Learning how to be together apart
By: Raquel Henriques
Tags: Digital Nomads, Freelance, Community, China, Coronavirus

Illustration by Nicolau

Three years ago, Janina was backpacking through Central America and ended up falling in love with Costa Rica. “I went to Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua. I’ve never really felt 100% at home in Germany, so I was always traveling. So I was just in Costa Rica and I didn’t want to go back home.”

She did go back to Germany, but only to sell all her stuff, quit her job, and get all the papers she needed to move to Costa Rica. She’s been there for a year now, working as a certified life coach, mindfulness trainer, and as an editor for Unbabel.

At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, just like many digital nomads suddenly stuck halfway through their travels, Janina faced a tough choice: “A few people were writing to me, saying they’d bet I’d be coming home now.” But she didn’t even consider leaving, least of all because the virus was widespread in Germany at the time while it hadn’t yet reached Costa Rica: “The thing is, I live here now. I feel home here.”

A few weeks ago, our Director of Community, Camila Pohlmann and I sat down to have a chat with a few members of our community to hear how they’re dealing with the pandemic, how they’re staying healthy in both mind and body, and what they’re looking forward to. Since our community of editors is spread all over the world, we talked to people in different stages of this pandemic, to try and capture a snapshot of what life was like in these strange, uncertain times. While Janina was finding a home in Costa Rica, with the coronavirus as a looming threat that was rolling closer every day, Chiara, from Rome, had been in lockdown for over a month in one of the most affected countries globally.

Changing routines

“I don’t even know what I’m worried about at this point. I’m worried about everything.“

Chiara is a member of our editor Community. She lives in Rome, Italy, one of the countries that were most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, Chiara describes her life in one of Rome’s residential neighborhoods as “very picturesque,” truly one of those places that would be the backdrop of a movie filled with colorful characters. Before the pandemic, when Chiara would take breaks she’d go to a café downstairs, or to the local market, but now the streets are empty and the stores she used to walk to are all closed.

The situation in Rome closely resembles what Harvey, an Unbabel editor from China, had just seen reflected all over his own country. When Chiara was still going through a strict quarantine, lockdown in Harvey’s province had just been lifted after a month with no new cases. Talking to Harvey, I couldn’t help but think that he was almost talking from a future where restrictions were already lifting, while in Europe, we were still in the thick of it.

“Before the pandemic, in fact, my day was the same as most ordinary Chinese people, nothing special.” Harvey, who lives in a province 800 km from Wuhan, says that the speed and reach of the virus came as a surprise. Like me, Chiara, and Janina, when he started hearing about the virus and Wuhan went into lockdown, he still thought it would never come to affect his life.

Life, remote

Although things are changing impossibly quickly, even a few weeks ago it was already clear that remote work was here to stay. “Some people who are working remotely now will keep on working remotely,” was one of Chiara’s predictions. Since Chiara has been working online for 14 years, any disruption to her work was minor, but for the rest of us, the move to working remotely took some getting used to.

Janina, who was working as a Reiki and massage therapist, lockdown measures meant that most of her work had to move quickly online. With that, she says, her “entire routine shifted”. Editing tasks for Unbabel used to be a small part of her income, but now she says she stays awake until 3:00 AM to make the most out of available work. She has also shifted some of her business online, doing Reiki consultations remotely, for example.

“We are blessed with the internet, but it can be exhausting sometimes.” Janina voiced what I had thought a thousand times since Portugal went into lockdown: yes, I’m extremely privileged to have a job I can do from home, but how do I focus and do that job in the middle of a pandemic with the whole internet at my fingertips?

For Chiara, who works as a full-time freelancer and already worked from home before all this, it’s all about sticking to a routine, even when you feel like being in your pajamas. Dressing up for work every day can help you shift gears into work mode. Another one of her tips is to write down a list of everything you need to do every morning, although she admits that most times she forgets about her list halfway throughout the day. Most importantly, “it’s finding the thing that works for you that makes you feel more productive and stick to it. It’s your lifeline at this point.”

