How I adapted to lockdown

In a way, I was made for a lockdown - I'm chubby, so I can last ages even if there were a food shortage, I worked from home at the time, and I enjoy my own company. I could keep myself entertained for endless hours without getting bored that rarely even involved masturbation.

When this whole lockdown thing was announced, although it escalated quite quickly, I was prepared - I had organised a lovely desk and had made a pretty decent space for myself to work and keep myself occupied; I had a checklist of things to do that I could fill my time with and I promised myself and others that we would stay in contact. 

I wanted this time to be productive. I wanted to write my own work again. I wanted to start and finish new projects and learn new skills. The emphasis here is on wanted.

This whole pandemic thing was uncharted territory, with no set path for how this will work out and, in my case, and I'm sure many others. Not that it is necessarily 100% over yet, but as the world slowly begins to open up as if the danger is completely gone, I have decided to look back on my time and reflect on how I dealt with it.

After the first few weeks of the pandemic, I was stuck in this weird paralysis state worrying about work and how I'll have to adapt my plans or the tenuous nature of all non-familial relationships. 

Usually, I would have had some idea of where I'd want to go, and the way things are now, it's impossible to know where that will bring us. Some days I would feel optimistic, and then I would feel bombarded with news that quashed it completely. 

And I didn't even want to think about the possibility of anyone dying. 

And at the same time, I knew I had extra time in my day that I could use wisely, but for ages, I found that I had been staring into space more than usual. 

I became irritated with talking on the phone, doing completely normal household tasks, and even talking with the housemates I had at the time. I found it difficult to motivate myself to do everyday things like empty the dishwasher or shave my pits. I mean, I'd wear a full face of make-up and a ball gown, but you bet your bottom dollar I'd been wearing no knickers for two days because I couldn't be arsed GOING DOWNSTAIRS to put on a wash. I went full-on hermit but wasn't initially didn't have the productivity to show for it.

Not that I think anyone should particularly care about my experience of lockdown, but I'm still going to write about it anyway because it might make me feel a bit better. I know that my experience could have been way worse and was by no means unique.

As everything opens up again, I've started to realise that even the least sociable of us need interactions to motivate and inspire us. We need to keep moving to avoid stagnating.

It wasn't until I moved to live on my own during the early stages of the virus that myself and my kid had the freedom and space to interact properly and my motivation returned.

Eventually, I knew I had to take action. The majority of my writing work had been centered around the hospitality industry, which had been destroyed here in Ireland. It had nearly completely dried up within three months of the pandemic hitting. So I decided to try to motivate myself and adapt.

I had to trick myself into taking on tiny goals and doing weird little activities to get my creativity back. I concluded that the goal for however long this may be is to function, or at least try to do as best I can. Productivity is overrated anyway, and seriously, why are so many of us so concerned with being productive during a fucking stressful pandemic?!

So before it goes crazy gloomy and dark, here is a list of a few of the things that I did to feel a slight sense of accomplishment. 

In turn, I could then write about them - not very interesting, but still, and then try to work some of them into my routine from now on.

1: Get rid of all that hard skin on your feet.

Scrape all bullshit hard skin from your soles with a razor blade until you have a crazy pile of human skin in your room. Keep going like you're grating a load of parmesan. 

Keep going… 

That'll make them lovely and soft… 

Oh, shit, now you're bleeding… 

Oh fuck…

2: Hide a scary doll around the house to attempt to frighten your child.

Make it a game. For the record, I've owned this doll for years but don't know where it came from.

Hopefully, scare the shit out of him to keep morale up.

I mean, this isn't cruel. Is it? It's just funny?

3: I became obsessed with spreadsheets.

Many of us are more on a budget these days, and when you feel out of control, this is the ultimate way to plan every aspect of your life. List every food item, price it online, create formulas to do the sums. List everything.

And then ignore said lists when it comes to food shopping and spending. But it's cool. You felt in control for a minute.

4: Attempt to infiltrate 5G groups.

Why wouldn't you do this? I've been working on this but not getting anywhere. I mean, I was accepted, but my posts don't get approved - so I think my attempts at trolling weren't subtle enough:

'What crystals should I put in the router to mitigate the 5G rays?'

I mean, it's hard not to laugh at people who think crystals can stop 5G radiation if you put them in their router while posting on the internet and talking about the lack of birds in their area.

Honestly, I wasn't there to fight, to laugh.

How can you not laugh at these absolute farts?

5: Buy stocks and shares online.

I added the amount of money that I would normally spend on drinking for two weeks (because I had not been drinking) to my newly opened account and started buying things. Honestly, I had no clue what I was doing but did I make a spreadsheet about it? You bet I did.

This is a habit that I have kept on, and the more I researched and learned, the more sense it made to me to invest. Planning for the future can be awesome.

6: Get good at contouring.

Contouring is simple. Just put brown and white all over your face. You can look as good as me.

(Contouring is simple, photo by me, of me)To be fair, with all this extra time, my eyeliner skills have improved:

(Me unfiltered with decent eyeliner)7: Cook more and take a picture of everything that you've cooked so you can prove that you can cook -  you just didn't before.

I never post pictures of food, but now I like to document everything I've cooked because if you don't take a picture of what you've cooked, have you even cooked it?

(All dishes and photos by me)Add a salad to the food to make it hilarious, because as all women know, salad is hilarious.

This is a skill that I have brought with me, and now I cook a little more regularly than I did.

8: Sell pictures of your feet to online pervs

You don't think I shaved all the hard skin off my feet for no reason? Might as well put them to good use, and if some harmless perv wants to pay for pictures of my feet, who am I to argue?

9: Artsy stuff

Sometimes I wondered if I should bother as I'd not been doing it as much as I should, but maaaaaannn artsy stuff relaxed the shit out of me.

At the same time, most of the stuff I drew looked either slightly wrong or as the creation of a demented woman in quarantine. 

I'll get better. 

Just give it time. 

And it's something that I still enjoy doing.

(All my photos and the result of boredom)So over lockdown, I amused myself with silly little goals, which eventually brought me back to myself. I taught myself to be creative, have fun, plan my finances and keep laughing. The anxiety subsided eventually, and as we started going back to a somewhat 'normal' life (like nothing weird happened), I've decided to keep these little projects on (well, clearly not the contouring). 

This, in turn, taught me how to adapt, and eventually, I went into writing full time on a freelance basis, as I had widened my net. 

And you know why?

That's because generally people are strong and mostly learn how to adapt, no matter how hard that transition may be. The ones that had the issues adjusting to these changes were the ones that had the most difficult times, and I sure as shit was not going to be one of them.