My Hyacinth Bucket curtain-twitching is
part of a larger shift: envy is back. Yes, it did
go away, or at least die down to the barest
embers. As we navigated pandemic lockdowns,
envy was the least of our worries. And really,
what was there to provoke it? There was no
opportunity for Fomo (fear of missing out)
when socialising was actually illegal; no social
media photobombing of hot holidays when the
whole world was on the red list. No one could
have a cleaner, nanny or personal trainer.
But now, after the past two years of collective
sacrifice, community spirit and being told by
politicians that we’re “all in the same boat”
(apart from them, obviously – they were on
a booze cruise), our lives have fractured off
again. And, I’m beginning to realise, the
Joneses’ boat was probably a yacht all along.
Holiday envy; sex life envy; money envy;
career envy. I am jealous of it all. I am jealousof things that I have never before wanted, and
probably don’t want now, if only I could break
out of my envy cycle to realise it. This is not a
good look, I know, especially considering that
my own life is pretty privileged as it is. But
at least I’m not the only one suddenly racked
with envy – not by many miles.
“If I see one more of her selfies taken in an
aspirational restaurant or swanky hotel room,
we’re going to fall out,” says one woman of a
mutual acquaintance whom she’s just “muted”
on Instagram, so she’ll no longer see her
posts. Both work in the same field, but
the acquaintance’s job involves much more
glamorous travel and VIP events than my
friend’s. Of course, all of that was on hold for
much of the past two years – and without it,
their lives aligned pretty closely. But now that
jetsetting is possible again, my friend has
become acutely aware of the differences intheir roles, and the lack of glamour in her own- something that never bothered her before.
“Two years is a long time, and a great
many people are not in the same life stage
that they were when Covid-19 first hit,” says
psychotherapist and counsellor Lucy Clyde,
who also co-hosts the How to Cope podcast.
“Not only are people starting to compare
themselves with each other again, but also
with their former, pre-pandemic selves. There
can be a perception for some that they have
lost the ability to live as fully as they did
before the pandemic. This may or may not
be the case, but there seems to be a nostalgic
yearning for the person we were before.”
Pre-Covid me was thinner, had fewer
crow’s feet, and still felt she had plenty of time
left on her biological clock. I mourn her, and
at the same time, feel like I haven’t moved on
from her enough: I’ve aged, but I’m not sure
I have enough to show for it. I’m not worse
off than I was before Covid; I’m actually a bit
better off. But I’ve gone from being a woman
in her early thirties to one in her mid-thirties
without ticking off any big life milestones.
“I’m actually very envious of people who
have used the pandemic to reset and rethink
their lives, quit their jobs and have made a
break for freedom,” says one friend. “I wish
I was brave enough to do this – like you
did,” they remind me. I resigned from my
full-time newspaper job two weeks before
the first lockdown – though admittedly, the
spontaneous freelance lifestyle that I’d
planned has been impossible until recently.
A year ago – and a year into the pandemic - an Aviva survey found that three in five
employees were planning career changes
as a reaction to a year of pandemic life. That
number is too high, I think, to truly be a
reflection of people who landed in the wrong
jobs. Surely a good chunk of that 60 per
cent is made up of people who are finding
t was the arrival of a letter from my local council that
tipped me over the edge. My new neighbours had already
committed the unforgivable crimes of simultaneously being
my age and being able to buy a big house from painfully
chic estate agent the Modern House; now, mind-bogglingly,
they were applying to do a multiple-storey extension out the
back. Living in a rented flat (that I’m usually proud of) in
the top of the converted house next door, I’m in no position to
keep up with the Joneses, whose finances, jobs and lives I don’t
know the foggiest about, having met them just the once by our
front gates. But all the same, I was so green over it that you
could have planted me – ideally in their lovely large back
garden, which they’ve just had landscaped.I
OPENING SPREAD: MAKE-UP: JULIA WREN AT CAROL HAYES MANAGEMENT USING CLÉ DE PEAU AND BDELLIUM TOOLS. HAIR: ALEXANDRU SZABO AT CAROL HAYES MANAGEMENT USING RITA HAZAN. THE MODERN HOUSE, GETTY IMAGES. THIS SPREAD: THE MODERN HOUSE, GETTY IMAGES
Valle de la Luna, Atacama Desert, ChilePeak envy Continued from page 29