Over the past few days, I’ve been reflecting on my reflections here (very meta :-)). And, it’s been quite an experience to look at the impact the Covid pandemic has had on what I’m thinking about. I’ve been writing every day for nearly twelve years now and I’ve never experienced anything like this.
Venture capitalist Brad Feld had a thoughtful post on an idea I found helpful in attempting to make sense of this experience. He makes the case that we are going through three crises all at once – 1) a pandemic, 2) a financial crisis, and 3) a looming mental health crisis from the isolation/disruptive shift.
In addition, these are happening at various levels – local/community, state, nation-wide, and global.
Of course, this may not be the case for everyone – e.g. for folks in communities where the effects may be minimal. But, even if so, there’s more complexity than the plain vanilla (in relative terms) financial crisis or public health scare. And, as the complexity of such events is never linear, the compound effect of so many things happening at once means that there really is a lot to think about.
So, if you’re working through a similar realization of how all-consuming these past weeks have been, I hope Brad’s articulation is helpful.
PS: There’s like a fourth crisis around a lack of time for parents with young kids who’ve also been attempting to be pre-school teachers during the day that also squeezes out available bandwidth to process everything.
