I remind myself every day how fortunate I am as regards the pandemic. I’m able to work from home. I have my chap for company. My health has been good. I have enough to eat. I have an excellent internet connection. I’m not trying to homeschool children.
But there is no doubt it can get lonely. And the daily round lacks variety. I’m not much of a TV watcher but find my consumption has shrunk. I had to stop watching in the evening because my dreams had become so disturbing. So now I might watch some at lunchtime maybe 3 or 4 times a week.
A weekly Zoom with the family is nice but sometimes we scrabble around for topics because we’re not doing anything different. Who would have guessed that the weekly phone call home would return in 2021?
And it’s occurred to me that in a small way this is a taste of life in the past. Maybe on a farm or in a hamlet. Only obviously for me right now minus the manual labour and possibility of starving to death. Life where the only people you see are those you live with. You sometimes see neighbours in the distance so you know that they’re still alive.
Small changes in routine are exciting and novel. But also strangely alarming. A 10 minutes walk to collect a bag of vegetables once a week seems like a highlight.
Birthdays are both special and nothing really different. it’s the people that make them mean something.
The same clothes over and over again. Hair now so long and pinned into place.
It’s not the same but sometimes I get a taste of the isolation. The struggle to find meaning and keep going. The urge to accept whatever the day brings because what else is there?