One Day at a Time
After weeks of quarantine amid a global pandemic…
As the days blend together and any semblance of a sleep schedule becomes less and less recognizable, it grows more important for me to hang on to some kind of routine.
At first, the release from daily responsibility came as a relief. I didn’t have anything to do or anywhere to go? Great! I’m a homebody anyways. I reveled in the time I had to myself to read, paint, draw, and voraciously binge any of the leisure activities I’d had on the back burner for years.
But as my addictive personality overindulged in old TV marathons and creating overnight metropoleis in Cities Skyline, any sense of accomplishment or self-motivation began to drain away. Social media and the news seemed stale and irrelevant. The plethora of Zoom parties started feeling forced and redundant.
So here I am, thinking to myself, what can I do every day to help me form some pattern of regularity? The current pillars of my week seem to be:
- Watch Governor Cuomo’s address daily
- Tend to the plants daily
- Babysit once a week
- Tune in to group fitness classes three times a week
Okay, so there is some structure. But it’s not exactly enough. What else can I do to create a routine that stimulates progress? Leisure activities such as reading, gaming, watching TV, and online shopping only lead me deeper down the rabbit hole. Even completing tasks such as dishes, laundry, cooking, vacuuming, etc are not satisfying – they’re just a matter of course in your average day to day.
So what KIND of productivity do I value? Something less transient, something more skill-based, where I can measurably improve and thereby use my time to invest in myself. Ideally, I’d like to engage in at least one meaningful activity – this includes writing, painting, practicing piano, exercise – per day. This is how I’m going to trudge through this rut, this prolonged period of social isolation, even when I don’t feel like cleaning up the paint brushes or taking out the dumbbells. So, I’ll practice one skill each day –
And move forward one day at a time.