what do you do when your world turns upside down?

Spoiler. Put your own oxygen mask on first.

About a year ago, I made the decision to write a book inspired by the questions I’m continually getting from young clients in my tattoo shop.  It’s saddening to me how many young people have never been taught to “adult” in (what I think of as) the most basic of ways.  You know, things like writing checks, learning to use credit cards, paying bills on time, addressing envelopes.  But none of these skills are taught in school, let alone in college.  

I can say that with a high degree of certainty.  I taught college for nearly 18 years.  Community college, university, small “little Ivy League” liberal arts colleges for New England blue-blood types.  Personally, I never quite fit in with the professorial crowd - I was always a little bit too real, too street.  I always kept a footing in the gigging world; I taught music and theatre and studio production classes, while I was out making money working in all three fields, plus tattooing on the side.  In fact, I’ve been largely a self-employed artist of various sorts since I was 17, so I’ve got a good 25 years of experience constantly hustling up the next gig to draw from there.  Common sense skills, vocational training - you generally don’t see that covered by state or college mandated curricula in higher ed.  

As a result, I wrote a book.  I wanted to help my young clients and my former students to acclimate to an unforgiving world outside of school.  My book was a practical manual on adulting - on how to manage basic, day to day things.  Getting jobs.  Working within a budget.  Investing.  Getting health insurance.  Dealing with student loan debt.  If it was a college class, it would have been titled something like “Life Skills 101,” with no pre-requisites.  I was about to start the final revision of the book this month, when…well…a global pandemic scare hit, and we’re all suddenly stuck at home, not making any money and freaking out about an imminent and dire lack of toilet paper, while the very real possibility of contracting a pretty awful respiratory disease looms large in everyone’s consciousness.  Now?  My book needs a whole new angle because of this new context, mainly because I fear we’re going to be facing a very different environment when we put real pants on again instead of leggings and wander back out into “normal” daily life. 

Let’s all be honest with ourselves.  We’re facing an unprecedented crisis, one we’ve not exactly anticipated let alone prepared for.  

That’s the big topic - as a self-professed “adulting expert” and “author” (wait until you see my fancy fancy YouTube videos!) — I feel the most compelled to address right now.  At the same time, I don’t want to focus exclusively on coronavirus, but rather crisis in general.  We can learn a whole lot from this present moment.  What do you do when the proverbial shit hits the fan, and your world turns upside down in a single instant?

Not all of us have ever had the experience before of having our entire world shift radically within a day or so.  Those of us who survived 9/11 - or maybe a raging wildfire or an unexpected violent action - get it.  It’s horribly disorienting and pretty traumatic; everything we’ve ever thought, expected, planned for - it’s suddenly out the window.  Experiences like this strip us to our core.  Some of us panic.  Some of us hoard supplies, in the illusion that we can control something in a world that’s no longer vaguely recognizable.  Some of us rage.  And others go into complete and total denial, doing exactly what we’re told NOT to do.  Spring breakers on Miami Beach anyone?

Look, I get it.  When poo hits the fan and goes flying everywhere, it’s a mess for everyone involved.  And while it’s understandable to lose your mind for a bit, that’s neither helpful nor productive.  I’ve been studying to become a flight instructor for the past couple of years, and an adage from commercial flying comes to mind in these situations: put your own oxygen mask on first.

Why YOU first?

Because - when an airplane depressurizes at 35000 feet, you have precious seconds before you completely lose consciousness.  If you spend those few precious seconds helping someone else - like a small child who doesn’t have the immediate cognitive ability to perform the said task at hand without panicking - you’re going to die, and so is the other person.  Whereas, if you get your own mask on quickly, THEN you can help the little kid.  And maybe no one dies.  We need to break free of the idea that taking care of ourselves = selfish behavior.

Frankly, in times of disaster, sometimes it’s easier to think about how circumstances are affecting other people rather than look to ourselves and strategize how we might clean up our OWN mess.  It’s always so much easier to see what’s wrong with someone else.  It’s always easier to tell other people the “right thing” to do in a situation.  It’s a hell of a lot harder to tackle our own crap. 

As a pilot, I’m into checklists.  This one is mine for disaster survival.

STEP 1: Take immediate action to mitigate disaster for YOURSELF.

First and foremost, get yourself to a SAFE PLACE.  That can be a physical place - like your apartment or home, or to a virtual place where you have a support system, like onto a phone call with your family or partner or closest friends.  Don’t delay on this.  Don’t cry about the circumstances and waste precious time.  If you waste time, you might be too late to escape.

To borrow another analogy from flying, when a pilot experiences engine failure, he or she shouldn't call air traffic control and start crying, or complaining “Why now? Why me?”  That pilot should be trained to first AVIATE, meaning, continuing to fly the airplane (and yes, we can fly without engine power), putting the airplane into a glide while attempting to troubleshoot the issue.

