I was up to my chest in the bath water, listening to the sound of soapy suds coming out. I had timed it so that when the clock struck midnight – and I turned 40 – I would soak in a bubble bath on the coast of Algeria. I needed a stylish backdrop as I stared my future in the face.
I had prayed in a single night in a large hilltop property with arches and colorful tiles.
Palm trees rustled outside my window and lights twinkled over the Bay of Algiers. The hotel was built in a Moorish Revival style in the late 19th century. I was used to more spartan sleeping arrangements, having spent much of my 30s as a freelance journalist.
For the past few years, I would work at a desk and on autopilot. It began at some point during those turbulent and breathless pandemic years. A therapist would determine my numbness when my father’s heart suddenly stopped in 2020.
Coping with grief while working at a desk
In those loathsome days of Covid, no one wanted to gather in groups, least of all to hug sobbing, tearful mourners. So we never had a funeral.
I flew to California, where my father spent his last years, and gathered with my brothers, hoping to do something symbolic, like collect rocks on the beach or shout in the surf. But a Trump rally swept through the city that day, and the sky glowed apocalyptic orange from the wildfires. We gave up our imagined rituals of grief. Eating fish tacos in a socially distanced circle would suffice.
But illness had already set in before that shocking loss. Life had become predictable and bland, thickening around the middle like an aging waistline.
Overwork had something to do with it. I had spent carefree years bouncing around Kyrgyzstan and Lebanon, Sri Lanka and Mexico, India and Armenia. Then, in my mid-30s, I landed a full-time desk job.
“Living death,” that’s what my philosopher-guitarist father called office work. No surprise. Every day felt the same. The role itself – designing photographic exhibitions and documenting peace initiatives – was often fascinating and I welcomed the break from financial uncertainty.
But sitting under fluorescent lights all day made me feel like a caged panther. Or maybe a cyborg. I was not prepared for the corporate culture.
Months later, a colleague’s mother died. “Condolences,” I wrote as the subject of an Outlook email, though I wanted to destroy our bedroom decor and scream in utter despair.
Then, my dad died, and the colleague just hit reply and added her message of sympathy. How grim our bloodless exchange felt. Would I spend the rest of my life like this, marking traumatic milestones with Microsoft Office notifications?
The sadness was overwhelming, but productivity required putting on a happy face at work. I soldiered on joylessly. Unloading four dozen e-mails a day became a grim escape—a way of not thinking, a way of protecting myself from new experiences, and thus further loss. To no one’s surprise, the burning followed.
Author’s view from the hotel overlooking the Bay of Algiers Ariel Sophia Bardi
Freelancing helped me feel free again
I had to start living again. It meant saving parts of myself that I had abandoned in my race to adulthood, including the roving writer inside me. When a magazine offered me an assignment in Algeria, I jumped at the chance. This would be my first solo reporting trip in four years.
Can I still navigate alone in unknown cities or foreigners? Fortunately, after a few days in Oran and Algiers, muscle memory took over.
In the name of research, I began hitting the red-lit clubs where cabaret singers rattle off risqué Arabic lyrics to whiskey-spattered crowds. One night, around 2 a.m., I looked up through the smokestacks at the man crooning into the microphone, ears ringing, and thought, “This is exactly where I want to be.”
On the eve of my milestone birthday, thinking about my legs stretched out over the tiled bathtub in my hotel suite, I thought about how the singers rai – an Algerian form popular music – were models of living courageously. Rai singers were even killed to make music.
I make no comparison between their incredible bravery and my infinitely lighter risks, which soon involved a return to freelancing. But when you consider the women of previous generations whose lives were narrowly bounded between marriage and motherhood, the idea of living according to one’s mind starts to feel pretty radical.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting a more conventional path or a less messy career. But on the cusp of middle age, what I still craved was the thrill of a blank page.