After nearly a month, it's time for another long covid update. (For my official "covid diaries," see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here, here; here; here, here; here; and here). And, as usual, the situation is a mixed bag.
First, the good news. Thanks to non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (basically extra strength Aleve for those Stateside) I have managed to eliminate debilitating headaches. By 'debilitating' I mean: being in bed all day, and being incapable of reading or watching streaming online content. So, the amount of suffering has been reduced dramatically! In addition, if I take the meds before I socialize -- say a lunch in a quiet place -- I am capable of enjoying it without nuisance. So, I have some hope that I can reduce my relative social isolation. My body does notice I have socialized (I have a strange kind of fatigue then), so it's not without consequence, but it's better than it was.
Unfortunately, some of life's simple pleasures remain out of reach due to my inability to engage in quite modest cognitive multitasking: even gentle walking while talking with others wipes me out cognitively. (I can do serious walking alone.) I am unable to enjoy music in the background while we're talking or even playing silently. I can't cycle in the city, I can't play basketball with my son, etc.
For example, recently, I had a lunch with a college friend in a quiet London club. The background music and noise of other lunch-guests were quite modest. I enjoyed it. (Hurrah!) I did have a vague sense that my capacity to eavesdrop on other conversations was much diminished. Once I walked out of the club into the air, I noticed how exhausted I was; and despite the lack of headache, and more meds, I was unable to concentrate again that day. It would not be wrong to call it 'brain fog', but the fatigue in my body is even worse: I walk slower then, and think slower. As I have mentioned before, I suspect a lot of symptoms commonly associated with aging are really the effects of post-viral syndromes.
In Seneca's Letter 56, he notes that "words seem to be more distracting" to him "than noises; for words demand attention, but noises merely fill the ears and beat upon them." Seneca mentions that shouting is not as distracting as singing and an intermittent noise more troublesome [molestior] than a steady one, and I would agree. In fact, hearing other people talk or even just hum while I am engaged in some activity of my own drives me batty. (Well not as badly as a few months ago, but still.) I have mentioned, I think, that this makes family life with a teenager challenging. He hums when he is happy.
While Seneca repeatedly suggests in this letter and others that finding inner mental tranquility is fundamentally healing, he also recognizes that rousing ourselves to keeping busy with good works is healing, too [ad rerum actus excitandi ac tractatione bonarum artium occupandi sumus], and, if I read him alright, necessary for the non-sage (that is all of us). A Christian may well think this is a call to charity, but I read it somewhat self-servingly as keeping true to my vocation (as scholar and teacher). I don't want to claim Seneca invents the protestant work ethic, but I do think he is an important voice in its development.
In fact, Seneca notes that when he is in forced retirement (due to illness or political failure--the letter contains a rare admission or at least allusion to it) ambition is often revived [interdum recrudescit ambitio]. I recognize the truth of this because much to my own surprise, in my forced leave of absence, my disabilities have re-directed even expanded my vocational ambitions as a scholar (even if I have come to accept that some projects have to be let go), and (while more challenging) teacher.
Even though I had to withdraw from quite a few projects and also have given up on a number of papers, in some respects being a scholar has become easier because I have so many fewer social interactions and don't travel to conferences. I probably read more than I have ever.
One unexpected effect -- I have mentioned it before -- of these covid diaries is that other scholars reveal their own enduring challenges with disability to me. I recognize that in my environment I have missed a lot of quiet suffering and almost heroic persistence. It's humbling to recognize what a bad observer of my umwelt I have been and, more importantly, to recognize that so many folk have achieved so much with chronic pain and cognitive instabilities.
This experience makes me interpret Seneca's suggestion that a hidden disease is worse than one in the open (which is on the road to being cured) in a social way. Norms that internalize suffering, 'being Stoic' as they say, hidden from the world are, while convenient to the powerful, a social evil. In a famous passage, Adam Smith notes that people tend to refuse acknowledgment of poverty and disease and thereby make it worse. (Smith thinks our gaze and recognition naturally falls on the rich, famous, and beautiful/healthy.) Sometimes I wonder if I hear about other people's suffering now because other people sense greater receptivity on my part, or if they think it's only fair that after having read about my trials I ought to welcome learning of theirs, or if I have actually become more willing to discern other people's struggles. Despite my vocation as a teacher, I tend to be skeptical of narratives of growth.
And after hinting at the need for regular cognitive-therapy -- good and solid thoughts [cogitationes bonas, solidas] -- as the road to wisdom, Seneca grudgingly admits that sometimes the best self-care is to seek out a quiet spot. I laugh, and admit that the reading room of the British Library is indeed my best friend. In fact, I now have my spot in the reading room that the other regulars leave alone -- and the librarians at circulation have started to recognize --; I love quietly reciting, in the spirit of cognitive-therapy, Newton's (early) definition of place being a part of space that a thing fills adequately just before I sit down at 'my' desk.
This past month a co-authored paper was rejected by referees. And I had hoped to circulate the first seven chapters of my Foucault/liberal art of government book [I am soliciting catchy titles!], which covers his material on the physiocrats and the ordoliberals, to trusted friends. But the manuscript is still too much a mess, and so its circulation has been pushed back into the Summer. No professional life without ordinary professional disappointments, I tell myself.
This is also my last digression of the academic year. On Saturday, we go on family holiday, and I don't expect resuming D&I until August. Thank you, my dear reader, for your continued interest in my (near) daily mumblings.
glad you are getting some relief and taking breaks as needed, see you on the other side.
https://jhiblog.org/2022/07/08/william-callison-on-max-weber-ludwig-von-mises-and-state-economic-planning
Posted by: dmf | 07/08/2022 at 08:02 PM