20 Signs You’re "Still Coviding" in the Friction Economy
Adding Some Levity to the Equation
If you’re anything like me, this journey started with just trying to keep your family healthy. But somewhere along the way, your daily life became a masterclass in social calculus, air science, and soft-core diplomacy. You were given names, labels, and projections you didn’t deserve, as the slogans seemed to shift from “stop the spread” to “stop those who are trying to stop the spread.”
Welcome to the Friction Economy — a term Kyla Scanlon uses to describe the invisible cost of navigating broken systems. It’s what happens when the world around you becomes increasingly seamless and virtual, while your real life — the life of caregiving, boundary-holding, and risk-managing — is full of invisible labor and resistance, especially when you’re Still Coviding.
You’re surviving a system that has offloaded responsibility onto individuals while gaslighting them for refusing to pretend that everything is ok. You’re navigating life inside a reality where your friction isn’t personal—it’s structural. And the fact that you're still here, still caring, still building new ways to exist?
That’s not fear. That’s radical persistence.
When I introduced Pandemic Math last fall," a way to calculate the total energy cost of any task, based on your baseline burden, effort, and recovery, it helped, for a while. But no matter how I adjusted the numbers, I couldn’t explain the exhaustion that lingered even after a “good” day.
That’s when I realized: it wasn’t the planning that was broken. It was the system we’re still operating within — and the unrelenting drag of navigating it. The Friction Economy isn’t about how well you cope. It’s about how much effort your coping requires, and how often that effort is ignored or erased.
So, without further ado, here are 20 signs you might be quietly holding it all together, standing at the edge of a liminal existence as the world pretends the pandemic is over while excess deaths from Covid-19 continue to rise.
20 Signs You’re Still Coviding in the Friction Economy
If your doctor calls you “anxious” but you brought 500,000 peer-reviewed studies to validate your caution, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If your family calls you “distant” but refuses to acknowledge even one requested accommodation, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If you dream more about Plus Lifes and Far UVC units than vacations, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If you’ve RSVP’d to an event with caveats about windows, testing, and group size, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If “return to normal” sounds less like a milestone and more like a mass delusion, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If you scope out playground density like an undercover agent, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If you have made endless calls to advocate for Novavax approval or driven across state lines to get it, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If your HEPA has a nickname and it’s often your plus-one, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If your CO₂ monitor is basically your second phone, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If you interpret amplification curves from test results on a regular basis, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If your kid thinks "ventilation" is normal birthday party vocab, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If you think, speak, and act like school shouldn’t be a viral exposure site, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If words like Zimmi, Flo, Aura, Profi, Metrix, and Enovid pepper your conversations like characters from a fantasy quest, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If you spend more time researching air filters than streaming your favorite shows, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If you’ve timed curbside pickups so well that they greet you like a regular, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If you can keep a mask on a toddler but struggle to keep a friend group intact, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If you have at least one glammed-up/ “dressy” N95 mask, you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If you carry social friction like a second immune system — because anticipating discomfort, pushback, or rejection is now part of staying safe — you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If you get ghosted by institutions — because most schools, clinics, workplaces, and faith spaces vanish the moment you ask for clean air — you might be Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
If you’re tired, not because you’re fragile, but because you’re the one holding the line in so many arenas of life, you’re definitely Still Coviding in the Friction Economy.
But know this: you didn’t opt out.
You built out from the margins, with spreadsheets, solidarity, and science.
While the world pretends the math adds up, you already know it never will.
Your ROI on risk mitigation is existential.
Your reward is too often isolation.
This is not the kind of friction the Stoics hoped we'd embrace.
A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials
-Lucius Anneaeus Seneca
If friction makes gemstones, then we must be a whole quarry by now — resilient, rare, and harder to break than anyone expected.
I don’t have a revised Pandemic Math formula yet — only the hunch that friction-aware spaces are where the healing starts. Not where we escape effort, but where we name it. Make sense of it. And refuse to do it alone.
That’s why I’m hosting our first live monthly call for paid subscribers inside The Room of Return, on Tuesday, June 17 at 8:30 p.m. EDT.
It won’t be a workshop. It will be a circle — a place to gather with other “gemstones”, ask better questions, reflect, and write together.
But before we meet, I’d love to hear from existing paid subscribers and those who plan to join us about what matters most to you.
Click here to share your thoughts. I’ll read each one. And we’ll let them shape where we go next.
“Glammed up N95” cracked me up- yup and yup! Can’t make this upcoming call but would love to in the future. Thank you for your work Rebekah.
This... *If friction makes gemstones, then we must be a whole quarry by now — resilient, rare, and harder to break than anyone expected.*
I just wish the gemstones and quarries weren't scattered.