2020 in hindsight was so far the worst man-made disaster in global history. It derailed my career plans, wrecked relationships, killed family members and landed me in a mental health crisis I was, like many of you, simply unprepared to handle. Fortunately, I have been making my way out of this dark hole — and wanted to share some things that worked, and which you might find useful in your own journey.
To start, its been important to understand what contributed to my state of mind was that from January 2020 to the events of January 2021 The Fasc6th my nerves were so shredded up I ended up in the SF ER. For you things probably went different, and its still important to ruminate on what went well, what did not and why. In my case I get a lot of my news from @Google’s YouTube, which is a much more effective decentralized source of information than ‘mass media’ television. By watching a lot of videos from 100s of sources on a new ‘sars-like’ outbreak in Wuhan, China in January 2020, it became painfully clear that we were in for a global pandemic we have not seen in 100 years! This made me very scared as I realized both the Chinese gov and the US gov were doing jack all, meanwhile I was stuck living with potentially infectious housemates. The very next thing that happened is my girlfriend did not believe me, listen to me, and before long started to make fun of me and ridicule me. When I went to my parents, warned them about the pandemic and asked for guidance I unfortunately got the same response. Later when I returned to the office in February and March, I was dumbfounded to learn that our corporate leadership was also not following the news or taking any precautions.
As governments painstakingly fumbled through broadcasting the idiotic preliminary health PSAs and big corporations started sending employees home, my employer at the time also decided to acquiesce to a WFH policy. This is where I bought $1000 of canned food and barricaded myself in my unshared room and bath to isolate myself from my roommates.. During the first “Shelter in Place” order nobody knew how deadly or widespread the infection would be in San Francisco. Its funny to think back to it now, I still remember convincing a team member on one of my first virtual calls that this was going to be ongoing for years not weeks.
My girlfriend of two years refused to accept that the pandemic was real- which left me no choice but to break up with her. For the next 3 months I would be confined to a small room and bathroom, watching the world go to hell, as the room filled up with empty cans. To top off the fact that I was left utterly alone surviving the apocalypse in my bedroom, my employer laid me off in May due to the pandemic’s impact in its business — at the very height of the pandemic. Many thanks to my generous former corporate overlords, I was now reduced to living in a drugged-out state on my bed ordering $1000’s of boxes Instacart beer. I soon lost all track of time, as days turned into nights, weeks, months…
As it became clearer that San Francisco’s London Breed and California’s Gavin Newsom not only leaned on science and technology, but also lead the country in with the most effective pandemic response, I was able to relax a bit. I met my now girlfriend and started venturing out a bit for exercise. However as our idiot-and-chief was doing fuck-all and the pandemic in America kept leading the world in pandemic infections and deaths. Due to our republican government's stupefying incompetence and malicious actions I continued to drink epic amounts of beer and wine. This turned into a bad habit and my body got used to a high level of daily stupidification, which was the only way I felt I could deal with the unrelenting deluge of batshit crazy bullshit coming from the republican government.
One of the most important things I did early on is find a partner who supported me during this difficult time and who I could actually count on to have my back. The world of dating has gone digital in the information age and even though I met her on @Instagram I highly recommend dating apps such as @coffemeetsbagel, OkCupid, Tinder ( and there are many many more ). Its hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, especially when everything is spiraling completely out of control. With the right man or woman by your side, everything you need to do becomes infinitely clearer, sharper and more defined. So if you dont have that person in your life start there. Pay the platform the $50 or whatever — its worth it many times over!
I used to be a librarian and happened across Marshall McLuhan’s “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”. In this 1964 book the author’s main thesis is that ‘’The Medium is the Message‘ and that the new ( at that time ) medium of audio-visual video communication will create a new paradigm for education. I figured out that not only could I access the worlds best talks from TED Talks and Google Talks among others and use data to filter them by which ones people watched the most. Now for YouTube you cant listen to it with the screen off but you can if you buy their $12/mo subscription! I discovered that if I pair this property with a 2010 Motorola Elite Flip headset I found in one of my drawers, I can walk around and listen to these videos with the phone in my pocket.
