A Lament for the Covid Hotel: A Journey into An Analog Life

I longed for the Covid hotel this week.

I know that’s a batshit crazy thing to say. And I know a lot of people struggled during the pandemic, becoming socially isolated, and lots of people didn’t have a community to rely on, often damaging their mental health. And I feel incredibly guilty for saying this, but I thrived. I loved that I had an excuse not to call anyone, not to talk. The first part of the pandemic was an easy change. I walked every single day with my headphones in, I drank coffee, I read, and I wrote. I loved every single moment.

There was a strange stillness to that time that people forget about now. The world had stopped moving in the way we were used to. No commuting. No social obligations. No constant rushing from one thing to another. For a little while, the pace of life slowed down enough that you could actually hear yourself think.

And when I finally ended up catching Covid, nearly a year after the pandemic started, I had to go to the Covid hotel to avoid infecting the people around me. I checked in, had no contact with anyone for 10 days, and it was delicious. I lay in bed watching cable television and Netflix until three a.m., and I ate three meals a day. I loved every second of it. I was so sad when my week was done. I genuinely was upset.

I remember thinking at the time that it felt like being temporarily removed from the world. Like someone had placed me in a quiet waiting room where nothing was expected of me.

When I feel overwhelmed, and I’m tired of talking and communicating with people all day, I think of my time in the COVID hotel. I think of sitting in front of my laptop watching all of the Scream movies in order, waking up and writing, sitting and enjoying the sunshine from the windows. I miss the simplicity of not having to be my best self for anyone, including myself. I could just exist without anyone around me.

I think as I get older, I grieve for isolation. I spend all day talking to people, and I’ve become the person that everyone calls to unload their problems onto, but so rarely does anyone actually want to hear about what I’m going through. And even rarer do I actually have the energy to do it. I am not meant for community, I think, sometimes. I think I was meant to live in complete isolation all the time. I am Will Forte in Last Man on Earth before the other people.

Or rather, I don’t think I’m made for the current zeitgeist.

Because the version of community we live with now is not quiet. It’s constant. Notifications and messages and group chats and emails and a dozen different ways for people to reach you at any given moment. It’s kind of embarrassing to say that I’m online now. I am, but not for social media. I hate that people have 24/7 access to each other. I hate that people call, email, and message me almost without consent. A message flashes across my screen, and I have nothing I can do about it besides swipe it away or physically put deterrents in place like Focus Mode or a simple DND. I have this social expectation to answer them, and I get anxious about an inbox that has messages in it. I’m deciding that this year, more than ever, I will no longer be controlled by a phone, my social media, or any part of it.

I, like many other millennials, am choosing the analog life.

It sounds dramatic when people say that. Like we’re cosplaying the Amish. Like we’re pretending to be some pastoral ideal of forest people. But it is less romantic than that. It is mostly just exhaustion.

We were the first generation that grew up alongside the internet. We watched it move from something you logged onto for an hour to something that never turns off. We went from our mom kicking us off the family computer to having access to all of the information in the world in our pockets. Phones slowly became the single device that contains every part of your life.

Your photos are there. Your conversations are there. Your directions, your news, your work, your music, your memories. Everything lives in a small glowing rectangle that follows you everywhere.

And somewhere along the line, I think some of us realized that maybe this was not a great idea.

I’ve taken to bricking my phone, a device that has been worth it. I’m less available now, the way it had to be with landlines, where someone would reach you when they got you. With the constant push and pull of information, having a break feels necessary.

Sometimes people get annoyed by it. They want you to answer immediately. They want confirmation that the message has been received and acknowledged. But there was a long period of time when that was not how life worked. You sent a letter and waited for the mail every day. You called someone. Maybe they answered, maybe they didn’t. Maybe you left a message, and they called you back two days later.

And that was normal.

I know I sound like a crochety gramma, and maybe that’s true. But I can tell you that I wrote a chunk of this in a notebook on the bus, annoyed by my seatmate scrolling through TikTok at full volume next to me.

I understand that I am a hypocrite. I’m transcribing this on my laptop, connected to the internet, listening to music available on a music streaming platform, and later I’m going to watch Shoresy on Crave so I can write more of my dissertation. I am not moving to the woods; I couldn’t survive anyway without my weekly visit to the Lakeview. I am not smashing my phone with a hammer and renouncing modern life, even though I fight the temptation daily. Because really, technology is not the problem. It never really was.

The problem is the way it quietly expanded until it started filling every space in our lives. Every quiet moment that used to exist now has something waiting to occupy it. A notification. A headline. A video. Another message from someone who needs something from you.

The truth is, I like my laptop. I like being able to look things up instantly. I like streaming music. I like watching television without having to buy a DVD box set. I like that I can write something and send it to someone across the world in a few seconds.

What I do not like is the feeling that I am always supposed to be available.

I bought one of those reusable disposable cameras. I have digital cameras, a travel cam, and a DSLR, but I’m trying to spend less time fiddling with settings and just take the goddamn photo. We’re on the brink of war again, and I’m trying to get my head around everything else happening in my life, and being dialled in to the constant horrors of the world fills me with existential dread. It feels like just surviving is too much right now. Like my frontal lobe is running at 100 kilometres a second, and I can’t make it stop.

The idea of the camera, even though I’ll admit that I haven’t taken a shot in months, was an attempt to go outside and do something slower. I want to be more intentional with the technology I touch, because even though we were the first generation to grow up with tech, we’re also the first generation to see the impact of it on our lives.

And not always for the better.

The internet used to feel smaller. You logged on for a purpose. You checked something, maybe talked to someone, and then you logged off again.

Now it feels like the internet has slowly expanded until it covers everything.

I think I’ve always been bad at getting the latest technology. When laptops stopped being made with CD drives, I made sure to get an end-of-the-run model so I could still have one. I could play my burned CDs when I was studying, even though I spent most of my time listening to music on my Sandisk Sansa.

As a matter of fact, it was almost ten years too late when I finally got an iPod Classic. The one with 80 GB, which felt like an impossible amount of space back then.

I think I always preferred the idea of being just behind the times. Feeling a little disconnected from everyone else. Not completely out of the world, just slightly out of sync with it.

I have a typewriter that I love. I still use wired headphones. The idea of relying on one device for everything is terrifying.

What happens when it inevitably breaks?

Sometimes I think about the Covid hotel again when I think about that.

Ten days where the world got smaller. A room, a laptop, cable television, sunlight through the window, and food left outside the door. No notifications. No endless scroll of headlines. No expectation that I answer anyone. Just existing in solitude with the room to think and breathe without owing space and time to anyone or anything. 

Just quiet. And lately, I have started to wonder if that is what I am actually trying to recreate. The silence of the Covid Hotel. 

My workstation at the Covid hotel. I think of this chair with such longing.