Pause and Plan
Image/Creative Commons.
By Natalie Pennington
I think it is important that I situate myself in my reflection from the start: I am privileged in that at no time during the pandemic have I been concerned about losing my job, and neither has my partner. I am also privileged in that I have been able to work from home for the last several months, and I do not have a heavy teaching load or children. This has allowed me to focus on a part of my job I really love, and in the past, have struggled to make time for: my research. When I think about what it means to have resolve during this time, I am consciously aware that I have found myself more in a place of opportunity than most: it has been a blessing to pause and plan and set a new course of action. That is not to say I have not experienced struggles as well, however, as I imagine we all have this year to varying degrees.
As someone who studies interpersonal relationships and technology use, I am very aware of the benefits and drawbacks related to communication online, mental health, and our well-being in a typical year. When you add in everything that 2020 has thrown at us, it is a wonder to me that I, and many others, can still get things done. The first month was the hardest. I moved to Nevada in 2018 with my husband and our pets, with the majority of our friends and family in the Midwest and Northeast. While I am grateful for the new relationships I have formed since moving here, knowing it may be well over a year until I see people close to me again is hard. The solace for me is in the visits we did have—my brother and sister (Sean and Wendy) both visited more than once prior to the pandemic, time I don’t normally get with them as we are scattered across the country. I hold those visits and the memories close, knowing we will all get together again at some point. In the meantime, we have started a sibling group text, most often sharing different things we are cooking on a given day, or Simpsons jokes that make me laugh, and I am glad I have my siblings. It is in this regard I am grateful—I don’t know if we would have connected like this if not for the pandemic, and it is nice to feel that closeness, even if it is from afar.
One of the hardest parts for me these last several months is that the typical structure of my day was stripped away: I am not driving to campus; I am not teaching a live seminar anymore. I found myself stuck early on. I was also nervous for my family (both my parents are considered high risk) and my husband, who is still going to work each day.
For me, resolve has come in controlling what I can, and letting go of what I cannot. After a few weeks of uncertainty, I resolved to rethink what each day was like for me, which started with resetting my day. I stopped using my alarm clock and let myself go to bed “early” if I wanted to—since then I find myself naturally waking around 6 am most days, which gives me time to take my dogs on a walk or to the park before my workday starts.
This shift in my day, not feeling rushed from the moment I get up, has led me to feel invigorated to jump into work. I also created structure where there was none: two to three times a week I participate in virtual writing groups with other faculty I know around the country, as well as graduate students in my department that encourage each of us that participates to make plans and write in two to three 30-minute chunks of time. Even if parts of my day are me cuddling my dogs and wondering if things will ever get better, these times have helped me have one of the most productive years for me for research in a very long time.
In line with that, I also opted to lean into the way the pandemic had foiled my plans for the year when it came to research. I had just started data collection on a different project when the pandemic started and found I had insufficient data to analyze. I had to let that project go, which was a first for me, but it led me to a lot of opportunities since then. For me, resolve meant figuring out how to best make use of my time, because I was not willing to let the pandemic cost me a year that is important in my career as I strive for tenure. Rather than fear no publications and taking the year delay offered by university for my tenure clock, I recognized my point of privilege and resolved to take what I knew about relationships and the use of technology for communication and apply that to the ongoing pandemic. The result has been three separate projects I’ve done, both solo and in collaboration, to look at how people all over the country are experiencing the pandemic and coping with a lack of face-to-face contact, and in many ways, the results showcase the resolve so many of us have to stay connected even when we are so far away from each other.
It is the third project, which I have most recently been wrapping up, that I believe has been the most helpful, as I learn how college students have coped during the pandemic. I have been conducting qualitative interviews through video chat to talk with students about how they have made choices during the last several months. Asking them to reflect back on those early days and how they have found their own resolve to get to where they are now. Their stories are heartening, and a reminder that each of us has to find our own way of making sense of the world around us, and also showcases how relationships and connection can play a huge role in helping us through our day-to-day.
Our relationships are the foundation for our lives. I often write about a theoretical concept called the need to belong, which is basically the idea that fundamentally, as humans, we seek out connection and belonging. When stay-at-home orders began in March, many lost daily connection opportunities, and had to figure out new ways to get that need to belong met. Just like the daily text chats with my siblings, I discovered in talking to people about their experiences that we are a creative and resilient population.
In many interviews, participants discussed how they too had to re-think their day to day. In some cases it was finding hobbies they could connect with others online about, for some it was embracing time at home with family—if they could not go out and see their friends, they could capitalize on this time to connect with those they loved. Several highlighted how things like family game night helped them feel closer to their parents or siblings than they had in years. One participant even mentioned that while they were frustrated at times, the close proximity forced them to work through and grow closer to their parents than if they had been able to simply walk away.
On the flip side, there were also those who had struggled with family and had to resolve to find other ways to connect. In one interview, a participant discussed feeling isolated and knew their family did not really understand them. For this person, turning to technology to connect and talk to people was really important to get their needs met, and I was glad to see they had sought out and made use of these outlets for communication.
Taken together, these stand as reminders to me that human connection is incredibly valuable, but we also have to be smart about how we make the choices we do. As we resolve to make sense of our lives absent face-to-face communication, which is likely for many high-risk individuals who wait for a vaccine, we find ways to satiate that need to belong.
For me, re-creating being in the office through quiet writing time mixed with short bursts of chatting has allowed me to socialize but be productive, as has casual text conversations with my siblings. For some of the participants in my study, it has been joining online communities to talk to those who they feel separated from. For those lucky to have family at home they get along with, it can also be about seeing this as an opportunity to deepen that connection when we might not otherwise have done so. For each of us, resolve is not about any one thing, but about pausing to see what we can do to get to the next day. We each have good days and bad days, but when we stop, breathe, and think about what we need next, and how we can meet that need responsibly, I have high hopes for the future.
Natalie Pennington (PhD) is an assistant professor of Communication Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr. Pennington’s research is interested in how people communicate through and can benefit from engaging with technology for interpersonal relationships. Her research has been published in several outlets, including New Media & Society and Computers in Human Behavior. To learn more about her or her research, please visit her website.
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