FINDING THE FUNNY AGAIN
NOTE: I was planning on posting this blog right after New Year’s, but that didn’t happen, and then the Capitol Riots occurred which made the timing of this feel wrong, and then… actually I’m not sure what happened these past 4 weeks. I just haven’t been able to get my act together, which is kind of part of the problem I explore in this piece.1 <———- CLICK ON RED BOXES
Then yesterday, Tom Brady, who is my exact age, finally caught up to me in career achievements. Tom and I have always pushed each other to reach greatness. So I had to step up my game and get this blog out.
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December 31, 2019, 11:55 p.m. (3 months before the pandemic)
Wife: What’s your New Year’s resolution?
Me: Not to smoke.
Wife: But you’ve never smoked.
Me: So it’s an attainable goal for me.
Wife: How about getting in shape?
Me: Why stop there, maybe I can land on the moon.
Wife: Or try to be funny.
Me: Stop. I’m funny. It’s all I am. Can you at least give me that?
No response.
Me: Can I at least get a kiss at midnight?
Wife: Have you been flossing?
Me: Sometimes.
Wife: So that’s a “No” to the kiss. But you now have a resolution for 2020: Floss more.
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I started off 2020 telling jokes. I joked with my family. I tweeted jokes. I wrote lengthier parenting humor pieces for my own site and for larger sites. When the pandemic came, I even adapted and posted a joke each day about the craziness of what we were going through: homeschool; being locked up together; our daughter managing to lose a new tooth every week for like two months amidst a shortage of dollar bills in my household. (the dental theme remained throughout the year)
This kind of captured my whole mood:
I was determined to find humor in anything I could during a tough time for all of us.
Then, in late April, my grandmother got Covid and died and something changed in me. Nothing about life during the pandemic was funny to me anymore. I was angry and blamed an administration I felt wasn’t taking the virus seriously.
Covid continued to get worse. There was a brief reprieve over the summer when the numbers were down, but to me it never seemed okay out there.
And so with all the sadness and negativity and anger, I stopped writing. Writing felt so unimportant. Besides, most of my new material seemed outdated in a world so changed. For God’s sake, around mid-March I had a comedy blog about a day at the supermarket with my daughter ready to go. Could anything make less sense now than a comedy blog about going to the supermarket?
I replaced writing with some healthy new habits: Chess (debatably healthy since I suck and get angry when I lose to the 11-year-old computer version of Beth Harmon on chess.com), Cycling (healthy, but I only do it outdoors).2 And some unhealthy indulgences: gluttonous eating and gambling on sports.
I parented as much as I could manage, sometimes at a B-Plus level (watching superhero movies with my son), oftentimes at a D-minus level:
I’ve tried to make sense of what happened to me emotionally. Sure, the clear event was the death of my grandmother. But she was 89 and not in great health before she got Covid. It’s hard to blame my transformation on her death.
The more I think about it, there were other reasons. First, I suffer from depression which existed long before Covid and will exist long after a vaccine. As someone who deals with depression, a part of me latches onto anything out there that confirms my cynical view of the world. While there was an initial jolt of purpose amid a new set of circumstances we were dealt in March (I wrote this piece about it for Scary Mommy), by May that purpose had worn off. Covid was here to stay and it fit my depression like a glove.
Another reason: I carry the stress for my family. I live in a household with a 6 and 8-year-old who don’t know what the hell is going on out there in the world (and I’m fine with it staying that way). The only other adult member of my household, Lauren, isn’t the type to dwell on negativity. In the beginning, she was forced to when we were stuck in the house together. But by May she was back at work and her life day-to-day is oddly similar to how it was before Covid.
When September came and the kids went back to school, I felt left behind. I am a working attorney still, but my career has been far more affected than Lauren’s. Courts are still closed. Trials aren’t moving forward. We’re doing things remotely, but none of it is normal. I’m talking to judges while my dogs bark in the background. I’m talking to clients from my car.
Once in a while now, something funny will happen and I’ll muster the interest to tweet about it:
But for the most part, 2020 kind of broke me. It broke my desire to be funny. It broke my desire to write.
Now as we begin a new year, I’ve somehow become motivated to write this piece, which is a start. A new year makes me slightly hopeful for the first time. Sure it’s hard to know what 2021 will bring. But we do have a new administration that actually takes human life seriously. And we have a vaccine.3
I just need to find myself again. My kids and Lauren need it. I sure need it.
Besides, I did accomplish the flossing goal. Being stuck in the house 90 percent of the time, flossing is like a big event for me every day now. I even got a kiss the other day at midnight.4
Last night, possibly as a gift from above, my son gave me material for the first time in a while:
It’s dark and it’s weird, but it’s a start.
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I hope everyone out there is safe. Spring is just around the corner.
