The Long-COVID Recovery Grind

Today, March 15th, is Long-COVID Awareness Day - so I'm sharing from my own experience.

Following many ups and (mostly) downs since first getting COVID in late 2021, I was confronted with the reality in mid-2023 of accepting stepping away from my professional life to fully immerse in the journey of long-COVID recovery.

Medical advice had finally made it clear that the only real path forward was stepping off the one I had had been dedicated to over many years.

The decision to prioritize my health was difficult but necessary, and it has been both humbling and enlightening. It has taught me invaluable lessons about patience, perseverance, and playing the long game.

I know many people continue to struggle with LC, and have struggled through lack of support and understanding in their work, in the healthcare system, and in their social environments.

The following is something I wrote in roughly mid-2023 and shared in a very limited circle. It helped me then to constructively reframe my thinking during a period when recovery seemed furthest away. I share it now in hope that it may find its way to another person in the midst of that challenge.

What does it mean to grind?

My perspective on this has been evolving.

In a prior life of accumulating personal and professional accomplishments, grinding was about finding the joy in pushing through to go the extra distance - summitting one peak only to look quickly for the next.

That's one type of grind. It's valid and can be a lot of fun.

Personally, I loved that type of grind.

For context, at the time when I got covid, I was fully into that grind. At 39, I had earned a contract to start a role in one of a top position for my field, I was finishing a doctorate at one of the top programs in the world for my field, I was consulting internationally for projects that I cared about and which excited me, and I was in the process of launching another new business of my own which I'd been preparing for over the prior couple of years. I was going non-stop and loving it.

Then, Delta happened.

Since getting hit with Delta and then long-covid, the type of grind I loved became impossible. All of my prior work and passions became impossible and rapidly became involuntarily abandoned.

After coming through the worst of the initial illness, I tried many times to get back at it, but inevitably the physical, mental, or social-emotional exertion that I used to thrive on would come back to hit me hard. I might push through to reach one summit, but would inevitably find myself wiped out for the next several weeks with incapacitating impacts on my health.

This has been incredibly frustrating.

In fact, more than just frustrating, crash after crash, it has been a wearing down of an identity that had love of the grind at its core.

Now, the medical advice I'm under requires me to carefully avoid exertion, be that physical, cognitive, or social. Others getting through long-covid may be familiar with this as "pacing". Don't think too much. Don't socialize too much. Don't let your heart rate get above a certain level. It's all about doing very little and resting a lot so that your body can slowly heal, over months, as you gradually make incremental changes in expanding your energy use.

Surprisingly, doing a good job of doing nothing is harder than you would think.

It requires discipline.

In fact, it is a whole new kind of grind.

I say this because it is not a careless slowing down. It is a deliberate slowing down that requires a high level of awareness, attentiveness, discipline, and determination.

It is also a slowing down that is accompanied by many setbacks. It demands the ability to fail, suffer, and then bring yourself back to your discipline so that you can make adjustments and keep going forward.

It also requires pursuit of your goals in spite of uncertainty about their attainability. It requires a faith in the possibility of something that's worth working towards.

Ironically, it is even a slowing down that benefits from a growth mindset. When you can no longer do the things you used to do with ease and attempting to do them results in being incapacitated, frustration means "I can't" becomes dangerously familiar. Again, it requires discipline and faith to turn that fixed mode of thinking into a growth oriented outlook of "I can't, yet".

So much of this is about recalibrating your understanding of what it means to put in a good day. It is about reframing 'the grind' from a race against time and driving through barriers, to a disciplined journey of staying on point and riding the waves of challenges and setbacks without losing faith in the big picture or your commitment to the next steps.

In this grind, there's immense power in the seemingly small. Each incremental victory carries weight, even as it's uncertain how long it will last. Each careful step forward is an expression of perseverance and commitment to a long-term vision that seems distant and demands faith in the seemingly impossible. This grind, then, is about discovering that even when stripped of all you thought defined you, the traits that got you there before can find expression in a new context and a new way of keeping you on point.

My experience in coming through the worst of the depths of long-covid and getting to a point of seeing hope, is that facing long-covid has required a deep-dive into the core of my identity and a redefinition of self in a way that was at first brutal and scorched earth, but is now starting to show recovery as new patterns are cultivated.

The grind of recovery isn't lesser than the grind of high attainment; it's just different. The measure isn't in the status or esteem conferred by reaching the goal and reaping its benefits. The measure is in the difficulty of the challenges themselves and how we express what is meaningful to us by way of how we choose to face our challenge and our setbacks.

The grind of enduring, rising, and continuing to move forward is a hell of a battle.

Fortunately, the brutality of this experience comes with the gift of a deep recognition of the power of circumstance, and an appreciation for the role that luck that plays in our lives. It has made me more aware of, and grateful for, the quiet strength of countless others facing their own battles, grinding every day for a chance to progress in the face of all kinds of unseen challenges.

It is hard. Keeping going, keeping the faith and just meeting it each day is admirable.

We're all grinding, in our own ways. Circumstances differ and what we know to be our grind one day can become something quite different with a twist of fate, but the essence of the grind remains the same.

It's about expressing those key traits – discipline, perseverance, faith, and commitment – in keeping going towards what we hope for and which seems so very difficult to reach.

Just writing this has been a drain. I can feel it in my nerves now. But, every day in long-covid communities I see people going through the same as me and worse, so I want to share this message on behalf of, and for the benefit of, not just myself.

Here's to everyone that's on this long-covid grind and everyone who's on some other grind that's part of life in their circumstances. We're all going through it, being disciplined, showing perseverance, keeping the faith, and not giving up in the face of inevitable setbacks.

If you read this far, thank you for taking it in. I hope the message helps in some way for your own journey through this. Don't give up!

#longcovid #resilience #growthmindset #grinding