While we are all navigating ambiguous times, it is a great opportunity to get to know yourself better and learn how to be comfortable with yourself, alone. I understand this might be easy for me to say and adopt as most of my days are spent in my live/work space and I have a lot of flexibility around scheduling, now that events are on a hiatus mandate.
I’ve found this to be a great time to disconnect from social media and unnecessary digital clutter too. A lot of our work from CHEECHABLE and SESH is distributed on digital platforms, which means we are creating and distributing content through a digital interface a lot of the time.
Since the quarantine orders, all meetings have been canceled or moved to digital platforms, which doubled the time I spent on a digital interface. Trying to keep abreast of the COVID-19 updates, keep our stakeholders, sponsors and volunteers informed of delays, cancellations, and manage to move all my administrative and educational interactions to a digital platform, I felt electronically overwhelmed. Not only by my increased workload, but I had a weird feeling that I wasn’t doing enough, that I had to make more content that was relevant to the current state of the world.
Social media became a sad window into the coping mechanisms of society. I witnessed anxiety turn into fear turn into hate and shaming. I saw a lot of people cutting their own hair and diving deep into toxic behavior. Efforts from companies to keep it positive felt insincere and canned at best.
Social media was giving me a lot of anxiety to see people I know and admire working through this. I felt like I had to do something, but couldn’t. I spent a few days meditating and contemplating on my purpose and our core values at CHEECHABLE and our newly launched creative services platform, SESH. I started thinking while it might be compelling to launch a new podcast or start broadcasting our day to day, I also started to consider that feed based media like instagram, twitter, facebook, etc. are algorithmically driven and our interactions have the potential to suppress vital communication. While I understand everyone manages stress in different ways, I have chosen the less public path to be introspective at this time. I felt like it was time to step back and let the essential information from WHO and CDC reach people.
I understand we have businesses to run, hell 2020 is the first year we have experienced a financial loss and our largest grossing year. You take the good and the bad. While we want to sell out of stock and keep our employees on full time, we weren’t in a position to pivot our strategy. We looked at what it would be like to run a flash sale and sell gift cards, it only lead to one outcome. Burn out.
When COVID-19 first started popping up in the US, we were in the middle of planning one of our biggest events yet. After all, when is it 4/20 for the entire month?! We were in the midst of signing on sponsors when the event ban was put in place. It was devastating to make the call to postpone, we felt like we took a major hit and it felt personal. Fortunately, our community is amazing and resilient! We are optimistic and looking forward to bringing ya’ll something really special once we are past this.
On an absolutely positive note, cities around the nation are deeming cannabis businesses as “essential businesses.” We are thrilled that these cities are showing up for our community and the medical patients who rely on cannabis for wellness and treatment. While access is an essential aspect of this, I am hopeful that we are closer to facilitating public consumption as well. We understand that access doesn’t end at the sale, for most people that’s where it starts. We know that access is about obtaining cannabis all the way through the act and effects of consumption too. We are hopeful this conversation of access to essential services has opened the door to consumption in the future.
Thank you to our supporters who purchased items from our shop. Thank you to our sponsors who are hanging in there while we wait this out. Our hearts are filled with gratitude and hope that we will overcome this barrier to better times. In the meantime, here are a couple resources we are checking regularly to keep ourselves updated on the progress of COVID-19.