Shpilkes

My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while... I’m two, and both keep their distance – Siamese twins that aren’t attached.       -Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Last week, I went on a hike and got coffee with the rest of the mental health team from my school. The four of us talked about the ups and downs of the last several months among other things. It was much needed self-care for a group of people who have made a career out of caring for others.

One theme that kept surfacing in our conversation was that we've experienced a lot of restlessness and unease throughout this pandemic. While that may not be surprising, and while much of that unease is due to COVID itself, the pandemic seems to have raised some even bigger existential questions in us. It's caused us to reevaluate a number of things in our lives - our values, our priorities, and how we spend our time. I kept trying to describe the feeling I was having unsuccessfully until, at one point, my colleague said "we've got shpilkes."

Shpilkes?

If you ever watched SNL's Coffee Talk (thank you 90s sketch comedy), you've heard it before. You know, when Paul Baldwin developed shpilkes in his genechtagazoink. Aside from the flagrant cultural insensitivity, Linda Richman (Mike Myers) makes clear that sometimes "le mot just" is in another language.

Shpilkes. It's a yiddish word that means pins. Like "sitting on pins and needles," it's a nervous energy, anxiousness, or restlessness that comes while waiting for something to happen. It's a feeling of impatience or agitation.

Reflecting on the last four months, and reading through many of my blog posts, it's clear that I've had a pretty constant case of shpilkes since this virus entered the picture (and fairly often before that, too). All of the uncertainty and the abrupt changes have felt paralyzing. Waiting for answers about what is to come has felt torturous at times and long anticipated things continue to be cancelled or postponed. I've found myself looking for new things to do - things that will keep me busy, take my mind off of the pandemic, and things over which I have some control. As we all know, those things have been hard to come by.

Every so often, I get this same feeling. It's like an itch that I need to scratch - a need for doing something new. It could be trying a new hobby, visiting a new place, or taking on some new endeavor. It usually happens when I feel like my life has become stagnant and I need a new challenge. Once I have an idea, I can't leave it alone until I've thoroughly researched it and decided to either do it or realized that it's not for me. My first blog post last October talked a lot about this: I often find myself asking the question "what's next?"

I believe this "itch" is what caused me to go back to school multiple times for new degrees. It's what led me to volunteer at the Birds of Prey foundation years ago and, more recently, at the Denver Zoo. It's why I decided to be a "Big Brother" and why I decided to start hosting foreign exchange students. It's why I've had a number of random jobs like teaching driver's ed and working as a lifeguard and archery instructor at a camp in West Virginia one summer. It's why I went on a conservation trip to Hawai'i last summer to learn about endangered birds and it's why I love taking my students on trips around the world. It's why I've had some unusual pets (like geckos) and why I bought a drum set and a piano.

Shpilkes can be a good thing. In healthy doses, it creates an unsettling feeling that forces us to act. It's a catalyst for change and for growth. For trying something new.

With this most recent case of shpilkes, I've been considering things I could do this fall to make up for cancelled plans. I've looked into taking some ecology classes through Denver Audubon or some photography classes to take my hobby to the next level. I've considered learning about my more recent interest in specialty coffee by taking a barista class or becoming a Q grader (like a sommelier for coffee). My interest in travel and experiencing new places even caused me to look into the qualifications for becoming a foreign service officer...

Maybe, though, I just need to have some patience...

If I do any of those things, I want it to be because I'm genuinely interested and excited for them, not because I'm just trying to distract myself from these challenging times. I go back to work next week and I think that planning for the new school year will keep me plenty busy. I've always appreciated the break that I get each summer working in a school, but this summer it's felt more like a liability. I've had too much time to spend with just my thoughts which has only made the shpilkes worse.

I am looking forward to the day when this virus is just a memory. Hopefully, we'll come out of this situation better prepared, smarter, more understanding, more compassionate, and more patient than we were before. Hopefully, we can salvage some of the things we've lost along the way.

While this situation continues to make me feel stir-crazy, at least I now have a word for it. I don't know if/how I'll scratch the itch this time. Sometimes, though, just naming our emotions helps us feel better. It doesn't change the situation, but at least I can call it for what it is.

I've got shpilkes.