Pandemic Preamble

I am certainly not alone in reflecting upon the global pandemic of 2020 as being a difficult time. It is only now, after 4 months of an Intensive Outpatient Program, that I can identify it as the beginning of when my use of alcohol flipped decidedly into the realm of unhelpful and unhealthy. However, one way I can identify my experience as better or luckier than most during the pandemic, is that I didn't have any short term financial stress or worries. On March 4, 2020 I was fired from the Whole Foods I lived next to after working there for about five years. I lived so close that I could leave my bedroom at 12:52pm and clock in for work at 12:56pm. Exactly one week after I lost my job, on March 11th, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Also on March 11th, what made the pandemic real to me, was that just before tipoff of a game between the OKC Thunder and the Utah Jazz, officials brought Thunder coach Billy Donovan and Jazz coach Quin Snyder to half court to inform them the game was being canceled because of a positive COVID-19 test for Jazz center Rudy Gobert. About an hour after the game was canceled, news broke that the NBA would suspend the season for the foreseeable future. As travel bans and stay-at-home orders soon became the norm, thousands of Portlanders flooded the outdated unemployment system that didn't have the infrastructure to support so many people needing help all at once. Whereas, I found myself with the immense fortune of having already locked my place into the unemployment system, had already jumped through all those hoops of bureaucracy on March 4th. Which allowed me unprecedented freedom, both financially and temporally. Objectively, I should have been elated. Subjectively, I was not.

I have since had the pleasure of having a counselor, currently my therapist, in 2024 who shared with me and my peers in recovery a video titled, "7 Ways To Maximize Misery". Imagine my astonishment when I realized that I had been doing not just a few, but all 7 of the recipes for disaster every single day for months and months on end during the pandemic. Add the magic elixir of drinking alcohol from the second I woke up until the second I passed out for all those same months (that soon added up to more than a year) and - *chef's kiss* - I had found the perfect recipe for misery. The one exception is I did take lots of walks, but almost always after the sun had set. Also, almost always involving a trip to the liquor store and back. Or, if it was between 10pm and 2am, to the closest convenience store for 6 packs of beer.

Having an excess amount of time and money to reexamine what gave me a feeling of purpose led me back to one of my favorite things I did for pleasure as a child into my teenage years. Namely, writing, directing, and editing short video projects. I signed up for, and completed, an online course through Yellowbrick and NYU entitled Film and TV Essentials. I wasn't naive enough to think that completing the course or creating short videos would lead to a job in TV or Film. But it pushed me in the right direction towards concrete achievable goals beyond finishing a bottle of tequila in record time. Resources beyond my immediate surroundings were limited due to my extreme isolation, and my prodigious daily alcohol consumption wasn't exactly the best source of motivation. However, I soon found that making short videos was its own reward. The further removed I was from chasing view counts, social media "likes", or trying to please the algorithms - the happier I was.