very much now has made them even more controlling in other respects.
I have become more hermetic. I often intend to call or Skype my friends in the evening, and then think, "Nawww. . . we'll all just kvetch and it will be depressing. And besides, nothing is happening." This is even more unlike me, as a while back I had several friends to whom I'd talk almost daily—often at length. If you're someone who hasn't heard from me in a while, forgive me.
Most of us, I think, are suffering from anxiety, which is the normal human response to uncertainty. And of course we have uncertainty big time: there's an election coming up; most of us are aware that if Trump is elected the country goes down the drain; we have no idea how Trump is going to handle either an election loss or the pandemic; and we have no idea when there will be a vaccine, or, if there is one, whether it will work very well.
Although I don't have to worry about losing my job, I seem to have lost enthusiasm for many things that use to get me juiced up. Even reading seems like a chore, and books, once my great joy, have become big blocks of daunting pages that I must plow through. When reading, I ask myself, "How many more pages until the end?" My attention span is limited.
Writing on this website, always both a self-imposed obligation but also a great pleasure, has become more difficult. It's harder to choose what to talk about, and I fear that some of my peevishness has slipped into the posts. If that seems to be the case, forgive me as well.
My sleeping has gone to hell. I used to get a solid 7 hours a night, which was enough for me, but now I wake up after, say, five hours of sleep, the anxiety sets in, and that's all she wrote. I try to offset this by taking naps, but that might exacerbate the problem.
No matter how depressing life got, I always had a trip in the offing to look forward to. That is no more. Trips—which I planned in my dotage to combine with lectures on ships—were something I looked forward to in retirement, but of course these aren't in the offing for a long time, and ships have become floating Petri dishes.
As I wait for things to resume, I'm conscious of my own mortality: the good years I have left are fewer, and yet most of us can't do what we want with them—not for now. As Bonnie Raitt sang in Nick of Time, "Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste."
I am pretty sure that once the pandemic has abated—if it ever does!—and I can start traveling again, things will be back to normal (well, as normal as I ever was). In the end, I have no idea why I'm writing a confessional like this except that I just fed the ducks (there are many of them today), and they were squabbling for food and pecking each other and I realized that what was once a great joy has become a chore. On the good side of the ledger, Honey is still here, as are Dorothy and her babies, the duck farming went well, with a bumper crop of 23 this year, all healthy and grown, and I'll be both elated and saddened when, in a month, the Eight Originals who remain raise their mighty wings and head south.
The best I can make of this post is that I'm trying to start a conversation to see if other people have had similar deleterious—or even salubrious—changes in their character as a result of the pandemic. Weigh in one way or the other. Or, if you're one of the lucky ones who hasn't slipped since March, weigh in as well.
Oh, and now instead of shaving every other day, it's once every three days, and even four around the weekend. Who's to see?
