Evening Pages: March 22nd, 2020
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the D.C. metro region has been in a state of partial lockdown. To alleviate fear and stress, my writer's group has put together a daily "morning pages" get-together on Zoom in order to touch base before starting the day. Here's some of my brief thoughts.
I missed the virtual morning standup, but I decided that won't stop me from posting a personal note in the evening. The show must go on.
I think starting off the morning right plays a huge part in how my day ends up shaping up. When my morning starts off really slow, or crappy, my entire day is ruined. When it starts off great, my day might still be crappy, but at least I'll get tired and fall asleep earlier for the next day. Today I got up around 3PM. I'm starting to be productive around 9PM. Yesterday I think I was productive around 8:30AM, because I made the morning standup. That's my experience in how a great morning makes a difference.
My iPhone addiction is really starting to seep in with my increasing paranoia about going outside. Some days last week I showered three times a day in order to try and keep any virus off of me and have as little virus as possible cling to my belongings. Looking at the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 dashboard also doesn't help my anxiety in going outside. Now I think I'll just try to avoid going outside unless it's an emergency, which will be horrifyingly bad for my physical health. Jokes on the virus, can't get a cytokine storm if I have no immune system in the first place. Problem is, my apartment isn't very big, and I have no pets, so I end up spending a lot of time just on my phone dicking around. This has horrendous implications on my productivity through this weekend. My mom asked me to keep my phone on me at all times, but I don't think that's feasible because I need to work. So I told my parents that if there's an emergency, email me and I'll smash my Kitchen Safe and get another one. It costs $50.
I'm also not really going outside anymore, because the times when I have picked to go for a walk, there were so many other people walking around. Just having people near me and breathing freaks me out, because the virus travels on the air and sticks to clothes, and also lives on the concrete and asphalt. I need to pick a time when nobody else is around, but then I'm afraid of getting mugged or whacked. There's just no winning with me. I think I'll try to take late night walks around my neighborhood, or super early morning walks, if possible.
I think one thing I can try to do if I'm not productive is working on stuff I want to work on, such as putting together some IFTTT thing to email myself my sleep log through my Google Home, or putting together a cooking website and recording down what recipes have worked for me.
In keeping with my newfound tradition of adding a cute picture from Reddit to forget about the day's troubles, here's a picture of a baby. Hello baby!