Another important discovery I made when I started watching these videos is that virtually every one of them recommends spending some time in nature or walking outside to improve mood and productivity. So I moved to the beach by Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and started spending time every couple days walking around with my headset listening to YouTube talks. This gave me physical excersize from hiding out from the pandemic as well as the time to discover a lot of internet wisdom on how to productively see how to improve my situation.
While watching all these talks I came across a really great TED talk from a man who had an injury and was overmedicated with opiates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhpAYw9kCt8 And the main point he was making was about withdrawal from such heavy drugs needing to be gradual rather than sudden. So based on this knowledge I leveraged the wizdom of someone else I read a long time ago saying that to make meaningful change you must track everything obsessively. What I did was bring back a template I used for time tracking myself when I freelanced in LA in 2012. This includes a block for each day and 20min increments for each hour thereof. In addition to tracking what I was working on I tracked how much I drank and later on how much time I spent per day on my phone and what fraction of that time procrastinating on YouTube specifically.
Heres how to make one of these two-day time-tracking sheets out of a standard US 8.5x11" piece of recycled printer paper I keep a drawer of:
The learnings were pretty interesting indeed. At the start of me tracking myself I was drinking 6–8 beers per day. I also learned that after about 4 beers I lost control, wanted to ‘party’ and would generally tip over into having more beers. I also learned that during stressful days I would drink more than otherwise which meant I built up a habit of self-medicating with beer. Looking at the hours of work per day — I could clearly start to see days where I didnt do as much work because I was drunk. Tracking my time each day made it impossible to pretend or forget that alcohol was having a predictable direct negative impact on my performance. Just like the accidental opiate addict said, I began to track and slowly taper down my consumption over months.
I also started to track how much I spent on booze and evaluate the missed opportunity cost of investing in Ethereum. Essentially if youre considering that over the last 12 mo. the crypto went up from ~$200 to ~$2000 in value thats a X10 gain on whatever capital you put in. Therefore at the current rates every $20 put into alcohol over Ethereum is a lost opportunity to earn a $200 gain! This means in San Francisco prices, every time I buy a six-pack of beer I am making a decision to loose $200 in potential earnings. Worse than that it compounds over time — next year $400, the year after that $600 etc. And don’t forget the fact that Ethereum can generate more of itself. So that $200 of ETH can be staked to make another $10 each year. Therefore if I did not spend that $20 now I could have made about $10 worth of beer each subsequent year into perpetuity! At some point when you go back to how much I was spending on during the time preceding the pandemic and during the early months of the pandemic you start counting dollars spent in Lambos ☹️
The last thing on my list is just riding a bicycle. Its amazing to experience the mental and health benefits of a bicycle ride anywhere for any amount of time. Prior to the pandemic I was a daily commuter 8 miles across SF each day for a total of atleast 16 miles. Running errands or doing group rides would increase the mileage substantially from anywhere between 20–40 miles. Having biked across the United States from Seattle, WA to Tucson, AZ I still forget how much positive energy a bicycle ride gives. During the pandemic, being terrified that any human contact or touching an infected surface was potentially fatal I did almost no riding and undoubtedly that contributed to my mental decline. Getting back into riding had immediate and innumerable positive effects on my body and my psyche!
Not to throw a sales pitch at you — but I have been working on a bicycle marketplace during the pandemic. So if you're looking for a good deal on a used bike I have sprocket.bike/app as well as Android and iOS apps available to help you get a steel workhorse to pedal around on. I had the fortune of talking to a veteran affected by Parkinson's on a bike tour with the CA Bicycle Coalition who professed that riding riding temporarily eliminated all symptoms. Its no wonder then that for healthy people with mental hurdles to overcome riding a bicycle can equally have profound mental benefits!
Anyway I hope you found this article helpful and were able to take away some ideas to try in your day to day. I know they worked for me because I now drink 0–3 beers a day and am infinitely much happier and more productive each day. If you found something that works well share below, I would be curious to hear things to try I can incorporate on my journey. Stay safe out there, the world is an unpredictable place but part of the fun is figuring out how to keep your balance. After all, if everything was easy it would be a boring universe to be an integral part of 😇
Not a big deal but an occasional non-alcoholic beer from time-to-time helps offset the cravings too —
