Date: I have no idea
No. of days in lockdown: I lost count after day 2.
It’s apparently April now? Oh must of missed that memo. There isn’t days of the week anymore… just night and day. We are settling in to this haze of what is apparently the new normal but is anyone else getting a little tired of hearing ‘it’s a strange time isn’t it?’. Its like we’ve ran out of other things to talk about, in fact what did we talk about before Covid_19? Oh yeah… Brexit…
But it IS a strange time isn’t it? I come from a background of creatives, all my friends are self-employed, and we’ve all been raised with that drive to keep hustling, think on your feet, adapt and stay on that daily grind. But suddenly, for the first time of our lives, many of us have been told to stop. Contrary to the years of training, dedication, hard work, life seems to have been put on pause, with all the work that was planned for Spring/Summer suddenly no more.
Whilst coming to terms with this, we are then bombarded on social media with fitness challenges, reasons to learn new skills, and advice on how to keep a routine, all to keep us ‘busy’. I don’t know about you but I’ve been busy for as long as I can remember. In the past two weeks I’ve seen so much of people naturally waking up early, preparing a vitamin-boosting smoothie bowl, after working out with The Body Coach, before then going out for their 1-hour government allowed exercise of the day, and that’s all before 10am! I don’t know about you, but most days I’ve been lucky to even force my eyelids open before then.
And don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with this. In fact, I do think it is absolutely incredible the shear amount of creatives and self-employed people who have adapted to share their skills online, providing free classes, when ironically, they have been some of those most affected financially. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t taken the opportunity to practice with teachers I very rarely get to meet, heck I don’t get a lot of time to practice normally!
The point I want to make is that some people will thrive off these fitness challenges and will relish in this new found time to learn how to sew, or bake till their hearts content. However I wanted to offer a different perspective and remove the guilt from taking a break and doing literally nothing. Rather than continuing to move through life at the same 100mph pace we were pre-Covid_19, we have been given permission to slow down and take a breath. We have been given permission to stay in bed until 1pm on a Tuesday, we have actually been instructed to stay home and binge watch all the Harry Potter films. To my fellow creatives, its ok if you don’t ‘feel’ creative right now, and please don’t put too much pressure on yourself if you ‘feel’ as though you’ve got nothing to offer online right now. Its ok. Not everything has to be done in a ‘productive’ manner.
I’m looking at this time as if I’ve entered Maintenance Mode. Taking each day as it comes; some days I want to practice, others I don’t. Some days I crave the outdoors, and other times I just want to stay in bed and hibernate. In Week 1, I frantically rushed around trying creating a makeshift studio space in my spare room in order to take my small business online. In Week 2, I was lazy, literally doing the bare minimum. As we head into Week 3, I feel slightly more energised but who knows how long that will last. I’m taking this time to really listen to my intuition and observe how I feel every day.
Yoga has kept me going, the fact I can still share and teach others virtually has saved me from self-destruction, but aside from this rather than ensuring I stick to a routine or focus on my fitness, I just want to simply maintain a healthy balance, and that will mean different things to different people. So I’m here to tell you that however you are spending your time in isolation, you’re doing great.
So continue to stay home, do what you can. Do more of what you want, rather than doing what you think you need to do. Do anything you can to just simply maintain, whatever that means for you.
Stay home, stay healthy, stay safe. x