Do you really need to make most of this downtime?
Sliding from Sunday. Moving into Monday.
But to be honest, most of the times I don’t even remember what day of the week it is anymore.
Everything seems to have slowed down, paused, brought to a halt. It’s almost as if we were speeding down a highway and abruptly hit the brakes to save ourselves from hitting something bad.
And here we are, stuck in the car that’s refusing to move, leaving us unable to open the door. And it’s not just us. It’s all the cars on the road, on all the roads in the city, in all the cities and all the countries across the world.
And what do we miss the most while being stuck in this proverbial car? Family, friends, colleagues, work, gym, malls, restaurants? It’s all of this and so much more, isn’t it?
It’s the feeling of waking up every morning with a motivation to do something new, tick off your to-do list, bag a new client or close a sale. It’s the feeling of standing on the roadside drinking a cup of karak with your friends while sharing some gossip from the day. It’s the feeling of walking into a store and having a friendly conversation with the shopper next to you, instead of hating them to have picked up the last packet your favorite bread. It’s the feeling of going to bed at night knowing you have to wake up early the next day and make a difference.
These and so much more, there are things we miss that cannot even be explained through words. So I’ll share a very simple one.
Among all the things I miss (the list is endless), one of them is going to restaurants and events with my camera and clicking away to glory. So in order to fight the blues, I keep working towards creating opportunities within my space to use the camera more and more efficiently. So whether it’s taking recipe videos or composing and styling photos or trying out different editing methods, I feel honing my skills in one area helps me combat the void in other areas of my life, even if it only lasts a few minutes before the anxiety takes over again and sends me down a spiral of self-doubt, ultimately leading to lethargy.
Remember, I try different things with my camera because it helps me deal with the situation. But that doesn’t mean I’m on it 24×7. Tbh, I need to push myself for a day or two before finally managing to work on something for 30 mins.
Now, before you start judging me, I’m not here to tell you how to make the most of your time or how you should learn a new skill. Instead, what I’m trying to say is, you’re not obliged to live up to being great and start pushing yourself to do something under the false pressure of “making the most” of this downtime. It’s okay if you’re not cooking like a masterchef, learning how to tiktok, or working out like a gym rat. It’s OKAY.
Because while social media may lead you to think otherwise, most of us are just taking one day or one hour at a time and barely managing to hold ourselves together.
It’s your responsibility towards your country and its residents to #stayhome during this lockdown and help flatten the curve, but it’s also your responsibility to take care of yourself while you’re cocooned in your shell.
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