inventing ted lasso: a coronavirus story
time to make you all endure my weird fever dreams for a minute
With hindsight, I put a curse on myself on New Year’s Eve when I said “I hope it’s a good year.”
January has hit me like ten awful trucks in rapid succession. I said goodbye to Isaac, which was dismal in a totally predictable but still eviscerating way. I got back to my apartment, whose drywall remained (despite the repeated promises of my building manager to fix it in my absence) in need of repairs. I lost a long-term freelance client, and a serious chunk of my income, to a change in content strategy. And when I tried to have one (1) evening out with a friend about it, that evening out gave me my very first coronavirus infection.
Which would have been enough! And then I woke up a few mornings ago—the morning I started drafting this newsletter—to find that the driving rain outside was seeping in through my window frame. This is, for those keeping track, the third case of ‘water in my apartment when it shouldn’t be in my apartment’ in about three months. Reader, I am crazed.
So now I’m going into 2023 underemployed, apartment hunting, still out on submission with my stupid book (no news whatsoever since October!! Crazed, I tell you), and still with no idea when I will get to move in with my fiancé and rest. All I’m saying is that it had better look up from here.
The first day I was properly sick with covid was the first day it really snowed here this winter. I was in so much muscle pain that I couldn’t sleep at all, so I just kind of lay there, mournfully looking at the snow as it fell. Eventually it made me kind of motion-sick—me horizontal, snow falling sideways, my slowed-down feverish brain trying to follow each flake until it passed out of view behind the wall.
There is not much more isolating and strange than being debilitatingly sick in a country that’s still pretty new. I could text Isaac, but he was far away and working; a friend dropped off some extra covid tests and some pain meds, but I didn’t want to talk through the door in case the illness seeped out somehow. I suppose I’d expected that I would get covid eventually. I wasn’t ready for it to be as destabilising as it was, or for it to remind me exactly how untethered I am from all my usual sources of support.
I did a lot of crying, which was probably a bad idea in terms of hydration. And I spent a lot of time trying to rest my eyes, imagining that I was holding my younger self. My erstwhile therapist once asked me to imagine my younger self—how that kid would see me, how impressed they would be. I found it difficult. But in a semi-delirious state, it was much easier to imagine small Waverly curled up in my arms, like a particularly high-concept anime opening sequence. We were comforting each other, kind of. It gets better, but also it gets worse.
I did also invent a television show while feverish. It was called Ted Lasso. It followed the emotional excruciation of a weird, repressed man who simply could not admit that he wanted to date his friend. Don’t ask me why it was called Ted Lasso; that was not even remotely the guy’s name. I woke up acutely wistful that all the existing Ted Lasso fanfic was for a totally different, much realer show.
The underemployment horror took a few more days to set in.
As I got less feverish, and more capable of thinking in joined-up sentences, it started to hit home that things were about to become a lot tighter. Going forward, I’ll be able to cover rent and all my living costs on the basis that absolutely nothing changes, and also on the basis that I do not put anything aside at all—for savings, for taxes, for travel, for anything.
I guess I should be thankful that it took me a while to recognise the urgency. I couldn’t have done anything about it while feverish. But I couldn’t do a whole lot about it while still learning the ropes at two new (very part-time) jobs, and I could do even less while recovering from covid on top of that. I’m still not quite right! My throat is permanently dry, and the dry cough is really sticking around. I’m taking this weekend to rest as much as I can, in the hope that it will all settle down.
The challenge here: I’m ultra-qualified for academic admin work, but I’m only going to be here for a little over a year longer, and because of my work permit, employers are going to know that. I also kind of need work I can do on my own schedule. I have some experience and a passable portfolio as a SEO writer, but I don’t have a lot of connections, and I have a lot of competition. And right now, my brain is mashed potatoes due to worry and covid, which is making it hard to conceive of topping up my existing income by selling essays or short fiction.
But until I find a solution, I don’t see the worry easing! So that’s a fun double bind.
Right now I am dealing with it by watching a lot of Drag Race. Like, a lot of Drag Race. The alternative is jeopardising my friends’ health and safety while I’m still getting a faint second line on the covid tests, so we’re going with what’s available.
I have applications out there, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about the longer term. If anyone knows of anyone in need of a freelance content writer (or data entry minion, or proofreader, or whatever else), I would be overcome with gratitude if you could send me their way.
The last big indignity of the month so far: rain through the window frame. The building manager ostensibly fixed this today. Frankly, I’ll believe that when it rains and my sill stays dry.
I confirmed yesterday that I want to end my lease on this apartment at the end of April. Even without the three-time unexpected water experience, I would be worried about continuing to pay this much in rent for the privilege of living alone. I have some leads on rooms in shared accommodation (I’m going to look at one place on Monday, if I’m well enough), and some emergency backup options if everything falls through.
I said, last time I wrote about my apartment, that I had really hoped not to have to move before moving to America. While I was sick, I started to persuade myself that I wouldn’t have to. Living alone was in many ways ideal while I had covid; I had my own bathroom, my own space, no need to worry about infecting a housemate. And from the vantage point of ‘horizontal while sick,’ the prospect of executing a move felt impossible. But the simple fact is that if I’m paying less in rent, then a big chunk of worry simply ceases to apply. Also, I should not have to wake up to find myself getting literally rained on in bed.
It’s scary. But everything is scary. And as per usual, I feel a lot better with a vague plan in place.
Wrapping it up with some good news, such as it is:
I mentioned starting two new jobs this month! One is at Literary Hub, where I am aggregating book reviews for Book Marks on a contract basis. The other is one I’ll tell you about in a different newsletter in the future, when I no longer need the work and can thus laugh at the present necessity of doing it. They don’t add up to enough for comfort right now on their own, but they will get me through the next few months in one piece.
I finished a short story over the holiday! Now that I am recovering, I am going to remember how one ‘sells’ those things.
Isaac and I are visiting Toronto in March—and we’ll be spending a chunk of that visit with a group of our friends, writing in a nice farmhouse. The notion is sustaining me.
Shouts out to the people who have gotten me through this month so far: Jenn for taking me out and cheering me up, Bruce for bringing me groceries and painkillers, Calvin for looking out for me professionally, Nancy for being the nearest thing I have to a parent on this side of the ocean. I am pathetic in the way of a wet and disgruntled cat right now; it is baffling and extraordinary that people have been as kind as they have been to me anyway.