Lupine’s Life Update: July

Hi All. It’s been a while.

It’s hard to know where to start, but what’s been even harder is convincing myself to even get to this place where I am sitting down and attempting to reflect on the last few months. It’s been safer to just keep moving forward.

The world has collapsed around us all, leaving us to navigate a reality that is completely unknown and unpredictable. I’m afraid to stop to think about how that has been, what my life looks like now, what it means for all of us in the future. If I let all that in, I know it is going to hurt.

Everything has been such a blur. I know I’ve been living in this really precarious, dreamlike space the last few months, my psyche balanced somewhere between dreading that everything is wrong, irrevocably broken and knowing that I’m exactly where I should be and that everything will be alright.

I’m exhausted. And scared. And lonely. And mad. And also really, really grateful.

For the first time in a long time I feel really vulnerable. Like I have so much to lose. When I turned 30 I told myself that I’ve had SO MUCH luck and love and health and happiness that everything after will only be a bonus. All the pain and hurt or loss that will come would be inevitable and okay.

But. These days I’m suddenly I’m feeling that mortality for real. My father could actually die if he catches this virus, my coworkers are actually violently angry about the protests, friends are actually slipping away because I don’t call. Our economy could legitimately collapse, my privileges could very much lessen, another earthquake could easily strike, old joys very well may never return, my delicate world view could break. The end could come.

Ostensibly, nothing for me has changed.

I worked from home before this. I live in Utah, not exactly a hot spot for racial tensions or police brutality. I don’t have thousands of followers which obligate me to use my voice. I wasn’t dating or going out often. I don’t miss restaurants or have kids I need to homeschool.

I’m still business as usual, working from home, safely walking my neighborhood alone at night. I still support when I can the voices of others who know more than me and believe them when they say they’re affected more than me. I still cook most of my meals at home, still take a break on my porch any time I want, still fall asleep alone.  

We’ll remember this time forever. Nothing like this has happened in any of our lifetimes. Hopefully nothing worse ever will. I talked with my uncle yesterday and he said this is our World War II. A completely disruptive event that will allow a few people to rise and set most of the already unfortunate even further back.

Which is why he, like everyone else, keeps telling me to keep my head down and just work right now. They remind me how uniquely positioned I am, rising in the only industry that was preparing for something like this. My company has always known telehealth would be inevitable, we just didn’t know that we’d have to grow 10 years’ worth in 3 months.

It’s been a lot, with very hard days and also very rewarding ones. I’ve seen tv commercials for national health systems that are using our technology to help their patients and simultaneously had to handle other hospitals who are furious with us because they had so many patient video visits that it crashed our system. I’m in a constant battle of wills with my sales team as they try to convince me it’s okay to ship their doctors the items they need to save lives even though they don’t have a signed contract committing to the order yet. My boss constantly publicly praises me, asking me to take on more and more responsibility. Coworkers rely on me to hear their complaints and advocate for fixes. And as much as the long hours and weekends add up, it also feels good to know that I’m in the middle of it all and that the decisions I make are knowledgeable, influential ones.

And at the same time, I’m also feeling the effects of a huge release in responsibility.

The acquisition formally went through on the First of July and just like that, the startup journey I’ve been on since 2015 came to an end. We made it public. We’re the actual definition of a “Unicorn”, valued at $1B.

My original CEO and boss invited me to dinner a day later. We hadn’t talked in 6 months since I’d broken our communication off. He’d been let go from the company a year earlier and hadn’t accepted it well. I’d finally told him I needed space too; I couldn’t carry him through something he needed to stand on his own for.

I was nervous, but grateful he called. I’d never regretted standing up for my space, but I’d often still felt guilty that I’d done it so abruptly and when he was still in so much pain. It weighed on me that there was still tension there, that someone I’d spent so much of the last 5 years with was now not in my life and with no real goodbye.

We reminisced over a needlessly expensive dinner on a gorgeous restaurant patio. Our waiter wore a mask and I relaxed as my dinner date treated me to wine and Prosecco and toasted our celebration, forcing me to bask in the simple, true statement that We’d Made It and he couldn’t have done it without me.

We gossiped more about the rest of the original 11 person start up team, most who are using their stock payouts to leave the company and take some well-deserved time off before finding themselves in something new. There are only 4 of us who are staying, readjusting to our new reality that we’ve just become small cogs in a 2,400 person machine.

At the end of the night I gave him a box of old files, the printed patents and letters of recommendation from his mentors that he had told me to throw out a year earlier when he was in a bad place. He was grateful and told me that we’ll hang out. I told him that would be nice and when I got home it felt good to see that now empty shelf.

It feels like the end of an era. I’m still telling myself I’ll send out a few thank you letters to some of my favorite key investors and friends, including with it a postcard history of our startup to public timeline. I hope I do, but maybe I never will. Either way, things are different now.

