This is a strange time to be alive. It may not always feel like it, but we are making history right now. Depending on where you are, odds are that you are currently under lockdown, or have spent at least some amount of time under lockdown. It felt weird, staying cooped up at home at first, but over time, this has become the new normal.
Still, when this whole journey first started out, we all had certain expectations of how it would go; and while in certain aspects, like boredom, it has lived up to the hype, each of us has had to deal with things we didn’t think we would have to under lockdown. At first, there was a sense of newness to this entire situation, but as we have settled into a rhythm, the days and nights just blur into each other. The concept of ‘bedtime’ feels more abstract than it has ever been. Is it 2 in the morning? Is it 5 in the evening? Does it matter?
Being able to take a nap pretty much whenever you want, affords a strange sense of freedom in the COVID-19 Era. But it comes at a cost; any sense of order is lost. Sleep, which historically acted as the great reset for a new day, but when the days don’t really matter, neither does sleep. The same household can now be home to a night owl, a devout believer of ‘7-9 hours a night’ and a fan of the mid-day siesta. This obviously, isn’t true for people working from home, or those providing essential services, but for those of us just sitting at home, this is reality.
Overall motivation has taken quite a hit over the last several weeks, to be honest. It’s really difficult to get out of bed and do things, when you know you have nowhere to go. We’ve all been fed a ‘one size fits all’ narrative of what it means to be productive. Get out of bed, clean yourself up, cook, eat, work, exercise, eat some more and so on. It’s rinse and repeat until it’s time to retire and then you’re considered just a burden on society. Just what does it mean to be productive? A person who chooses to stay in bed and reconnect with their family should be considered just as productive as a person who gets out of bed and sits in their home office all day. Heck, why can’t a person just have a mental health day, Netflix from dawn till dusk and go to bed knowing that their day wasn’t a waste? Why isn’t that normalized? The measure of productivity should not be in imbuing value to others and the physical self, but also catering to the needs of the mind. This is a delicate line to walk, but we should at least be afforded the freedom to determine what the line is, instead of being shunted into a box that is labelled either ‘Productive’ or ‘Unproductive’. These are all highly existential considerations, so let’s move on to something a little more low-key.
Our times spent in front of a screen have sky-rocketed since the lockdown kicked in, and while this would be a great time to work your way to Netflix or Prime Video’s library, you tend to find yourself gravitating towards things you’ve watched before. There is something inherently comforting about watching The Office for the 7th time, as opposed to committing yourself to watching something new. These are strange, unfamiliar times for all of us, so it makes sense that we would want to watch something that is a reminder of a time before lockdown. Re-watching stuff has become the safety blanket you never knew you needed to deal with this new world order. That’s what it’s all about at the end of the day isn’t it? Everything that has happened over the last couple of months has pretty much shattered the lives we had built for ourselves in the time before. There will hopefully be a time when things return to normal, but who knows when that will be? So, whether we like it or not, we seek safety and comfort in the strangest of things, and giving that a label just isn’t possible. Things just are in lockdown, it doesn’t have to make sense to you, as long as it does to me.
So what are some of the things you thought you would not have to deal with in lockdown, but do? Share your views in the comments below! Also, does anyone’s thumb and pinky hurt from using their phone a lot more than usual? Asking for a friend.