I met Jacey at an event hosted by David Nebinski, as he recorded a live episode for his Portfolio Career Podcast.
After I learned of her own show, Recalibrate, and some of her personal stories of finding community and belonging, I knew we had to record a conversation together.
Watch the full interview on YouTube here or listen via podcast audio here.
The pandemic is still affecting us
This is a sentiment I continue to see coming up for folks:
"I know that period of quarantine and isolation was a couple of years ago now, but it still feels like it created this imprint in people's lives that hasn't fully shifted out. Like I think it created this fundamental change for people."
"I think being in a remote work environment for the last three years and also seeing social media, it creates this environment where you feel like you are always connected but you're also never really connected."
We developed some bad habits during quarantine. Some of us haven't un-done them yet!
Working from home is great until it's not
I started working from home in 2006, so Jacey's story was painfully familiar:
"I've been working remotely since October 2020. Initially, I loved it. I could work in my pajamas and accomplish so much during the day. But over the past few months, I've developed a sense of isolation, spending too much time alone with my thoughts. Sometimes, I don't talk to a real person all day. This isolation has taken a toll on my mental health, leading to increased anxiety and symptoms of depression.
When you're alone so often, you can develop an inflated sense of self, becoming ungrounded from the everyday world. Without those micro-interactions with people, you can forget that the outside world exists. This can lead to a loss of a sense of community."
Getting out of the house to be around other people is critical to maintaining your connection to humanity and reality.
But where to go?
Finding the elusive Third Place
By coincidence, Jacey and I grew up in the same town—so I was curious to know how our experiences overlapped and how they differed.
It turns out, she was missing that community space much like I was. Fast forward to pandemic time, when she found a beautiful (but sadly short-lived) space:
"There's this place in Brooklyn that I used to go to all the time called Kava Social... it turned into this community spot where people would just cowork there all day.
They had art supplies, they had board games, they had you know these people that are working on their businesses or their passion projects—the people that it attracted were amazing, and we would joke like people lived there because they were always there.
There was always the same people there, everyone knew each other and that type of space was amazing. If I felt like I didn't know where to go when I was done with work, and I didn't have plans, I would just go there and I knew I would see a friendly face. I knew someone would be there to talk to."
Survivor night: Gathering to watch a show (but it wasn't about the show)
Jacey's friend managed to get a dozen or so people to regularly attend a Survivor watch party, despite the fact that none of them actually cared about the show:
"One of my friends loves Survivor. He is like the biggest Survivor fan I've ever met.
I personally don't care about Survivor at all. But we would always just listen to him talk about it, and one season he said, “guys every Wednesday, come over to my apartment and we're gonna watch Survivor together.”
And at first I didn't really want to do that. I don't like Survivor and I have to go all the way to the Upper East Side. I wasn't too enthused. But I wanted to see my friends, so I figured I'll go for the first time... and it was amazing.
I had so much fun! It really got me out of my routine of the workweek. It gave me the space where I could reconnect with my friends in the middle of the week. Every week we became so dedicated this group of like 10-12 people who also weren't really into Survivor and then we just showed up every single week—and we all got so invested in it, even to the point where if we couldn't make it we would Zoom into it."
I think having those routines that you know you do at this time this place every single week, even if it's something as so simple as calling a friend or watching a TV show together every week really does create this sense of structure and meaning in your week. We love that we can count on this time of the week, when we know there's this thing that we can look forward to.
So easy, so simple.
What show would you host a watch party for?
Watch the full video interview here:
Recommendations
- Book: The Yoga Sutras
(find it at your library) (buy it on Bookshelf) - Recipe: Banana Pancakes