— Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, 9th Wonder, and Kamasi Washington feat. Phoelix
The pandemic is a trickster god. There have been moments, hours, days during this past year when I was convinced I was alone in this less than epic story of survival. Before COVID, my love well filled with the smiles of strangers, the soft eyes of my friends and family, and the hugs and high fives of all willing partners.
My life force demands laughter.
My currency is kindness.
My vault used to overflow with both.
Love in the time of the pandemic is the accumulation of small favors. A box of cookies from another state might sustain my soul for weeks. A compliment from a grocery store clerk might keep me buoyant for the day. Strangers delighted by my LED face mask on a walk would bring a huge grin to my face that they couldn’t see. A text. A postcard. A surprise socially distanced drive by. A video chat happy hour that doesn’t suck.
But that’s not every day. In those late summer months, the little things that matter most to me felt out of stock. My love well was so dry.
A colleague’s mother got critically ill in late September, and that was the time when I figured out that I could replenish my love supply: by showing others you give a shit.
I give a shit about you.
I’ve been doing the little things, and I hope it shows. If it doesn’t, I understand, though. That pandemic trickster god has been a stubborn asshole who has long overstayed their welcome.
“I really miss my boo-boo hoping [s]he don’t stay away.”
— Rapsody
By Wednesday of last week, I had taken to telling people outright that I was cranky. I was frustrated with usual work stuff. I was annoyed with having to move desks and floors. I was uncharacteristically curt with folks for whom I usually have more patience. My emotions were at the surface, an occurrence so rare that others were commenting on it. By Friday, though, my story had changed. I was cranky and annoyed and frustrated but the cause was, I was lonely.
This week I’m grateful for longing. Tiffany spent the week visiting a friend in Vancouver, leaving me on my own at home. It’s not common for me to be home alone. In the last few years, I’ve been the one prone to solo travel multiple times a year for work. Work travel is so busy; I don’t get that sense of being alone. All my time is filled with meetings and movement and managing time zones. Over the last seven days, though, I sat in this house listening to its creaky floors and cupboards, forgetting to eat dinner at a reasonable hour, working too much, off my routine, and missing my wife.
My schedule never filled with appointments and events with other people. The few I made were canceled or postponed. So, I was left to spend my time thinking about how much I appreciate her presence in my life. How much I enjoy caring for her and being cared for in return. One morning, I nearly made coffee despite knowing she wasn’t here to drink it because the feeling of not doing it felt so… wrong. I joked with her about enjoying not having every television tuned to MSNBC whenever I chose to turn one on while she was away but I would’ve gladly traded Maddow for our nightly discussions of dinner plans that were sorely missing from my every day.
I think the real challenge of marriage or a long-term relationship is trying to appreciate the wonderful things about it. That sense of human understanding and sort of compassion and home — a sense of home that is always there and is always accessible to you.
I’m thankful for getting the chance to appreciate the beautiful things about my partner, the home we’ve made, and the life we share. When we came back together last night, our faces lit up, again on this rollercoaster jam called love.
“If someone loves you back, don’t get in the way. Don’t hold it back. Don’t wait.”
— The Foreign Exchange
Meditation: Love and Gratitude, 7 minutes
It’s been seven years and seven days. I’m not going to retell our wedding story even though it’s my favorite tale. We celebrated Tuesday night with a meal at Native in Santa Monica. In between magical bites and delicious sips, we marveled at the passage of time. Seven years married, ten years together come this September, fifteen some odd years of knowing each other existed in the world.
Time moves and love is powerful. The most reverend Michael Bruce Curry said during yesterday’s Royal Wedding:
“When love is the way, there is plenty of room, plenty of room for all of god’s children. Because when love is the way, we actually treat each other well, like we are actually family,” Rev. Michael Bruce Curry says during powerful sermon. #RoyalWeddinghttps://t.co/OvLScRZ1pspic.twitter.com/8RRXXo26xD
We are actually family like last Sunday when my immediate family and her cousins broke bread together in our house on Mother’s day. We ate and drank and talked as if everyone were blood and had known each other for years when, in fact, these two groups had never shared the same space before.
