quarantine diary #3

Here's a mood board of the kinda energy I've been feeling today.

Eclectic, agreed. But also sort of apt. I am evidently feeling a lot of passive anger. Yikes.

Today was a bleak one; I couldn't edit enough words out of my essay, had a sad bagel for tea, wanted a g&t but had no t, wanted a run but (of course) couldn't leave my room. It's felt really quite interminable, looking at the same seven thousand words, trying to work out how to rework and reshape and just do anything that will cut it down. I've basically eating the same thing for 6 days, done pretty much the same workout at the same time, taken the same (un)ironic selfies, and listened to the same 'get me out of here' playlist.

I will stop whining. 

It's a very informative process, let me tell you that. Having the time to do silly things like make a ring dish or paint a tin can is blissful and wonderfully defiant of the demands of capitalism. My gold paint arrived, and I've wanted to cover everything in my room. I also enjoyed putting up my postcards, taking them down, readjusting them. 

It's just a bit monotonous, which obviously it would be.

I haven't had any grand realisations about myself, other than I can go days without going outside, the thought of which used to make me feel sick. So I guess that's good. I also have realised I need constant affirmation, which obviously is hard to receive when your friends are together and you're apart, and the silence makes you think the world hates you. 

What hit today was the sense that, even when my iso is over, and I can go for walks and see friends and go to libraries, I'm still not free. (from a place of inherent entire privilege) my emotions about this pandemic come and go in waves. Sometimes I feel I have made peace with it. That the change has gone on for so long, I can't remember the world without it. New normal and all that.

And then sometimes (i.e. today) I feel angry and depressed and it feels relentless. That this has been going on for so long and our liberties have been so radically curtailed. That I might hand in this essay on Friday and I might be able to leave my room, but what does that really mean. I still can't go to the pub or meet with more than one person outside for anything other than exercise, or even buy a copy of Frankie magazine that for some, bizarre reason, I am craving. And, I think, you become desensitised to it. Not desensitised so much to the stats, they are shocking regardless of how often you hear them. But desensitised to the enormity of the other problems going on in the world. How has this all culminated in the most perfect storm? As I got ready this morning, I listened this episode of TyskySour (a really, really good - non affiliated - news podcast). One of the reporters said 'the apocalypse is multifaceted', and man this sure did hit home. How can we jump from the undermining of democracy in the highest echelons of power, to a virulent pandemic, in a matter of seconds, and keep on doing our daily 'ting? 

Man!

So that's where we are at, on day five of solitude. 

A MHN quote to soothe the soul:

Let July be July.

Let August be August. 

And let yourself 

Just be

even in

the uncertainty.

You don't have to fix everything.

You don't have to solve everything.

You can still find peace

and grow

in the wild of changing things.

g'night.

(all pics can be found here)