Amid the pandemic, we hear a lot about social distancing, which produces images of people isolated and alone, cut off from the world. The sound of it alone can bring on bouts of depression. What’s really happening is anything but — if you’re willing to use the tools available.
Mood Music:
On the work side, we may all be at home, but through GoTo Meeting, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Facetime, my colleagues and I are getting a lot of time together. There are the meetings, of course, but a lot of us are also using these platforms to have lunch together and just banter:
Checking in with my colleague, Hillary BlairColleague Charlie Carey telling me, “Your humor is best when socially distanced.”
Some of my friends in the security industry have set up Zoom meetings and kept them running. Folks can come and go as they please.
My friend and former boss, Akamai CSO Andy Ellis, has used these tools for family dinners and spiritual gatherings. The following is posted with his permission:
In some respects, I think our extra efforts to socialize these days has been good for us. There’s a certain solidarity in all this.
The war footing we’re on with COVID-19 remains serious and will be for some time to come. We can’t let our guard down or return our lives to normal — whatever that was — for the time being.
But we can put the future into a better perspective. As harsh as life seems right now, there are myriad examples of humanity doing the right things and seeing measurable progress. Here are five of them.
With a vaccine for COVID-19 still a long way from being realized, a Johns Hopkins immunologist is working to revive a century-old blood-derived treatment for use in the United States in hopes of slowing the spread of the disease. The treatment could be set up at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore within weeks.
South Korea reported more recoveries from the coronavirus than new infections on Friday for the first time since its outbreak emerged in January. The downward trend in daily cases raises hopes that Asia’s biggest epidemic center outside China may be slowing.
Distilleries across America are stepping up to mitigate the shortage of hand sanitizer by making their own and giving it away. Another example of the best humanity has to offer.
Each morning, as part of my job, I scan the big daily papers for cybersecurity news so we can put them into a digest to help chief security officers (CISOs) communicate the important stuff to top executives. This includes reading DealBook, a business-oriented newsletter from The New York Times. Reading it this morning brought out something I didn’t expect.
Mood Music:
This morning’s digest led with “What a ‘Wartime’ Economy Looks Like,” a rundown of all the actions the government and private sector are taking to approach the COVID-19 pandemic like a war. Said Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard economist and former Chief Economist for the International Monetary Fund:
The whole point of having a sound government balance sheet is to be able to go all out in situations like this, which is tantamount to a war.
Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, Harvard University
Reading this energized me.
My reaction seemed odd at first, since the write-up was anything but a call to arms. It was just an emotionless rundown of information.
But this morning I awoke feeling grim. Right before bed the night before I had made the colossal mistake of ignoring my own advice of limiting news and social media intake. Erin chided me about it and I got snippy. Once you get sucked into a mounting pile of doom on the internet, pulling away is like trying to rip out a nail that’s gone through your foot.
So I met the dawn feeling that things were as bad as they could get, or that they were certainly headed that way.
Then I saw the DealBook article.
It didn’t convert my gloom into sunshine, but it reminded me of the larger purpose and how, to use the very old but still applicable cliché, we’re all in this together. This is indeed war, and we all have an opportunity to save lives and turn the tide of battle, even against a virus that couldn’t care less about borders, culture, creed, skin color or economic standing.
Social distancing sucks after a while. The damage to the global economy is going to suck in a multitude of ways. But all is not lost. We have much to gain, even if we have no clue what that is yet.
“Humor is the universal solvent against the abrasive elements of life.”
Former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson
Several lifetimes ago, I was a newspaper reporter and editor. I saw a lot of tragedy and depravity in that line of work: fatal car wrecks, families burned out of homes, murder and, yes, health crises.
Mood Music:
https://youtu.be/QPNqojbyIDk
I used to walk over homeless people sleeping in the Lynn Police Department entrance, the place wreaking of piss. I’d sit in courthouses to report on arraignments, watching some of the unluckiest, choice-challenged people I’d ever seen in my life.
Along the way, my sense of humor took a dark turn.
I’d joke to other court reporters about whether someone standing in front of the judge was guilty of whatever they were charged with (“Of course they are!”). When listening to police-scanner chatter about fire trucks being sent to a triple-decker fire in Lawrence, some of us would place bets on how quickly they’d put out the flames. Lawrence burned so often that the firefighters learned to do their jobs with ninja-like precision.
My colleagues and I felt a lot of sadness and heartache along the way. Our hatred of human suffering was always just below the surface. But joking about some of it is how we survived.
This gallows humor is something a lot of police officers, medical professionals, security practitioners and military veterans have shared with me over the years based on their own experiences, most of them a lot more harrowing than anything I’ve experienced.
No matter how dangerous and tragic something is, sometimes laughter is the only armor you have.
I mention this because there’s been some backlash over memes and commentary making light of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Some say it’s cruel to laugh about such a grave threat, that we have to take it seriously. Some who joke about it are called dismissive.
And some of those people are dismissive. I shake my head more over people who seriously downplay what’s happening, writing it off as a media conspiracy to undermine Trump.
But those memes joking about toilet-paper hoarding? That Onion article about wearing two face masks (one on the back of the head in case Coronavirus attacks from behind)? Those are keeping me sane.
If the humor bothers you, I’m sorry. I certainly don’t want to see you hurting.
But don’t expect everyone to walk around their quarantine holes with a dour stare 24 hours a day.
To the jokesters: Keep it coming. You’re helping me through this, and I appreciate you.
