Notes from an unexpected road trip

Rethinking work, life, and meaning in a digital age

It’s been a rough week. Last Friday, my wife and I packed up our Subaru and left our Brooklyn home. I sat in the back seat, sandwiched between the dog and our toddler. I read him “Goodnight Gorilla” about 100 times as we made the 18-hour drive to Mississippi. We’ll quarantine here for two weeks. And then if we’re healthy, we may stay with family for a while.

How do you pack for a sudden trip of indefinite length? There was a limited amount of space in the footwell of the back seat, and I couldn’t figure out whether to bring the extra hand sanitizer or the family heirlooms. 

I feel all kinds of complicated about this leaving. I’m sad to leave friends and neighbors behind. I’m anxious about getting sick, and even more anxious about accidentally making anyone else sick. I’m grateful we have a place to go, a place where we are welcome. 

And I feel guilty about going. Our culture has tipped so far into the realm of individualism, and yet now is a time for collective action. I’m conflicted about the tension between taking actions that benefit our society, and actions that benefit my family. I know that people with means, as Anne Helen Peterson wrote recently, are spreading the virus as they leave the cities to take refuge in smaller communities.

Yet staying put began to feel untenable. More than half of our apartment is a windowless basement. I had taken to recording the podcast in our bedroom closet. Our local hospitals were filling up. Somehow, we both had to figure out how to care for our child while we worked.  Every time we went out our front door, we were anxious.

And we could do nothing in person to help our neighbors. No watching the kids for an hour. No bringing groceries, or stopping by with a beer.

Our home is at a very busy intersection, and part of living there has been making peace with the noise of traffic waxing and waning over the course of the day. But in our last days in Brooklyn, I could hear only two sounds: the birds were out, everywhere, chirping. I hadn’t realized we had so many cardinals. And then there were the sirens. Maybe there were always so many sirens, blending into the general cacophony of the city. But I don’t think so.

All of this is justification. Leaving is simply what we did. 

We drove quickly, free from the traffic that normally clogs up the pathways between cities. We packed all of our own food, and brought gloves and masks for the gas stops we made.  I have now peed in a deserted park in Silver Springs, Maryland and a grove of trees behind a baptist church in Hollywood, Alabama. 

Here in Mississippi, we’ve so far been entirely isolated, playing house in a home we have borrowed. Already, I can breathe more freely. I can hear myself think. And, I can record the Hello Monday episodes that attempt to speak to this time. Episodes like this week’s bonus track, a conversation with Crisis Text Line founder Nancy Lublin.

As I take stock of things on April 2, we are still at the beginning of this calamity. The destruction phase. It’s uncomfortable. Every day the headlines spell out new disasters I hadn’t let myself imagine; sometimes I find out a friend is sick, or I see a number so large I quiver. I cannot salvage those days. I have to go to bed, and start all over again.

Other days, I spend time listening to a friend. Or I watch my son lick the peanut butter off a piece of celery. And I feel more connected to myself than I have in years.

I’d like to fast forward to the end of the story of the global pandemic here. I’d like to bring you the perspective that we develop as we reflect on the events that shape us. But that’s not where we are. We are in the destruction phase. Next will come grief. It will set in like a lead bodysuit, weighing us down as we begin to take stock of all that we will have lost--all that right now we still have to lose.

After all of this will come the rebuilding. It won’t go according to plan, because there is no plan. There’s only faith in humanity. We are capable of building pyramids. We are capable of moving the entirety of our social life into Zoom rooms. And we are capable of stitching the fabric of our lives, thread by thread, into something beautiful again.

So here comes the old newsletter. It’s changing. It began as the backstory to my tech reporting. It has evolved to become the repository for my curiosity. How do we make sense of this moment in which we find ourselves?  I figure I will write about it. Maybe, in the writing, and in the dialogue, we will figure something out. Feel free to follow along and write back.

🎙Things I’ve made: On Hello Monday, we’ve begun dropping short bonus episodes on Thursdays that address coronavirus. This week, I called Crisis Text Line founder Nancy Lublin to see how people are feeling—

Another recent episode that came out particularly well is our collection of stories from listeners who are being impacted by the virus. It is just two weeks old, and already, listening to it feels like a listen into a moment when we were all more innocent.

🏆Ways to help:

Volunteer with Crisis Text Line: The training takes less time than you’ll spend binge-watching The Wire again. They ask you to commit to four hours each week in which you answer texts. (Bonus: Helping other people feel connected is a great way to feel connected yourself.)

Give to this community-driven initiative to get meals to doctors and nurses, and keep restaurants going. Jeff Berman has been involved with helping organize this massive endeavor that began as an idea some LA public school moms had less than two weeks ago.

Give to Together Rising. Author Glennon Doyle started this endeavor years ago with the conviction that if everyone chipped in $25, we could solve each others’ problems. She’s using our contributions to help struggling famililies make rent, pay bills and buy groceries.

Share the things you’re seeing with me. I’ll include them on the show, write about them for LinkedIn, and pass the news on here. We’re all going to need to help each other through this. If you’ve got an idea for something significant, let’s amplify it and help make it happen.

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***So maybe you’re asking, what’s this about again? You're my brain trust. I don't write for thousands. I write to exchange ideas with the small group of people I've met and who matter to me, in hopes that together we can figure out something more about where humanity is going and how it gets there. This is a team sport.