For the last few months, Harvey has been working from home with his young daughter, and that was the hardest routine to adjust to. For many parents, childcare has taken over their entire lives when they’re quarantined with the little ones and still having to work full time. Harvey’s advice is very practical: have self-discipline, make a schedule for work and leisure time, and then follow through with it. However, he admits his daughter is still “driving me crazy several times a day.”

Dealing with the mind noise

Harvey is not the only one feeling the pressure. Since the start of this pandemic, studies have shown that 70% of the population of the US met criteria for moderate to serious mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety. And these numbers are strikingly similar all around the world, with the World Health Organization (WHO) providing new guidelines on how to stay informed and healthy from the virus, without damaging our mental health.

And it’s not just Covid making us feel worse. Anxiety around unemployment, social unrest, and fear is affecting the way our brains work. So, what can we do?

Since Janina also coaches people on mindfulness techniques, I was desperate for some advice. The first and most important thing to realize is that “my mind noise, it’s not necessarily true”. But during a global pandemic, when your fears are perfectly rational, how do you get your “mind noise” to shut up then? Well, according to Janina, you don’t. It’s all about finding ways to accept the place your mind is at, as “there is no stability outside right now so that we can have stability inside of us.”

As someone who used to describe herself as a “chill Virgo,” but in the last few months has devolved into all the worst traits of the sign, I need some guidance on how to find that stability. Turns out, there’s no quick fix. Janina recommends trying online yoga classes, meditating, and looking for activities that distract and educate you. Now is the time to watch those films or read those books that have been lingering in your lists, or to finish an online course. The most important thing is to be mindful of where you’re at, and what you need in each moment, whether that’s to exercise or to find a moment of quiet and focus.

Looking for the new normal

As we watch 2020 go down in history as one of the strangest and most difficult years in a while, the vision of returning to normal seems increasingly naive. So, what is the “new normal” going to look like?

Harvey may be the best person to tell us because, in a sense, he’s talking to us from the future. Since China was the first country to deal with the new coronavirus and acted decisively fast putting in place effective lockdown, things now are “basically back to normal”. Sure, mask use is now widespread and Harvey tells us that people are still vigilant about the virus, but there’s a sense that the worst has now blown over. “People can go wherever they want, we are back to socializing again, people can go out to work, all public places are open to the public now,” although schools and daycares are still closed. For Harvey, that’s a big part of the new normal. Since both he and his wife work from home, there’s no office to return to, and childcare can still be challenging.

Back in Rome, the lockdown is just now being lifted. But when I spoke to Chiara that was still a distant reality. Instead of talking about reopening, her concern was for the way of life, and the people we lost to the virus. “Soon enough, we won’t have any witnesses to a big chunk of our history,” Chiara told us. Even though we know that Italy lost over 33,415 people to the coronavirus, we still haven’t had the time to take stock of the deep cultural and historical patrimony that is now gone. In Italy, the older generation is the glue that holds families together, and it may in fact have been the tradition of having multiple generations under one roof that may have led to Italy’s death rate. This devastation is measured not only in lives, it’s “basically wiping out the best part of this country, the people who really do community life.”

How can you even start to rebuild those things? Even though one is in China and the other one in Italy, perhaps because those are two of the most affected countries, Harvey and Chiara answered very similarly. “You don’t need to be selfish,” Chiara said, and in my mind, I heard Harvey complete: “everyone on this planet has the responsibility to contribute their own efforts to fight against the virus.” In a way, it’s about building new communities. Turns out, we’re all really in this together, and our actions can have consequences on a massive scale.

When it comes to looking forward, Chiara told me she’s looking forward to “the small things,” like gardening, seeing her nephews and nieces, and even smaller things like talking to people on Telegram or Whatsapp. Just because these things are part of our life in quarantine, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth looking forward to. In a way, that was a common refrain everyone I spoke to repeated, in one way or another: that this is a time to learn how to slow down and learn to live with less. As Janina told me, “there’s no positive effect,” but these are still lessons worth learning. This is a chance to ask ourselves what kind of new normal we want to build, what kind of routines have we developed that will stay around, and what have we learned that we can live without.