Will COVID destroy our collective mental health? Maybe not, actually…

I think sometimes about what would have happened if COVID took place at the same time in 2017, which is entirely possible because life, and global pandemics, are often random as hell. If this was three years ago, I would have been newly-divorced, living by myself for the first time in seven years, and in the process of losing most of my 20s/30s friend circle. As you might imagine, that was a depressing time anyway — I broadly got through it — and I think if you had added government-mandated social isolation into that mix, it would have been pretty bad.

I get knocked all the time by people for being too negative or discussing mental health or whatever else. I am mostly fine with it. Some days I wish I had bigger followings that seemed to care more about what I do, but the reality is, life is not easy for everyone, Instagram filters be damned. People do get depressed, and you do evolve and lose friends in your 30s, and mental health is an actual concern — so much so that I’ve even done a couple of podcast episodes on it, i.e. here and here.

Because human beings need connection (“social animals”) and generally do not like isolation, the common belief about post-COVID or during-COVID is that we’d see an explosion in mental health issues, both reported and just within our communities and friend circles…