Picture it: Hollywood, California, December 31st, 2019. I, along with every patron at the Scum and Villainy Cantina, were singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” at the top of our lungs as we waited to ring in the new year with champagne in our hands and hope in our hearts. When the clock struck midnight, the theme from Star Wars blared loudly in the bar and the nerds shouted for joy as we all anticipated not just a glorious new year, but a bright, sparkly, new decade. Ah… we were all so young and so naive.

Since you, like everyone else in this world, have a front row seat to the madness that is the pandemic we’re living in, I don’t need to go into detail about what happened next in the lives of the joyful nerds. And I’m sure that you, very much like me, are exhausted from hearing anything related to this topic. But since we’re here, let’s get real about one unexpected side effect of this virus that has hit most, if not all of us: a loss of hope for the future.

When I was chilling in the cantina that night, I spent part of the time daydreaming about what the year might hold. I thought positively about possible career changes, relationships, moving to a new city, and felt a burst of excitement just dreaming about the possibilities. I was 110% confident that 2020 would just be different. Well, I guess I was partially right.

As news of the virus and city closures began to spread, I realized more and more how much life and everyday human experiences were being robbed from us all. People postponed, canceled, or severely scaled down weddings, proms, and graduation ceremonies, birthdays were left uncelebrated, celebrated virtually, or never lived to see, people lost jobs, closed businesses, and the tight spot some were already in – financially, relationally, and emotionally – before this all began got even tighter. As you know, that’s just a small sample of what’s been lost.

I fall somewhere in that last category: the people who were already in a tight spot and life just got tighter. My hopes for career and relationship changes came to a screeching halt (hard to get a job when no one’s hiring and not easy to date or meet people when you’re under stay-at-home orders), plans to move were put even further out of reach, and the new social circles and projects I started to engage in were all put on pause until we could figure out how to adjust to this new normal. I was already living on low supply of hope for my future and now, with all this pandemic business, I was running on fumes.

I know that this loss of hope and how we’re living through this time in history looks different for all of us. My losses and disappointments aren’t as severe as what others are dealing with, and yet, are also greater than others. But the common thread is that we’re all, in one way or another, dealing with some form of grief: the grief of what is, what was, and what could have been. This type of grief hit many of us in our lives long before covid even came to be – so the fortunate thing about that is because we’ve already been infected, there are tools to help us combat the infection.

First step, limit your intake of the news or conversation about what’s happening in your internal and external worlds. I’m not telling you to stop communicating about what’s going on in your life or the world or large, I’m just saying to slow your roll a bit. Think of it this way: even your favorite snack becomes too much when it’s served in large quantities at every meal and you’re forced to eat every bite. I mean, even taco Tuesday could lose its glory if every day is taco day and you can’t even pair it with chips and salsa – it gets to be too much. The point is that it’s good to be informed and have conversation about real-life topics, but there is such a thing as oversaturation and it will tear away at your mental health and capacity for hope.

Second step, focus on the present moment. That can range anywhere from stopping to remind yourself to breathe to focusing on not burning the 150th loaf of bread you’re baking to hard core jamming out to a favorite song. Basically, just do your best to focus on any shred of normalcy in your day that you possibly can. As difficult as it may be (speaking from experience here), if you focus too much on the past or look too far ahead into the future, you will (not might, will) lose your mind. Stay present.

Lastly, the third and equally important step is to find the good in your world (it’s out there). Not gonna lie, some of my joys that have resulted from this weird time in history have been my mostly clear social calendar and not having to drive all over God’s green earth to get from point A to point B most days of the week. And I know this is a controversial opinion, but I LOVE the marked out spaces in the store aisles because now people aren’t getting all up in my business when I’m just trying to buy some essential items – I really don’t want this to go away and I’ll miss it when it inevitably will.

This is not the end of the story – this is just a super horrible, dramatic, nauseating plot twist in an adventurous tale where you, the conquering hero, will win. So do everything you can to push through and maintain hope because the days of champagne, sing-a-longs, and abundant toilet paper for all will return and you’ll come out of this better and stronger than before. Hang in there, buttercup. You got this!