The same follows for you.  Glide along to a destination of a degree of safety before figuring out what to do next.  And by all means, don’t carry fifty cases of toilet paper with you, or focus on details, until you get to safety.

STEP 2: Take care of your immediate PHYSICAL NEEDS.

I know we all have loved ones and dear friends.  But before we can look in on them, we need to take care of our personal required physical needs first.  This includes: our financial needs, food, and shelter.  For example, when it comes to money, if you give out your last dollar to your friend, you’re now going to be in the position for asking for money from someone else.  Meaning: you yourself become a burden.  Now, I believe in asking for help when it’s needed, for sure - but in the case of disaster, look within.  Take care of YOUR needs before 1. either reaching out to someone else or 2. pre-emptively taking care of someone else and neglecting yourself, hence becoming a liability.

STEP 3: establish BOUNDARIES.

In adulting language, simply put, boundaries are self-imposed rules that separate our crap from other people’s crap.  Learning how to set - and respect - boundaries is a fine art, and one that every adult should attempt to excel at.  Boundaries can be physical and they can be psychological.  They can be action-oriented.

In the case of natural disaster, one good boundary might be to limit the amount of news items that one ingests.  In times of stress, hysteria is contagious.  While I don’t believe in IGNORING current events, it’s also not helpful to sit in front of the TV and listen to every single story about who’s dying, how they’re dying, how that’s affecting other people and making them die inside, etc.  Get the digest version.  Set limits.  Get the headlines in the morning for 15 minutes - ok, that’s what’s up.  Then move on with your day and into more productive activities.  Don’t let it eat away at you.

Also in times of extreme stress, you should try to limit your interaction with people who DRAIN you rather than build you up.  We all have that ONE friend who dumps allllllllll their (mostly self-made) problems on us - my best friend and I call this the “ol’ swoop and poop”.  We can care about that person from afar in tough times, but it’s not exactly helpful to US to get caught up in their apocalyptic visions of disaster.  It’s tough because sometimes toxic people are in our families, and it’s seriously taboo to not deal with family members.  But in this case, YOUR oxygen mask first.  If you get dumped on, you’re going to get stressed.  You’re maybe going to get strapped thin and then fall sick.  Don’t become a liability yourself, remember?  Set a limit and move on.

Interactions with people don’t even have to be in person.  Those interactions can be online.  In the case of a natural disaster, there will be those who recount every single possible horrible thing happening in real time - on Facebook.  Posts every five minutes.  Posts about doom, destruction, horrible poo.  You?  Does it really help YOU to scroll and read every single one of these posts?  Most folks typically use social media as a form of therapy - posting incessantly is often their method of getting out their ya-yas and their anxiety.  It’s not really about helping anyone else in many cases.  I’ve found, personally, that commiseration over a shared problem is only helpful to a certain degree.  It’s comforting to know people in the same boat as you, but you get to a point where it starts to drown you in negativity.  Move past simply talking to everyone around you about how things suck.  Instead, look to people who are posting solutions.  To people who are empowering others.  Set time limits and filters.

STEP 4: control the things you can.

I hate to tell you this, but you can’t control a pandemic.  You can’t control another person’s actions.  You can’t control the weather or a wildfire or an earthquake.  What you CAN do, however, is make a choice in the here and now to be healthy and productive.  You can adhere to good habits, not ones that draw you deeper into despair or even disease.

Good healthful habits are not sexy.  They’re super duper common sense things that pretty much everyone SHOULD know, but hey - not everyone’s been taught this stuff.  In general though - what you can control are things like:

1. Going to bed at a reasonable hour and trying to get some decent rest.  Sleep is a miracle medicine.  And if you’re so stressed you can’t sleep, lay down and rest.  Rest.  Rest.  You need it in times of crisis.  (And turn off your phone!)

2. Making choices for food that sustain rather than drain you.  Fruits and veggies anyone?  Believe it or not, apples and carrots aren’t that expensive - maybe they’re a little more than Top Ramen, but they’re a hell of a lot better for you in pretty much every way.

3. Avoiding OBVIOUS vices that will make you feel like shit in the morning. Don’t you want to be running on a full tank rather than on fumes, especially in the middle of a health crisis?

4. Getting some exercise in rather than sitting on your butt in front of Netflix for hours upon hours.  Go for a walk - alone - if you can.  You don’t have to have fancy equipment or six pack abs to start.  Just move.

5. Soaking in some sunlight, even if it’s just on your back patio by yourself for a few minutes at a time.  And if you don’t even have that, open the darn window and stick your head out into some fresh air.  Vitamin D does wonders.

It’s an uncomfortable truth of adulthood, but sometimes, things simply suck.  We can’t avoid those times.  And it’s hardly helpful to rail against them, to cry about how awful it all is, especially when we’re all suffering.  What is helpful, though, is to take care of what you can, and ultimately you should be your one first priority.  Take care of you.  Then - once you’re in a better position - look to providing support for others.  Put your oxygen mask on first.