The three stages of lockdown life

Now that we’ve lived through nearly four weeks of lockdown, and with a few more still to come, I’ve started to think that lockdown life follows a pattern, with three distinct stages.  Quite a few of us started out thinking that it would be rather nice to spend some productive time at home, but I am wondering how we’re all feeling about that now.

Stage 1: Enthusiasm. Everyone starts out with the best of intentions. That long list of jobs can finally be tackled. Those pictures that we’ve been accumulating over the years can be hung artistically and thoughtfully around the house. The bathroom has needed painting for some years now. All those digital photographs can finally be sorted into neatly labelled folders and the best ones printed out, ready to be hung artistically and thoughtfully around the house.  Naturally, an exercise routine will be established, incorporating aerobic workouts, weights and stretching. And of course we’ll contact all family and friends regularly through one of the many online video-calling apps available.

Stage 2: Disillusionment. It becomes obvious why so many of these pictures have been languishing at the back of a dusty cupboard: you don’t really like them and can’t imagine why you bought them in the first place. Of the ones you do like, nearly all need to be framed and that’s out of the question at the moment. Result: one picture has been hung. You forgot to buy paint for the bathroom, so that will have to wait. As for the photos, although you make a start, it soon becomes apparent that a giant tortoise wouldn’t live long enough to sort through them all. So they’ve all been pushed up to the cloud, where with any luck they’ll vanish permanently into the ether. Why, oh why, do we take so many of the things?

Do I even need to comment on the exercise routine? Just one look at Joe Wicks in action forces me to flee to the pantry looking for comfort food and IT IS ALL HIS FAULT. I do manage a short walk around the block every other day.

Having installed countless video-calling apps, you discover that you are equally incompetent in all of them. Instead of chatting in an upbeat, encouraging way to our nearest and dearest, we spend most of the call trying to log in, positioning the screen so that we can see them, wondering why we can’t hear them and/or why they can’t hear us and then trying to think of things to say. We don’t do anything or go anywhere, so what on earth are we going to talk about?

Stage 3: Acceptance. Lockdown or not, we are still the same people. It turns out that it wasn’t time that stopped us sorting out our photos, training for a marathon, becoming technical whizzes or writing a novel, it was a disinclination to seriously apply ourselves to anything when so many more appealing distractions were on offer. Have you seen all those entertaining lockdown memes and videos doing the social media rounds? So much more fun than painting the bathroom.