Seven years and seven days mean a lot of routines, many battles for space in the kitchen, and frustrations about chores. There are concessions and conflicts. Days of silent treatment and disappointment.
Every moment—even the ones that aren’t sunshine and soft shoulders and feet entwined and hands clasped and boisterous belly laughs—has been full of love.
“We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.” #MLK#RoyalWedding
Love to make men better. Love to make me better. When I remember our wedding, I like to recall my vows. I entered this partnership not by thinking of what I might gain but of what I might give. Every day I challenge myself to think about how to be more kind and compassionate to her and then by extension how do I bring that from the home to my work and my community and the world.
Seven years and seven days. May each that follows be even greater.
I’m not sure I ever found a flow on the mat over these 30 days. I have one more session tomorrow, so maybe it will come then. Perhaps it won’t. It’s okay either way. What I have found with this practice is a sense of control and awareness of my body that I hadn’t had since college when I was playing basketball four or five days a week.
My shoulders have strengthened a lot during this process. My trainer has noticed and is now regularly increasing how much I lift during our full body workouts. I’m holding much less tension in my neck. My balance is better. My left hip is working hard at loosening. It’s still the tightest area of my body, but it doesn’t want to be.
If you stayed on track for the full month, the journey was supposed to end today on the 31st. Mine continues as I took this most recent Sunday off to give that hard-working hip some recovery time. I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning’s time. And to the next day on the mat.
And the next.
“The first time your name was used, it was beauty, and I knew.”
Come September, Tiffany and I will have been together for a decade. It feels both not that long—she is still a beautiful mystery to me in many ways—and like we have always been this way, comfortable in our connection.
This month, I love her for meals made, and appointments kept. For grocery store runs and shared TV time. After the first of the year, we didn’t leave the house together much but we found time to delight at Grown-ish, guffaw at Desus + Mero and Alone Together, and binge One Day at a Time.
I dipped into her viewings of Disjointed and always enjoyed a weekend day where we both spent time in the home office, the sun beaming through our windows, the neighborhood alive.
My heart still swells at her smile and when her eyes light up with accomplishment. I ask about her day knowing she will get overly technical as I like hearing her talk passionately about the work of solving problems.
I loved her despite her destroying my time in the mini-crossword more days than not. I loved her even though every time I turned on a TV in the house it was tuned to MSNBC.
“We ain’t looking at the time, don’t nobody got a phone.”
That lyric sounds like heaven right now. I’ve been thinking a lot this month about what I’m not doing with my time when I’m spending too much of it with my devices. How lovely it would be to not always feel like I’m fighting for the attention of others with their much more compelling smartphones.
I stopped bringing my laptop and tablet to meetings, and I leave my phone in my pocket unless I need to reference something in service of that meeting.
Once I finish “Bored and Brilliant,” I may swear off reading via the Kindle app on my phone so that I can put it away during my commutes. I ordered a work phone in part for privacy concerns but also because it will allow me not to be available 24/7. To put my phone in my bag at the end of the day and not get any work messages until I check again in the morning?! I don’t even remember what that is like, but I’m looking forward to getting back to that.
“Feelin’ Inspired cuz the tables have turned.”
I do. I feel energized creatively. I wrote more this month. I spoke up more at work. Digital media is in this uncertain place that has many people feeling unsure about the path forward. Not me.
If you’re smart, you take the opportunity to check in with the purpose of what you do. Give up on quick fixes and hacks and tricks and do what’s right.
Let’s just get back to basics and make good shit every day. Let’s do right by our audiences. Let’s build the audiences we want by giving them real value. Why does our content exist? What do we hope they do with it? What conversations do we want to start and participate? How do we show appreciation for people spending time with us in a cluttered space? Do we think of those clicking our stuff as data points or people?
My favorite quote from a Spike Lee Joint is from Shadow Henderson in Mo’ Better Blues:
“If you play the shit that they like, then the people will come.”
Still true, y’all. Make good shit. Put it in a pretty box. Be grateful. Be humble. Learn something.
