Early in 2020, quarantine killed my ability to engage with effective altruism. Turns out in-person meetups were load-bearing. I had access to online EA discussion spaces, but trying to do it all online—keep up with the latest news, learn more about each cause area, think over my career and donation decisions—proved unsustainable. Barely a week in, I felt the early signs of burnout.
So I stopped. My new goals for the pandemic were: finish university, take care of myself and my partners, don't catch COVID. Anything else was secondary.
This wasn't a change in values. I reasoned that hunkering down to focus on myself and my loved ones was, even from an EA perspective, the best thing I could do—that my total life impact would be higher if I kept up a good trajectory overall, rather than run myself into the ground for a little short-term gain. Not the only reason to take care of myself, of course, but it made the decision feel robustly, straightforwardly good.
And I actually did okay! Finished university, moved in with my partners, didn't catch COVID. Quarantine eroded my health, self-esteem, and overall well-being—but I had loads to begin with, so I was good for a whole year and a half, and the fatigue was temporary when I did finally catch it. Now I'm doing more than fine. I'm almost flourishing.
But EA is still missing from my life in a major way. I'm ready to get back into it, and I'm trying, but it's hard.
When I decided to take a break, I thought the pandemic would last a year or two. I thought it would end, cleanly, and my life would pick up where it left off. (I have no idea how reasonable this prediction was. I have a frustrating mental block around thinking too hard about COVID, because the 24-hour news cycle stresses me out and COVID was the 24-hour news cycle for a long time. Bleh.)
I was wrong in a few different ways:
The pandemic didn't end cleanly.
A lot happened in the movement while I was gone. I'm missing a lot of context. I barely know where to begin catching up.
I moved cities. My new home has a much larger EA community than the old one, but ironically this works against me—there's no single local meetup, so it's hard for newcomers to find the kind of in-person discussions and community I'm looking for.
That said, I have some cause for optimism:
I have an in-person job, and the whole "getting out of the house every day" thing is super helpful for managing the mental health burden both of the pandemic and of being lonely in a new city. Since I no longer spend 100% of my time at home, in-person EA meetups might not be so load-bearing anymore.
I'm making a monthly habit of donating 10% of my income to GiveWell-recommended charities, and of actually looking into their research when I do (instead of poking around just enough to make sure they're legit, which is all I did for my first donation through GiveWell). In addition to the normal benefits of giving to effective global health charities (fewer people dying!!!), the whole exercise feels extremely empowering and agency-affirming—which I did expect, but not to this degree! I've only done it for one month so far, having postponed the November donation due to NaNoWriMo, but I expect I'll keep up with the commitment because wow it feels good.
The FTX scandal has been (indirectly) helpful in getting me to feel like part of the community again. Most effective altruists are as in the dark as me, or nearly so; I'm learning things at the same time as everyone else. And lots of people are returning to the drawing board, reasserting and reevaluating their fundamental principles, which gives mild but helpful "101" energy to some conversations.
For now I've been doing a lot of lurking in online spaces, as well as trying to think seriously about my highest-impact career paths, both of which are easier now than they were in the early pandemic. We'll see how it goes!