I'm scared of posting too many details for fear of self doxing. But I am that guy who N95s indoors everywhere. I never unmask except in front of my partner, who also is careful. I put HEPA filters in my classroom. I also avoid unnecessary indoor activities, like cinemas, gyms and indoor sports. If there's an interesting event but there's no ventilation and no one is masking, I'll give it a pass.
There's been some positives. I'm way more self confident than I used to be, knowing deeply how shitty and ignorant the average normie is. I used to always second guess myself, and now I don't. I also spend way less money, as I don't dine nor holiday. COVID pushed me far into tankie territory, and opened my mind into better understating patriarchy and white supremacy.
Also ya, I don't get sick ever.
However, I'm such a different person today. I'm not the sweet chatty person I was in 2019. I had an almost femme twang in my voice back then, and now I'm just a ragged pissed off uncle.
One huge disadvantage is that I'm such a media consuming person. Pre covid, I'd avoid TV and games. Now it's all I do. I've become the kind of person that needs someone on in order to eat or sleep. I used to fucking hate these people, and now I've become that person.
The other huge problem is that my work productivity is way lower. I used to finish everything up in a coffee shop, now obviously I can't do that. I can definitely do more in my job and in my org. I regret that I've become, honestly, maybe a bit lazy.
Solidarity! I ended up in the same spot with covid, but for me this also included stopping news reading, removing my big socials and turning my attention to my immeadeate circle and reading etc. I look at the national news maybe once a month or so now and that alone is typically enough to enrage me in some way.
This was not a simple thing to get to by no means, but it has been so worth it.
In about 2021-22 when the whole vax and relax was going on I noticed myself slipping into a misanthropic rage that forced me to investigate things more. After that I really started to start to try and understand why these anti-vaxxers exist, why I feel the way I feel and this plus a million other similar things started to dismantle some of the taken for granted stuff in my head that was leading me into a dark place.
What helped was realizing that the point of it all (news, clickbait) is to enrage us, to sow helplesness and to sow despair and discord. I realized it does not matter one bit if I don't know what some politician did or said on a given day and that what I think about it also matters very little. Surprisingly a very neolib book about mediated reality helped me get there.
Now I get my news from the megathread here and partially from mastodon where the most relevant stuff tends to seep in just fine. I am pretty sure that I am now better versed in global affairs than I ever was before. I am seeing some actual nuance and long form discussions about the things. I also try to learn the histories and circumstances of things that happen better by reading books about them. None of this I feel is really possible with the fast paced news machine and I think it is a feature, not a bug.
The pandemic also made me lean into my partner a lot more. We hike and cuddle and watch old Star Trek in our freetime. It made our tiny family a lot stronger, because we were always on the same page about this stuff.
I also started to study again and decided to start working in the social sector after covid took my previous work.
So for me the pandemic kind of broke me free from my alienation. But for that, a lot of things happened like getting rid of my body related performative activities, realizing I am audhd and actively choosing something different.
I embrace the things I used to feel some weird shame for like liking being at home, disliking family gatherings and mandatory celebrations, being proud of my ability to change and care, enjoying reading and learning.
So I am also a completely different person today than I used to be.
My brother just complained to me how I can't take a joke anymore when he made some joke about our shitty times and I did not find it funny. I just told him that I am done masking this for him or anyone when I have in fact never found this suffering funny, but have engaged in this circus where it is expected of you to always just go "this is fine, lol" and carry on.