It started with constantly checking the news, refresh…refresh…refresh…any, new, news? Anything more of this virus; I, once thought was so far away and now was on the doorstep. It started as a blanket ‘oh only 3% of the people who contract it, die, it’s not a big deal!’. Well it has become a big deal, as it was affecting those most vulnerable and it has scoured the Earth taking most countries hostage. Living in a family which has two vulnerable people in it, I wondered how long I would have to continue travelling on the tube and looking at faces of people who unknowingly carried this invisible disease. Bringing back to people who would be so severely affected by it.
However, once I was safely stowed away in my household the notion of refresh…refresh…refresh did not stop and the heightened anxiety did not leave. Now, I was refreshing all things positive, the amount of time I now had to carry out all these tasks I had said I would do ‘when I had more time’. “Well there you go” said the Universe “Now you have no excuses. You complained your travel to work left you, with dead time and tiredness, when you returned home. Now there is no excuse is there?”
This excess time made me more paranoid about the fact that I had to now do things I had promised to myself I would do to better myself, but I hadn’t expected it to now come so quickly and with such force. With the 100’s of people on Instagram telling me how to fill this time and how they had managed to so easily slip into it. Everyone seems to be getting on with their goals and doing all these things. What was I doing with this precious time, I had prayed for? Scrolling and scrolling on every app that provided me with some feed. Anything to block out the fact that I actually had to now do all these things. The focus I had so carefully derived from the depths of my body, building block by building block all seemed to have run away, as soon as I had to put goals into action and steps into motion; as though they had been touched by an electric current.
I was so hard on myself for not even taking one step towards using my time wisely but seeing the average time spent counter on Instagram rise and rise. It was like I couldn’t get myself away from this distraction, which was stealing my time and making me more numb. For even though we have more time and I want to better myself. Outside the door is this virus lurking and a world we all once knew changing. For how long? That is something we still do not know and this one thought itself has become draining.
SHELVED 