Member-only story
How To Talk About Literally Anything Else
Conversation starters that don’t trigger coronavirus anxiety
There’s a spontaneity to social life in quarantine. Just a few weeks ago, before the coronavirus forced us all inside, trying to pin down a dinner with friends could sometimes feel like playing Tetris — and everyone involved knew it would be rescheduled at least twice anyway. But now, hunkered down at home, calling a friend on a whim feels normal.
There’s just one hitch: Whenever I get a friend on the line these days, the first question is nearly always, “How are you holding up?” Or, “How is quarantine treating you?” Or, “You guys ready to kill each other yet?”
Look, these are completely reasonable icebreakers right now. But they’re also exhausting. Anyone asking already knows the answer: None of us are doing amazingly well. Quarantine is not summer camp. Most of us would love to see someone beyond our partners, parents, or children.
On the one hand, now feels like an especially vital time to let the people in our lives know we’re there for them. On the other hand, as anxiety disorder specialist Catherine Belling recently explained in Time, excessively rehashing our quarantine situations and the news will only make us feel worse. “There’s no correlation between how worried you are and how at risk…
