The pandemic turned many of us into hermits. It's time to head out again.
 | By Michal Leibowitz Editorial Assistant |
"I've trimmed the fat," was my husband's phrase, uttered just a few months into the pandemic after a day of working from home. Without a commute, without office chitchat, without having to travel from meeting to meeting, his days had become more efficient and convenient. There was more time for him to do his actual job, without all the other stuff interfering. |
But if trimming the fat was my husband's motto for work, it soon came to define my entire pandemic life. |
In the beginning, I went the other way. I did the 1000-piece puzzles, knitted the scarf and baked the bread. I learned how to cook chicken (a task I'd avoided my whole life), took the meandering walks and read the long book I had never had time to read. |
But later on, after the novelty (the terrifying, anxious novelty, but novelty nonetheless) of pandemic life had worn off, the idea really took hold for me. My life — without commutes, without social events, with the services and products I began using first to avoid Covid exposure risks and then the hassles of the supermarket — was so, well, streamlined. |
Those big family events? Nonexistent. Those sorta-friends' birthday parties? Ditto. Those everyday interactions with the grocery clerk, neighbor, fellow bus passenger? Gone. |
Look how productive I am, I sometimes boasted to my husband. Look how long I worked without all those distractions, with, instead, deliveries of exactly what we need to our door. |
As I wrote in an essay this week, it wasn't until later, much later, that I had the nagging feeling that something was missing from my now lean, ultraconvenient, homebound life. And it took even longer before I started trying to find it again. |
The thing about fat (as any good carnivore knows) is that it's where the flavor is. |
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