Lockdown log

The last week’s been rough. Personally, professionally… it’s the most I’ve felt challenged since lockdown began, and when my anxiety was at an all-time high.

It is both odd and oddly-reassuring that even the most devastating and unnerving developments, with time, even out and feel sort of normal, so suddenly you’re not hit with little effervescing pops of horror every time you think of them. When lockdown first kicked off I was determined to ‘use’ that time (time that had been in very, very short supply only a week before) to do ALL THE THINGS I’d been putting off, hadn’t had time for, labouring under some delusion that this would be my time of retreat and productivity.
Reality has not been quite so fruitful.

Yes, I did sign up for a meditation course and yes I have actually done the evening meditation every day for three weeks (which I am really chuffed about ), but work has also been more challenging, demanding, just MORE in every sense since this kicked off.

Obviously retail, like travel or entertainment, is one of the worst-hit sectors overall, so this should come as no surprise, but it is genuinely surprising how exhausting working from home is when things are mega-stressful. For a start you’re dumping your angst all over your dining table, so even when you wind up for the day there it still is, glowering up at you. When you’re tidying up in the morning, there it still is, winking at you to come over and play, again, and again, ad nauseum. Weekends? What is a weekend? It’s also very hard to decline a meeting in a Coronavirus crisis because ‘I’m doing x, y or z’ no longer stands. ‘I think I might be on the cusp of a mental health crisis’ is closer to the truth, but is also a weird one to say to colleagues.

It’s also very hard to decline a meeting in a pandemic because ‘I’m doing x or y’ no longer stands.

I miss working out. I miss the fucking gym more than anything else, because that’s where I sweat out all that storminess that’s now clouding up my living room. I’m doing the Zoom classes (and an insanely grateful for them) but it is obviously not the same. So there was a week in the middle where I gave in to the self-pity and stress and cried (and cried, and cried, and cried) and then I stopped weeping and swapped that activity out for ice cream-eating, and pizza-ordering (yes I’m fucking having food delivered guys, fucking sue me). Which meant that I felt like seven shades of hell. Now I’m somewhere in the middle. Getting shit done. Not putting quite as much shit in my mouth. Feeling less shitty overall. A good result for this week.

Anyway, there’s enough memes and inspiring accounts out there that you don’t need me to tell you that you don’t need to learn a language, or become ripped to an inch of your life, or launch a business (oh god please don’t) in lockdown, and that it’s okay to just be quiet, and reassess what your life and consumption and habits had become, or just enjoy your family or dogs, or just want to kill whoever you’re cohabiting with… all okay kids.

I’ve given myself a lot of grief (these last six weeks, these last years, my entire life) for not being enough or doing enough and if I take nothing out of lockdown than to stop doing that, I’ll be grateful.

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