LIFE IN LOCK DOWN - ROUTINE

When lock down first begin I read an article that had been written by somebody who had spent a lot of time on a submarine. I can't for the life of me remember where I read this or even who had written it but it was really interesting. Basically it was saying that to survive being confined in isolation in a small space for a number of weeks one had to stick to a routine. Eg meal times at a certain time etc. I think this was because the days become very samey and if you have a routine then you work towards what is happening at a certain time. You just take one day at a time and focus on what is only a few hours ahead, not what is going to happen weeks or months in the future.

I didn't actually think I had any routine to my life until I started to think about what I was going to write in this post.

I own a dog and live in a flat and for that I am very lucky. It means that I have an essential reason to go out twice a day. Every morning after I've showered and dressed I take the dog for a walk and then return home and have breakfast. At some point during the afternoon I take the dog for another walk. And then just before bedtime I'll take her out again for a before bedtime wee. My whole life at the moment seems to be focused around my dog and I truly believe if I didn't have her there might be days that I didn't even bother to get dressed or even get out of bed.

Apart from the dog there is very little in my life that I actually need to do. I go shopping on a Wednesday morning for an old lady and do my own weekly shop at the same time. This has become the highlight of my week. I get to go to a supermarket in the car and then off I go to deliver the shopping to my old lady. I place the shopping bags on her doorstep and then stand back and have a social distancing chat with her. Who would have thought that chatting to a lady in her late 80s for 10 mins would have been the most exciting thing I have to look forward to every week. But it is and I know she likes chatting to me too. It's the only real life interaction both of us have had with anyone since lock down began.

The other thing that I do each week is go out to do the 'clap' at 8pm every Thursday evening. I've never missed a week because I feel it is important to show the NHS and frontline workers how important they are in this crisis. I remember the first time we did this. There I was standing on my balcony in the dark, thinking it was a one off show of solidarity and now we've been clapping for weeks. And it doesn't get dark until about 10pm.

And those things, are pretty much the only routine I have in my life at the moment.

When lock down first started I was full of good intentions to do online fitness classes and certainly for a week; every day at 10am I got changed into my fitness gear and danced around the living room. That came to an abrupt end when it was sunny one morning and I decided to sit outside on the balcony and make the most of the nice weather. Somehow I never got back into the routine of my 10am online fitness classes.

It's the same with all the jobs I was going to do. At the start of lock down I wrote myself a little time table which involved doing a 'job' after my fitness class. It might have been tidying out my wardrobe, or cleaning out the cupboard under the sink, etc. In all fairness to myself, after almost 8 weeks in lock down, I have completed most of these tasks but I certainly haven't stuck to my timetable of when I did them. I've just done them when I've managed to tear myself away from the daytime TV which I seem to be watching all the time.

Ditto the online course that I signed up to do. What better time to learn a new skill then when one is confined to isolation in lock down. Full of enthusiasm I thought I could spend 2-3 hours a day working on this. Hmmmm.................. having not studied for more years than I care to remember, I underestimated the amount of commitment this would take. And at the end of the day I don't actually need any more qualifications. It's not like I'm going to begin a new career at my age. So yes, I'm doing the course and I'm actually about two thirds of the way through it now. But, I'm certainly not studying for 2-3 hours a day and I'm not sticking to a set time when I do it. I just do it when I feel motivated, which actually isn't that often.

I'm sure that sticking to a routine is probably is a good thing to do. I have a single friend who is also 'home alone' and she has certain things that she does on certain days and she doesn't deviate from her routine. Ie, every Monday she does a shop, every Thursday she phones her friends for a catch up, every Wednesday she does her cleaning. She sticks to this routine and woe betide anyone who phones on her cleaning day. She hates not being able to work to her routine and to be honest she seems to be coping a lot better than I am.

However, as I stated above because I have a dog, I pretty much have some routine in my life every day. During the first two to three weeks of lock down I felt incredibly guilty that I wasn't achieving more. Now I don't really care. I've developed a new kind of normal and if that means sitting around watching about 50% more TV than I normally do then so be it.

Lock down isn't going to last for ever, though I do sometimes worry that once this is all over I won't have any motivation left. Will I want to go back to my fitness club? Will I want to go shopping when it really isn't essential? Will I want to put make up on? Apparently it takes three weeks to change a habit. We've now been in lock down for almost 8 weeks. Personally I don't think our lives are ever going to go back to how they were before Covid-19.

…...................And although I'm ashamed to say it...................... I'm getting a bit worried that by becoming a 'lazy slob' that doesn't really do very much all day, then this has become the norm in my life and once we do get back to normal (whatever normal may be) I won't be motivated enough to get out of my 'slobbish mode' and back into my so called normal routine.

See you all tomorrow.

Toodles