A peek inside my head

Current situation: Today is the fifth day that I'm staying at home due to this virus that it's threatening the whole world.

I have to admit that despite all my initial enthusiasm for being at home and be able to work from the couch, this is going hard on me.

Life has just been halted, and no one knows when it's gonna start up again ...

I prepared myself for this ...

If you had asked like 1 or 2 weeks ago what was my feeling with the Corona situation, I would have said:

“This is just to panic people, it's not that serious at all”

At that moment if you have checked how many people were affected and died because of the virus, I was right! This virus was not lethal at all. But what most of the people were not thinking about was how much the virus can spread. And how is possible that 2% of death, will end up killing so many people globally.

Last week was “the last drop in the glass”. It was the week when most of the countries announced the quarantine, borders closed, flights canceled, events shutdown and mostly every possible social interaction was over too.

So I knew in advance that “dark times” were coming, and one of the things that I wanted to avoid at all cost was to fall down in the boredom or solitude. So I came up with a plan!

I built a Home work out routine

Sports are a big deal for me, especially in the past month, I started training quite regular and intensive. Doing sports every single day of the week. Besides the good health benefits, it's something that fills me and makes me happy.

Therefore I had to think of a way to keep going and not lose the progress I made and most probably my motivation. I built my own “gym” at home I can train every morning for 40 minutes, and it actually works!

I bought something called “elastic bands”, with which I can train practically everything I do in the gym but at home. You have to be a little bit creative with it, but after watching some YouTube videos I managed to have a killer full-body routine.

This is by far one of the best things from this period.

I started to have remote lessons of Germans

One of my goals for 2020 was to finally defeat this freaking hard language, and March/April was the month that I wanted to start again the german classes.

Suddenly the whole fucking world tore apart, then schools closed, and everything stopped. And I said, “Okey if I can't attend a course, then I will bring it to me”. So I started taking remote German classes.

At this moment I only took 2 lessons, both with different teachers. I wanted to have an overview of how it feels to have remote classes, and it was a good experience.

Now I need to decide with which teacher I want to continue, but it's good to know that the option is there and that I don't have to stop my learning process because of this.

I came back to gaming like the good old times

I've never been what people called hardcore gamer, but I used to play quite a lot. Like 1 or 2 hours per day was a normal thing for me.

Then I moved out of Argentina, I have a job, I start to regularly do sports, hang out with friends, party on the weekends, etc. And sometimes I felt that I disconnected from the games that I love and enjoy so much.

Luckily when I went back to Argentina in 2019, I took my “gaming” computer with me back with me. I assembled all the parts and yeah I was using it ... just to see Netflix on the TV ...

Now I took another try and started playing again, and it's soooo much fun! I managed to finish some games that I started but never finished (Control is one of them), and also started fresh and new games, like Call of Duty Warzone or Disco Elysium.

So yeah, I'm happy that I came back to this old habit. Some people might consider it a bad habit, that you're not actually accomplishing anything by playing video games. But for me, this is a way to stay lean and to disconnect, at least 30 minutes, from the craziness that we're all living.

The bad things

So given what I said before, this doesn't look as terrible as I said in the introduction right? Well let me tell you the other side of this, and what I really struggle with.

The lack of context switch

Most of the people will agree that context switch it's bad for productivity because it makes you think of several things at the time, and it's better if you focus on only one thing. By doing so, you are going to achieve more things and most probably with better quality.

And I agree with that. But the problem here it's not the constant switching, the problem is that there is no switching at all ...

During my entire day, I'm basically in two rooms: the kitchen, where I eat, and the living room, where I work. And that's it ...

Comparing with how it was before, the amount of working it's still the same, but I had the chance to change my context, by going to the gym before work, walking inside the office to another floor, or after work, I go to play football, see some friends, etc.

Please don't blame me, I'm not saying that remote working it's bad or anything. My point here is when you stay in your house, not because you like it because you have to, it's very hard to disconnect your mind and relax.

Keeping motivation up

I consider myself a person who always want to achieve something, who has a plan for the day. Actually it's a simple TODO list, with around 5 or 6 things that I want to mark as done at the end of the day.

I've been doing this (it's actually called Bullet Journaling in case someone wants to look at it) for about 1 year now and I think it really helps to stay on track with my goals and also not forget about events.

Some people find this practice very formal and that I should let life go freely, but for me doing this makes me feel secure and productive.

And that's exactly what I've been feeling that I start to slowly miss, productivity. I actually don't know the proper definition of it, and to be honest, I don't think I need to know it.

For me productivity, it's something that I can feel. When I'm in this mode of rampage, jumping from one problem to another, fixing this, talking with this person, getting the information about that. It's like a force that pushes me to do more.

And well, I don't know what's going on but I feel that force it's becoming weaker or something. I'm not being able to mark as done as many tasks as before, and I just move them to the next day, and the same happened the day after.

To sum up

I'm fine, really. I'm saying this because people, when they read this, think “Oh shit, he's having a very hard time”, and it's partly true but I'm not going to commit or some stupid thing.

I did this because I felt the need to sit down and start writing about everything that it's spinning inside my head. Some people write it down in a diary, I like to post it online, it's a matter of taste.

Lastly, I would like to know if you are up to have some call, just to chat, and see how can we make this situation better for both. I'm sure that I'm not the only one having these problems.

Thanks for reading.

Ema.