Rather than give me stock in my new company, my options were cashed out, meaning that from all sides now I’m just a normal, average employee. No special responsibilities or obligations, or risks. When it arrived in my account two weeks ago my jaw hit the ground. COVID-19 had raised our value so much that when the final numbers came in we’d been valued at double what we’d expected. It’s not six figures or life changing money, but it’s two+ years’ worth of the salary I’d been paid during our start up days.

My brother and I and some of our friends stole away for a weekend rafting trip that day and he dropped me alone off at our remote, perfect campsite for an hour while he went to help the rest of our group find us. I sipped my wine quietly and looked out over the river as the sun set behind me, feeling release as every breath I let out made room to breathe in new. We’d Made It.

The weekend was a dream. I expertly rowed our raft through huge rapids and clung to life and my overturned kayak through others. I felt powerful and talented and complete as we reconnected with old friends who set lofty goals and then methodically take action meet them. We drew tarot cards to reveal our spirt animals around the fire and cliff jumped into the rushing current, clinging to the throw ropes our friends used to pull us back in. We talked. We laughed. We played. We ate. We slept. We awed. We connected.

I was so happy to be driving home dirty and bug bitten and sunburned on Sunday night that when my brother fell asleep in the passenger seat I couldn’t wake him when it occurred to me we were low on gas. Thirty miles later he woke on his own when we ran out in the middle of nowhere Wyoming with no cell service. Within a few minutes the two of us were hitchhiking, riding in an RV with a retired couple who had just left Yellowstone. They drove us another thirty minutes to the first town with a gas station and only had one store open that Sunday night, thankfully a Family Dollar that had gas cans. We helped each other stay light-hearted and hitched our ride back with the first car I waved at, though admittedly I was a little nervous as the older couple who’d picked us up drove us down a winding dirt road for a pit stop so their dog could run for a few minutes.

In all, we got back on the road just in time for the sun to set, only two hours delayed and a whole lot of character building later. I felt grateful again for my privilege and luck and brother, an incredible supportive friend who keeps his optimism and kindness especially when most people wouldn’t have.

The following week I spent time with a different social group every night. My parents, my neighbors, even two different sets of old friends who stopped into town. No hugs but plenty of smiles and stories and… normalcy. I’d forgotten how good it feels to see people in person. To joke with unmasked Wyoming gas station clerks. To pickup food and share a bottle of wine. To imagine that the world hadn’t changed and that the future would be more of same.

A day or so later my anxiety spiraled. Every ache and pain I had meant I now had COVID and so did so many people I loved and my whole life was about to come crashing down. All the joy and connection that 7-day span had brought suddenly went dark. How could I have been so selfish and stupid and risky? What if because I didn’t weather the battle alone, I’d just lost the war forever?

We made it safely through that storm, none of us are sick, but the bad weather is still here. I still can’t hug my family and friends, still have every excuse to pull back rather than reach out, still have to fight even harder for the joy and connection and magic that we used to all take for granted. I find it harder and harder not to over think all my relationships, overly fearful that in this time of quiet there is resentment harbored or love lost. What if the people who used to love me are now actively against me, upset that I haven’t fought harder to stay in touch? What if I haven’t checked in on them enough or been there for them? What things in my life won’t weather this time? How will this time change me for the worse? What will I miss out on and never be able to get back? What if this lasts too long?

The only way I’ve found to keep those fears at bay has been to keep moving and try not to talk about it. I’ve become a tie dyer, lended myself as manual labor for parent’s remodel, deep cleaned and painted my ceiling vents, watched trashy tv, drank wine, slept a lot, painted gifts, online ordered, walked, donated to causes, compulsively cut my hair, completed puzzles, purged files and clothes and stuff and emotions, and worked. I’ve worked a lot.

And everyone else I know has kept busy too, my favorite coworker and default best friend’s wife is finally pregnant, a local friend moved to the California coast, my mom retired, weddings have been rescheduled, baby showers and brunches are hosted remote. A friend’s mother has made it through chemo and radiation for breast cancer. Even when it seems like the world around us has stopped, life still goes on.

And we’re also thinking harder about what things really matter than we were before. National Parks and hiking trails and lakes are busier than ever, political and social causes are gaining momentum, employers are recognizing that 9 to 5 in an office isn’t essential to success. Families are prioritizing a picnic over the risk of infection. Educators are becoming private tutors so children won’t fall behind in reading. Pet fostering is up 90% in some cities. Home improvement business and online education are booming. Delivery services, health and wellness initiatives, streaming entertainment, are all here to stay.

None us know what tomorrow will look like. What I hope we do is work to keep calm and mute the voices and opinions of the angriest, scaredest, and most destructive of us. I hope we don’t build higher barriers or chose sides. I hope we don’t enforce cancel culture or stop trying to agree. Living is not black and white, right or wrong, my way or yours. We’re all hurting and I know that means many of us will need to direct our rage at times to whoever is in front of us. We can try to forgive them for that.

All I can do is listen whenever someone is trying to communicate. And make sure that whenever and whatever ways I can, I make sure to reach out too. Because when it comes down to what really matters to me right now, it is that stress and fear and pain doesn’t divide us further. We have too much to lose.