In some ways, we’ve been lucky these past few weeks as we’ve navigated quarantine, but these past few days, I’ve really felt the “quarantine monotony” set in. A great Lifehacker article today talked about how weeks felt like they were themed. And I thought that was so, so true. For us, it’s been:
- Week 1: So grateful to be home and in our own bed, even though the apartment wasn’t set up for us at all and we had a ton to do to make it feel like home again. Feeling happy to be isolated because it meant recovering from all the camps and catching up on sleep.
- Week 2: Weirdly busy. Getting furniture in place, writing a ton of new content, and prepping for a new course I was going to teach. Still self-isolating, but since it was still recovery mode for training, it wasn’t so bad. Pull-ups.
- Week 3: Even more productiveOut of isolation and able to actually get the apartment set up the way I wanted it to, knocking most of the major projects off the to-do list. Starting to miss seeing people. (Still writing + teaching.) Baking, thanks to the fact that I could now grocery shop again. Started our mini-garden. Nailed 10 pull-ups, unlocked achievement.
- Week 4: Somehow a social whirlwind? All the Zoom meetings with friends—fantastic! Felt a little harder to push through work, but do-able. Ditto training.
- Week 5: I feel like this week is where it’s really started to settle. The big house projects are knocked off, the friends we don’t see much have been contacted and Zoomed, and without weekend plans to go anywhere, it’s suddenly hit that every day is just like the other. Which, for someone who hasn’t stayed in the same spot for more than a couple weeks at a time for a decade… It’s a weird feeling.
It’s not boredom—I still have plenty of stuff that I would like to do, i.e. get my cabinets painted, or re-watch 30 Rock for the billionth time. It’s the things I need to do that are feeling more like a struggle, like training + my work to-do lists.
I’ve seen a lot of jokes about WTF we’re all going to do once all of our drawers are organized, and yep, that’s me right now. What do we do when all the projects are done, and our lives are optimized for… more sitting? I know this is not just me. The struggle against the new monotony of daily activity blending so much that it’s almost impossible to know/care when the weekend is feels heavy. (And yes, I fully realize how lucky we are that we can stay home, et cetera. Just wanted to put that out there.)
The feeling I want to reclaim more than anything is the feeling of excitement and anticipation. I keep listening to the same visualization meditation and I realized that I can’t use this one anymore because at the moment, the future feels so nebulous that it’s impossible to imagine/visualize/manifest/project WTF we want in 6 months, let alone 5 years. (Or maybe the 5 year one is easier?)
What I’m trying to remind myself right now, though, is that monotony isn’t so bad.
Sure, it’s a departure from what I’m used to, which is why it feels so strange, but when we are on the move, this is what I’ve been craving. There has never been a better time for me to hone routines and focus on making them as optimal as possible.
I don’t have a whole lot of answers here, but what I have realized in all of the push through the monotonous moments has been that getting in my training—whether it’s teaching yoga, getting out on a run or riding the rollers inside—makes a huge difference to my mood for the rest of the day. Having a training plan in place despite no races on the calendar, having a coach who I’m accountable to… These things are making the day to day feel more like we’re moving forward, not stuck in place.
We’ve also moved up our timetable on a big project we’ve had in the works since December, because frankly, we needed something big to continue to be excited about. Keep an eye on this site in the next week (and get subscribed to the newsletter so you don’t miss out!)!
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