Read the rest of my Corona Lockdown diaries here.
It’s been a month now since Coronavirus first really entered my consciousness, and three weeks since the kids came home from school and didn’t go back in. I thought it was probably time for another little Coronavirus lockdown update, if for no other reason than to remind me of what’s been going on when I look back at this in years to come.
(When I say what’s been going on, I mean in my own house*).
It’s currently the Easter holidays.
Not that you’d know it, as our ‘routine’ such as it is hasn’t changed really.
As predicted, homeschooling/infinite patience isn’t my forte, so my husband has taken that on for what it’s worth – but we aren’t even pretending to try this week.
Our enthusiasm for PE with Joe Wicks waned once the clock change happened and getting up and being energetic for 9am was just punishing ourselves.
We’ve all promised that we will start up again once the holidays are over – and I know it is better for us to begin the day doing some kind of physical activity – but whether we do that or just continue to be lazy and eat crap, drink too much and put on a tonne of weight… I’d say it’s probably about 50/50 at this point. Maybe more like 70/30 and not in Joe’s favour.
As Easter holidays go, by a lot of measures it’s been perfect.
Compared to previous drizzly years there has so far been nothing but excellent weather and the kids are happy playing in the garden (when they aren’t screaming at each other, obviously).
We are fortunate to have a decent-sized garden and a paddling pool, a freezer stocked with ice creams, and a local drinks delivery man who brings alcohol to the doorstep.
Yesterday, I sunbathed, finished a book and had a cider in the garden. It wasn’t a bad day really.
Today though, I’m really struggling again.
Even though in a coronavirus-free parallel dimension we would probably be doing very much the same with our Easter holidays, with no end to the pandemic – has it peaked? I hope so, but I’m doubtful – in sight I just can’t shift my bad mood. Despite being the first to say it’s OK to be pissed off and upset at the moment, I’m really finding it hard to just take my own advice and honestly, I’m annoying myself.
I’m hormonal (if pubs and sending your husband to the shop just to buy chocolate at 9pm are cancelled then periods should definitely be fucking cancelled too), I am missing laughing with my friends, afternoons spent in the pub garden, lunches I don’t have to cook myself or clean up after. I’m missing being busy with work and going to gym classes and swimming and mooching round the shops on my own.
On my own. God, I miss that.
I’m really missing alone time.
I never got it that much as my husband has always worked from home, and even when I got it I didn’t even do much with it, but I just really miss having the house to myself very occasionally.
Now it’s a family walk each day and the occasional hour spent sitting in the shed pretending to work when nothing much is actually coming in.
I love my family of course, but they’re just so THERE all the time and sometimes I just like to sit in silence, doing nothing with nobody there – or perhaps watching TV with tea and Jaffa Cakes.
First-world problems, in the scheme of things, but struggling is struggling.
There is no real conclusion to this, no advice wanted or offered, definitely no sympathy sought.
I’m just writing it down because it’s what I do, and I think maybe if I do, then maybe others who might be feeling the same might just recognise that they’re not alone.
Maybe.
I just wish I knew when it would end.
What are you doing to make sure you look after your mental health during lockdown?
*As far as world- and UK-wide events are concerned, it makes for massively depressing reading so I’d rather not dwell on it; a catalogue of incompetence, disregard and mismanagement which has lead to record-breaking levels of deaths here in the UK over the past few days, and a lot of people who appear to be suffering from Stockholm-syndrome who are bizarrely all over social media praising the orchestrators of our collective destruction. Clap for Boris? I’d rather get the actual clap, thanks though.
(While you’re here, give this a watch. It’ll get in your brain).