This strange way of life.

I have found the weeks going by like I am living through a cycle. There is very little to break up each day, let alone each weekend. I know that this is a temporary lifestyle for me. I know that very soon there will be new places to go, new people to meet. I have realised that these are the fundamentals for feeling renewed and alive. 

When this pandemic is over, in whichever way it will end, I don't think I am going to sit still for very long ever again. I enjoy puttering about the house, being quiet and still for a few hours, taking in a slower pace of life. But when it is enforced, when it is for the sake of everyone's health to reduce your entire life to a small bubble of places and people, it is like living in some version of Groundhog Day, The Truman Show and somebody playing The Sims all mixed into one. 

I am surprised every time the night comes along because it felt like no time at all. I get confused as to what happened (not a lot) on which days and how much time has passed since the week began. My heart sinks when I'm reminded how many weeks and days and hours have been and gone since lockdown began in March. 

Even so, I have very little to complain about. I have a job, I have a beautiful home, I have a close family who I only want to kill about once a week. I have my garden, I have the local common to meet friends at and drink pints from the pub, I have my neighbours who have plied me with wine every time I knock on their door on a Thursday or Friday evening, and their children who have spent Saturday mornings with me doing crafts. All of these things in themselves have become part of the routine. The light relief, the escapism itself, has been swallowed into the repetitiveness of our current daily lives. This is not to say that I don't love all of these things, that I am not deeply grateful, but when I imagined being twenty-two, so young and carefree, this way of life was not in the picture. 

I suppose this is a way of airing my grievances, of which there are very few legitimate complaints, but I am also still surprised when I think about what we are living through. Every single person around the world has had their lives changed in some way, big or small, at pretty much the same time because of a shared human problem. It feels enormous and strange and scary and almost inconceivable all at once. I have adapted to a different way of life, and I have become used to it, but I don't know when it will stop feeling weird.