Make the first move

For a while, Covid was making me passive.

I’m usually the first one out of the gate, often before fully thinking. So, if I was paralyzed, I bet I wasn’t only one. Sitting around. Waiting for instructions. For someone else to make the first move.

As a publicist for much of my career, I pitched journalists to write stories about my clients. To be successful I had to have an idea or an expert of substance. And I had to gauge this: Where was the fine line between persisting and pestering? And could I toe that line in just the right way to serve the system?

Reporter gets their story. Client gets their ink. Publicist gets paid.

If we pussyfoot around, the system breaks down. We might forget we have a job to do.

Now, here we are in Covid. The economy is in the crapper. Our relationships, and our nerves, are frayed. And yet, we’re paralyzed behind questions like this:

Should we wait for the client to re-up the work—or should we email again?

Should we wait for the estranged sibling to call—or should we pick up the phone?

Should we wait for the new love interest to sidle over—or should we initiate proximity?

With more than a million people dead worldwide since February, and a thousand a day dying now in the United States alone, the line between persisting and pestering is no longer the point.

There’s only one way to decide what to do. And I heard it in a song by the Canadian indie band Born Ruffians:

Did you live enough?
Did you give enough?
Did you take enough, make enough love?
Have you given up being taken up?
Did you ache enough, awake enough love?

I’ve probably played Deathbed 100 times in three days. And I’m not sure I can 100 percent say yes. But I know I want to.

So. Covid is here. Election day is coming. And I’ve got a plan.

Pester away.

Persist.

Make the first move.