Lockdown Routines

I opened my eyes the other morning in the semi dark to another day of tedium.  Its getting to the point where I have to check the calendar to see what day it is, one day is much like the next.  I don’t even bother with an alarm anymore; I know I’ll be awake by 8am or thereabouts and I have nothing really to get up for anyway.  Its dark when I get up, it makes it so hard to drag myself out of bed.  I know there are many people for whom this doesn’t make sense, they have jobs, they set an alarm, get up go to work, even if that’s just to the desk set up in their spare rooms, they have kids to get ready for school, or home-school at least.  But for many hundreds of thousands of us on furlough or prevented from working by law, the days all, merge into one and its easy to just get lost in it all.

“The Real World”

Before all of this, in what we now call “the real world” I had a routine, a purpose, each day was different.  Monday was a day off, so food shopping, Tuesday into work to help people, Wednesday, networking and admin, Thursday, Friday Saturday into work and Sunday a day outside walking and enjoying the outdoors.  Now its different.  Monday, get up and do nothing, Tuesday, get up and do nothing, Wednesday, get up and do nothing, Friday, do nothing, wait did I miss a day?  What comes after Wednesday, is it Saturday?  There’s one named after an avenger, is it Hulkday?  Who knows anymore?  In this parallel universe we seem to have slipped into, nothing makes sense, there’s no routine, there’s no purpose, you get up at some point you eat, you sleep, there’s some TV but its recorded or on a streaming service so even that doesn’t tell you what time it is.  This is tedious.

Change

You have to change; you have to force the change because it doesn’t come naturally.  As humans we are naturally averse to changes, we like routine and stability, we can’t cope well when things are different because that’s outside our comfort zone.  But also, as humans, we are uniquely designed to adapt to mould ourselves to suit new circumstances.  Ever since the first creature crawled out of the primordial soup and thought, I know, I’ll be different today, we have been changing and adapting and becoming something new.  So in amongst all this it’s time to change.

Yesterday, I don’t remember which day that was, I decided its time to build a routine, and dear readers I thought I should share my process with you so you can copy me, or ignore me, or ridicule me, anything you like.  I made a list of what I had to do, cleaning, washing, shopping etc, then a list of events that I had booked onto, network meetings, zoom meetings with friends, lives and webinars I wanted to watch, and then a list of things I like doing, walking, baking (I know, I was surprised that found its way onto my list too), reading, watching movies etc. 

Next, I split those out throughout the week.  Obviously, some things were fixed, like the network meetings, but the rest I just split so that I had a thing I needed to do, a thing I wanted to do and an event every day.  That way its easier to deal with the chores if they are surrounded by nice things, easy right?  Plus, with a different thing planned for each day it makes it easier to remember which day of the week it is, even if I’ve renamed them, shopping day, baking day, networking day and so on, who needs those traditional names for days anyway, what do they even mean?

A purpose

So now I have a purpose, now I have something to do every day.  The weird dystopian world we live in seems a little easier to deal with.  I even scheduled a movie night once a week and that went well yesterday.  Little tip for you if you don’t know what to watch, I asked on social media for some recommendations, added them to one of those clever wheel things on the internet that help you choose something randomly, and I ended up with Miss Potter, which was surprisingly good.  I felt a weird sense of excitement and anticipation at what the magic wheel would offer me to watch, little things amuse me these days. Here’s a link to a wheel thing in case you dont know what I’m talking about. 

I’m only on day two of my new schedule but so far it seems great, we’ll see if that continues as the weeks go by.  Obviously, I have no idea how long my furlough will last, or when I will be able to get back to work, it could be weeks it could be months. But however long it is I think I can get through it; I think I can survive.  I’m still working on a few new projects too and I’ve added those into my schedule, so look out for a podcast coming soon and follow my new Instagram account so you can see where I’m off to, although currently its just pictures of the forest at the end of the road, because, well, lockdown, you know.

I hope that might have helped or inspired some of you, my loyal followers, if not at least you got to waste a few minutes reading my ramblings once more.

Until next time…

S ?