Current status: sitting on my moderately comfortable sofa in my living room, which also doubles as my bedroom and kitchen on day 59 of the stay-on-place order. Its 10:27pm, which is oddly the time of night that I was born 32+ years ago, and I am not even close to being tired enough to walk the 8ft to my bed. Weeks 1-3 of the SIP were some of the most productive I’ve been. I had always imagined working from home and earning my salary. I imagined all the things I could accomplish – both professionally and personally – during the day. Waking up without an alarm, not adhering to a dress code, autonomy over my own schedule, no constant micro-managing, etc. I felt oddly free for someone who wasn’t allowed to leave the apartment. Now? Now I have no idea who I am or what I’m doing anymore. As the weeks passed, the amount of work that I’ve been needed for has started to decrease. I spend the day checking emails to see if I’m asked to pitch in, while the rest of my team take the lead. I went from being constantly needed and overwhelmed, to barely necessary in a matter of two months.
This is all sounding extremely dramatic, and I admittedly blame my anxiety for that. I’ve been working non-stop under stressful conditions, balancing multiple tasks at once for years – begging for this kind of break to ‘re-center” or whatever bullshit I told myself, and now that it’s happening I realize that I thrive in the chaos and I’m actually drowning in the boredom. It doesn’t help that I live alone in a hotel-sized studio in Brooklyn. Before all of this, I loved my selective isolation. I didn’t even think my apartment was that small (by New York standards at least). I would be mind numbingly busy all day at work, out at the gym or at dinner afterward, with friends on the weekends and then I would get to come home to my refuge of a quiet apartment to bask in the solitude that was all mine. Now? Let’s put it this way, I binge watched Waco on Netflix and during one scene thought ‘wow, these people all look so happy with each other, it looks like fun!’. Essentially, I’m at the point where joining a cult seems like a swell way to ride out the quarantine. Its only been 59 days, but I can’t even remember what a normal week is like anymore. Monday through Friday its just me, myself and I. Luckily Sarah and her husband usually pick me up for a day on the weekend so that I can talk to people and get a little outdoor time in their garden. By then I’m so excited to get out of here that it’s easy to ignore that I’m the single friend whose friends pity her enough to save her from herself for a few hours. The more I type, the more Perks of a Wallflower this is all becoming. Jesus, I’m not usually this self-deprecating, I fully blame the lack of fresh air daily human interaction. This all needs to end soon before I become the lady that fuses to her couch.