Like most people, some COVID-19 news items scare the crap out of me. Two examples from yesterday: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommending a ban on gatherings of more than 50 people for the next eight weeks, and the Federal Reserve, seeking to steady financial markets, cutting interest rates to near zero.
The latter rattled me because the news will only spread more fear among investors. It signals that the Feds see recession. Global stocks took a hit from the news overnight, making another bad day on Wall Street likely. The CDC news rattled me even more. “How the hell are we going to hunker down like this for 8 weeks?” I thought.
Mood Music:
After a few hours of sleep and some more reading, I’m calmer. Hopefully, this post calms you, too.
Let’s start with the economy: There’s little doubt that we’re in a downturn. But there are myriad signs that we’ll adapt and even make innovations that will benefit economic growth in the long run.
NYC-based financial advisor Joshua M. Brown writes that we’re in for more scary headlines, but that like the alarming words we saw amid 9-11 and the 2008 financial meltdown, we will adapt and move forward. He notes:
Without a doubt, the news will get worse from here. But its ability to shock us will diminish.
Last night, after the governor of my state announced a ban of even midsized gatherings and sitting in restaurants and bars, there were signs of hope. I saw restaurants quickly adapting and making takeout options easier for people. I mentioned one such example yesterday: the Canlis Restaurant in Seattle shutting its dining room but switching gears to food delivery.
Schools are closing en mass, but instead of doing nothing, most are adopting online classroom options. I’m seeing this up close with both my kids at home.
Some areas of the economy are going to suffer more than others, obviously. Restaurant servers, Uber drivers, hotel workers and airline/cruise ship employees are in for a lot of pain. Those of us with the financial means to help should be thinking about what to do.
In many other parts of the economy, however, I see companies quickly shifting their models in ways that will keep them humming along. Microsoft and Google moved their employees to a work-at-home model earlier on. My own company has done the same, and we’ve been able to shift several of our in-person events to virtual without much of a sweat.
In the coming days, weeks and months, we’re all going to learn a lot about what my profession calls business continuity. The lessons will enable us to weather future crises with more ease.
In the meantime, how do we all keep from going mad as we isolate ourselves? Here’s my plan:
Daily walks and drives. We can still go outside as long as we keep our distance from others. I’ll be taking plenty of walks and a few drives to break up the day.
Being the change wherever I can. I’m fortunate to be in the cybersecurity business, which is heavily focused on business continuity and risk management. I’ll be tripling down on producing content to help our clients through this. I’ll also use my social media platforms to share common-sense guidance and shoot down fearmongering, dismissiveness and falsities as much as possible.
Music. I’ll be doing a lot of soul soothing by losing myself in some of my favorite music.
Movies. Our house will need breaks from reality, and we have Netflix, Britbox and Amazon Prime at the ready.
Healthy eating. I’m fortunate in that I dropped 70 pounds before this crisis and adopted healthier eating and exercise habits. As a result, I’m already finding it easier to weather current events. I have more energy and mental bandwidth to do so. These habits will continue.
We can do this. We will do this. Peace and strength be with you all.
I first wrote this in 2014. Amid COVID-19, a lot of us are going to go through bouts of depression. Back then, I found it useful to use the five stages of grief as a reference point for what I was feeling. It helped me get to the other side. May it help you now. It won’t make the depression go away. But it might help you deal with it.
There are plenty of articles out there about the so-called five stages of grief. Based on my experiences in that department, I find the writings mostly accurate and valuable.
I’ve been thinking lately about how there are also stages of depression, not unlike those of grief. Identifying them can help you know where you are and what’s going on. Note: this is not a scientific effort. It is simply based on my own experiences.
Mood music:
Denial and isolation. Things start to go wrong, but you’re not immediately aware of them. Your short-term memory starts to slip, you become disorganized, and you protest when those who love and know you best suggest you may be heading for an episode. You respond by clamming up and ignoring friends when they ask you to have coffee. You spend a lot more time on the couch.
Anger. After one too many days in denial, you start to realize you’re again slipping into depression. This makes you angry, and you start taking it out on those around you. Your self-worth begins to sink, and you start to feel you can’t do anything right. This leads to more anger, self-loathing, and self-pity.
Bargaining. During grief, this is the stage where a person repeatedly goes over the what-ifs: what if the loved one had gotten medical attention sooner, what if you’d recognized the problem for what is was, etc. With depression, the bargaining works a bit differently. You plays the blame game with the world around you. You’re depressed because of work. You’re depressed because of a disagreeable family member. If the depression is really bad, you blame anyone and anything but the disease within your own brain.
Melancholy. With grief, the fourth stage is depression. Within the depression itself, the fourth stage is melancholy, at least in my experience. A deep sadness and hopelessness take hold in your gut after too many successive days of feeling like shit. It becomes hard to do most basic daily tasks.
Acceptance After a while, you realize you have a few choices. The most extreme choice is suicide. I’ve never seriously considered it, but I know people who have and, sadly, gone through with it. Another choice is to start doing things to emerge from the depression. For me, that involves talking to people and writing to get the feelings off my chest. The other step is to re-embrace coping tools. It’s not like flipping a switch, but more like rebooting a computer. It takes time to start using your coping tools effectively again and more time for them to make a difference. But acceptance is a start.
Acceptance is where I’m at now. I long ago accepted that frequent bouts of depression come with being me and that there are things I can do to keep it in check. It’s time to reboot the system.
