Jorie: Being outside. I fortunately have a little yard and porch that I spend a lot of time on, but even getting sun by the window. When the sun is out it drastically improves my mood. Trying to be outside or near that when it’s present and prioritizing it because I’m able to, and have full control over my schedule.
Jenny: Practicing compassion across the board. I’m a bit of a workaholic, so if I start measuring myself by how much I did prior to this, I can start to spiral.
What was most important to you before you had to social distance?
Jorie: I don’t think I had time to think about what was important tome.Maintaining my schedule was a peak priority whether i wanted it to be or not. Now that I don’t have something happening for every part of every day, I’ve been forced to reassess why I was running all over the place and if I want to keep doing that moving forward. I guess, getting all my things done and crossing things off lists was very incredibly important to me prior to everything shutting down.
Jenny: Hustle culture. I’m over it.
For me, it’s definitely always been career. Obviously all the life things–community, love, family–but at the end of the day if I boil down why I move a cup to the left, it usually has to do with my career.
What’s the first thing you’ll do when this is over?
Jorie: What is “over” for this? There’s small things I’m looking forward to like being able to invite a handful of people over to our yard and cook food for them. I really want to go to New York, but I don’t know when. I feel like I kind of live in the epicenter of [cities and states] who are handling this in different ways. I’m excited to not feel guilty about being around people. That’ll be nice. Baby steps.
Jenny: I second that. Being around people. I’m part of a theater company and we meet on Monday nights. It’s almost like a tease because we’re together creating shit for Zoom, but there’s not that energy that happens when a group of people get together. Getting in the room and feeling that, for sure. Secondly, I don’t think I’ve ever in my life gone this long without being able to go near or in a body of water. I’m from LA and the beach is very healing to me. The first thing I’m going to do when we can rent a car or travel is go for a body of water.
What are you doing to pass the time?
Jorie: Indoor Outfit is part of it. It’s been helpful and interesting to see how similar everyone’s experiences are no matter where in the world they live or what their jobs were before this. I work at a thrift store in Minneapolis that has remained somewhat open. Most of the people who are working there are just volunteering. I’ve been making masks for them out of jeans that we then resell as jean shorts. You get a mask and then we donate the other five. That’s been time consuming and good as well. I’ve been staying somewhat busy. I also still work at the old bar I used to work at, I just box up takeout food for them in a mask and listen to music.
Jenny: I’m still working. I work for home as an assistant to a career coach. She’s pivoted her business to help coach people through this time.Her client base is all creatives. I feel useful being able to support her supporting a huge community of people. I also started a directing for television class. I have my theater club meeting on Mondays. I haven’t stopped. I actually feel like I need a break. I have a lot of creative projects right now with a lot of different groups of people. I’m not good at saying “no.” I actually feel like I need a break from quarantine where I need to go to that body of water and just sit and read a book.
What makes you happy right now?
Jorie: My cat makes me pretty happy. She’s a small little blind cat. My boyfriend adopted a dog who we run with in the morning and he gets joy out of every new thing he experiences.
Jenny: I’m getting joy out of the fact that I set up two very good friends of mine on a social distancing walk in the park blind date and they’re fucking smitten with each other and they’re on their fourth date. I created my own drama saga rom com. I’m watching it unfold in this fun way.
What would you tell yourself two months ago with the knowledge you have today?
Jorie: I was blissfully unaware that this was coming, so I don’t know if I would have told myself anything. Not pre-worrying about anything was nice.
I need to be more patient with myself and everything. Patience has been a daily experience/lesson/journey for me.
Jenny: I would tell myself to slow down. Deadlines are fake. I would have told myself just to block and delete every ex’s number. Don’t throw grenades when there’s no reason to throw grenades! That would have been a good thing to do.
I think I’ve learned how rigid my understanding of self care was before and actually how flexible it is. It can look like a lot of things.
