My Coping Mechanisms for Covid-19

Like many people living in these interesting times, I have taken up journal-writing. Though I may no longer be a practicing historian, I felt a duty, as it were, to leave something for the historical record. Alas, any future scholars (or more likely, my future self) hoping for an eloquent or engaging account of the Covid-19 pandemic will primarily encounter disappointment at the disjointed entries.

The pandemic has done no favours to my naturally anxious disposition, and I ostensibly hoped that by setting down my fears in a clear and logical fashion they might be shown to be — not unfounded, but at least less apocalyptic than the visions entertained by my overwrought brain. Journaling, therefore, constituted my first attempt to really cope with Covid. By that metric, it did not really succeed, but it did provide a chronicle of all my other coping mechanisms during the course of 2020.

In the early days, I took refuge in daily viewings of Wallace and Gromit as well as Shaun the Sheep. Together with a shot of whiskey, I managed to stagger thus through the first month of lockdown in Norway. Unfortunately, this attempt at assuaging my nerves lacked longevity.

I turned then to baking. Sourdough gave structure to days otherwise lacking in delineation. But sometimes the bread failed — lethargic starter, cold kitchen, overproofing — and that failure felt personal. I have been baking, both yeasted and sourdough breads for more than half my life. Pre-pandemic, it was a skill that I could always count on. To fail at something as simple as bread-baking took away my self-confidence.

So I moved on to music. The passive consumption thereof, not the production thereof. Most of the time and to my husband’s great chagrin, I listen to Baroque opera and Bach’s keyboard works. However, I came to those late in life and so, as true auditory comfort, I returned to the pop and rock of my teenage years. To be more precise, to Boyzone’s greatest hits. My favourite 10 songs on a loop. And for a while, it worked.

Still, even the angelic voices of Ronan Keating and Stephen Gately could not distract my brain forever. At the beginning of May, I noted, “My brain can’t settle.” A few days later, nothing had changed: “I’m mentally tired.” By 12 May the lockdown had ended but I remained wary: “I can’t tell if I’m a paranoid loon or if everyone else is overly optimistic.” Things did not improve much in the following month, or the month thereafter. On 7 June I was “unable to sleep again”; by 5 July I felt “like Bilbo — butter spread over too much bread.” August was even worse: “I wish the world would end. Not in the awful drawn-out way that it seems to be currently ending, but in a bang, with an asteroid.”

Then I made an appointment to call a Swiss friend. My German being atrocious, I knew there was no way I could hope to carry on a conversation without a refresher course in the language. (Twenty years ago, I spoke it fairly fluently, having spent a year in Switzerland as an exchange student; but since then it’s languished in favour of Dutch and then Norwegian.) My self-designed crash course consisted of 10 days watching Swiss documentaries on YouTube.

Among other things, I learned about the Via Francigena, the effects of the Reformation on Swiss industrial development, and the tragedy of the first expedition to summit the Matterhorn. By the time that 4 September rolled around and we connected on Skype, I had managed to improve to the point of being able to talk for two hours without relying on too many Anglicisms. (Norwegianisms, on the other hand, were another thing entirely, and one that I hadn’t anticipated.)

Anyway, in preparing myself for this conversation in German, I accidentally discovered my most effective coping mechanism yet: burning off all the excess brain energy with a foreign language. I now start my days in German with either a documentary or podcast episode. I am fairly sure that one reason it works for me is because I already have solid grammar basics; it isn’t a language that I’m learning from scratch (but at the same time it takes noticeably more effort for me to understand than Dutch or Norwegian). I also think that reviving it may have triggered some capacity to deal with adversity. As an exchange student, German & Swiss-German were the languages in which I had my first taste of independence and discovered my capacity for resilience. Maybe speaking & hearing them again reminds my brain: You’ve already done this. You can do it again. You’re going to be OK.