Day 214: 7 months, yo!!!!

Dear friends, 

Thank you for still being nice to me despite me being so flaky. I’ve been lurking around reading and commenting, but have been putting off writing.

And yet, on day 214 I cannot NOT write. So write I must, and write I shall ! 

Don’t know about you but I felt really depressed and anxious for the first couple of weeks of covid madness. But then, because I am a mature and resourceful individual, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I officially decided to stop being diplomatic and really be my “authentic self”, and so I became a real BITCH to my boyfriend, the only human I had seen in several weeks. I suddenly heard myself tell him I needed SPACE and ALONE TIME because I was SUFFOCATING in this relationship and couldn’t stand the feeling of us being the only presence in each other’s lives and needed to exist as a SEPARATE INDIVIDUAL so he needed to leave me ALONE and go home and stop relying on me to be his MOTHER and expect me to cook all the meals and tell him how to peel a potato and explain what “mincing an onion” means and .… etc. You get it.

Ok ok ok, I might have been able to do that in a SLIGHTLY more diplomatic way.

But weirdly he took it well, and agreed to try and be more independent and give me some space, so I got 3 or 4 glorious days of alone time, during which I have been following a Spartan routine of self-discipline and self-care, and would like to share it with you all here, because I think I’m definitely on to something.

• Wake up
• Feed Fern, aka Godzilla, the starving cat
• Make coffee and wonder if sore throat + grogginess are Covid symptoms
• Drink coffee
• Meditate (AFTER COFFEE, NOT BEFORE !)
• Read/write for PhD
• Almost go insane because of too much reading and not enough breaks
• Lunch
• Read/write for PhD
• Almost go insane because PhD is terrible and what’s the point anyway? Oh, looks like I haven’t been taking any breaks again – whoops!
• Go for a 1 hour long walk (NON-NEGOCIABLE) while listening to some kind of self development podcast. Look up at sky and at trees in bloom and look down at lovely delicate flowers and blades of grass, and remember that 6 feet distance doesn’t preclude eye contact and smiling/nodding to say hello to other fellow humans who seem to all be doing the same thing and look like robots because who knows anyway you can’t get close enough to tell who is human and who is a robot…. and whatisthemeaningoflifeanyway ?!!?!?!?!
• Get home and feed Godzilla who is starving again and very angry that food hasn’t been served earlier.
• Do 30 mins – 1hour yoga (or any other spiritual workout, such as “how to tone your underbutt in 10 minutes” on youtube).
• 5 minutes: Practice the handstand I still can’t do but thought I would be able to do after 3 months of sobriety. LOL
• Shower
• Switch into pyjamas mode! [Optional: do the Pyjama Dance]
• Negotiate with self to read for one last hour before dinner. If self agrees, reward self with a snack to keep self going.
• Make and eat delicious dinner
• Think about doing evening meditation [but most of the time be too lazy and decide for Netflix instead]
• Do paint by numbers in front of Netflix with Godzilla the in lap and decide that it counts as a “meditative activity”
• Go to bed and DO NOT SET AN ALARM
• Think of all the people who are scared and suffering in the world and working hard these days and feel like I haven’t fathomed the depth of what is happening to the world yet and am still in shock. Remember that I forgot to call my parents AGAIN (this miiiiiiight have to do with the fact that my mom is still drinking though she said she’d stop- see previous posts)
• SLEEP
• Fail at sleeping. Put on guided meditation to release stress and worry (or alternatively, “how to tone your underbutt in your sleep with no effort”)
• Sleeeeeeeep
• REPEAT, Groundhog Day style.

Tadaaaa

Should I publish this as an e-book and make lots and lots of $$$$$$? #remotejobs

So yes, Covid has made me insane, but hey, what do you expect ?!

***

Unrelated but related: 

A good friend of mine sent me an instagram message the other day, saying: “alcohol and marijuana are my two best friends these days. I don’t know how you sober people do it”. I replied that sobriety is actually what’s helping me “do it”, while drinking would just have made things worse. For me.

Ironically, a common friend of ours (with whom we used to form the perfect drinking trio) stopped drinking two weeks ago – he took the leap at the beginning of the quarantine and says he is feeling great. He is also writing a PhD and says it has improved his work and mood a lot. It feels so strange that this person would decide to take a break from drinking – I’ve known him to drink daily, for the last few years, and defend the lifestyle a LOT. I’m really really proud of him. I’m also a tiny bit proud of myself because he has inquired regularly about my journey, and a part of me wants to think that somehow, I set the example without even trying to.

So YAAAAAAAY to people who are deciding to stop drinking in this time when we hear so much about alcohol sales rising together with domestic violence and all the other stuff. It’s brave! And smart!

There you have it folks, my 7 months post 🙂

Stay well and stay at home !

Hang in there !!!!

xxxx

Anne