Dear Pepper is a monthly advice-column comic by Liana Finck. If you have questions for Pepper about how to act in difficult situations, please direct them to dearpepperquestions@gmail.com. Questions may be edited for brevity and clarity.
Dear Pepper,
I find that, the older I get, the more introverted I become—my social-butterfly days have flitted away. The problem is, now that I’m an introvert, I’ve become an extrovert wannabe. I want to be home, alone. But I wish I️ didn’t.
Quarantine has really played to my strengths. I’m home, I’m alone, and I don’t have to feel as if I’m missing anything; I don’t have to feel as if I’m some loser while everyone else is out doing fun and interesting things.
So, now what? Thank all the goddesses and gods in Heaven and on Earth that this pandemic may soon be over and people can once again pick up their careers and lives, and hopefully bounce back to their happier selves. But I don’t want to bounce back to my sadder self. Help, please, with some nugget of soothing wisdom.
Sincerely,
Another Social-Media Depressive
Dear S.M.D.,
Here is that nugget you requested. I hope you carry plastic bags.
I️, too, am one of the rare dogs/people who have, in certain ways, thrived during lockdown. I’ve found it wonderful not to have to take the subway multiple times a day, or to have to balance different kinds of planned and unplanned social interactions on a hallucinatory, shifting calendar. I like not having to spend a huge chunk of my time and brain space on friend maintenance. (Does anyone truly enjoy travelling to Williamsburg to go to someone’s loud birthday gathering in a bar, or are we all just making a show of it?)
It’s somewhat thrilling not having to balance Cousin Dewey’s wedding with four work meetings with a potluck dinner party with nine out-of-town visitors with what often feels like four hundred Jewish holidays with a looming book deadline with teaching a class with two back-to-back trips to California to speak at rival colleges, plus three trips to Pennsylvania to (I don’t remember what I even used to do—frack? Sell carpet samples? Spy?), and one to Ontario. I’ve always struggled with questions of what will be fun, what will be meaningful, what will be important to others, and how I can make a hierarchy of these qualities, the better to choose which things to do, and when, and for how long. And what will happen if I just say no? I was always too scared to find out. The decisions were impossible, and painful, and relentless. The subways were crowded and noisy, and people shoved.
Then it all stopped.
Since the pandemic began, I’ve experienced some bad things, which I won’t write here because they are far less bad than bad things experienced by many, many others. I’ve also been baking bread and going for long runs in the park. I’ve been drawing a lot, which is the actual work that I ️don’t always have time for in “real” life. My boyfriend moved in. We got a, um, pet. I️ have fewer people in my life now than before, and feel closer to the ones I’ve kept. I️, too, would like to hold on to some of this quiet and some of these values after things return to normal.
One thing we’ve been forced to do during the pandemic is to take everything one day at a time. Let’s do that now. First, let’s see if things do return to normal, and what that even means. Afterward, we can make some adjustments if we need to. But I’m hoping we won’t need to. We now know that we can survive without meeting our third cousin Toby for brunch in the West Village. I can’t imagine what our motivation would be to start torturing ourselves again.
On the flip side, I am looking forward to never having to sit through another Zoom birthday party.
Sincerely,
Pepper
