Well. I’d never have believed this would be my next post when writing my last.
But that's also because my last post was ages ago, so sorry about that. But this blog is first and foremost a reflection of me and my life, and so I went back to uni and things
were busy, and this blog went on the back burner a bit.
However, I haven’t abandoned the pondering completely. In my
‘time away’, I have been doing some writing, so hopefully I can get more posts up for you soon. And I have also started an Instagram page, as sometimes I
have things I want to share that are too brief for a blog post,
and I’ve been really enjoying it. So follow me here over on Instagram.
But, now, I suddenly find myself with a lot more time, and we
all know why that is, dear reader. With the outbreak of Covid-19, the world is
in a bit of a dark place right now; everything is strange and surreal and
unsettling. I hope you are all well, with loved ones or have people to chat
to regularly, and are trying to find ways to make yourselves content.
And on this subject, I feel like
my head is full of possibilities of things to do. Social media has been providing a lot of suggestions of ways to be productive, be creative, be busy. And that’s great, in some
respects. It can make you feel inspired, relieved to have ideas of things to
do.
Filling our time is what we’re striving to do right now. Something
that I’m finding difficult is the fact that, actually, as I’m away from my
boyfriend and loved ones, as I can’t go out for coffee with friends, as I’m
stuck at home without a routine which is dodgy for my mental health, I’m wishing time away. And I hate the
thought we’re living our lives like that. So I’m trying to enjoy each day. But this creates pressure, and
it's increased by all these suggestions of things you feel you should or could be doing.
Also, (and I can't decide whether this is a good or a bad thing) time just disappears. For the first week or so, I had
an essay to write (yet another factor that makes it harder: unenjoyable work).
In that routine, I got up, did yoga, sat on my laptop working, and suddenly
it was 4pm.
Ultimately, I think, humans just end up stewing a lot. Sometimes
you can have a list of things you want to do (or think you want to do), or a free day for you to finally get round to learning to sew, or play piano
or do an at-home workout, but time goes and before you know it you’re on your fourth
Disney film of the day eating spoonfuls of peanut butter from the jar (don’t
look at me like that, this isn’t personal experience…). Actually, if this is what we naturally do, it's probably because it's what we authentically want to do most of the time, away from all the influences. It only becomes a problem when our mental health could be improved by varying our activities.
So, here’s my advice to you, dear reader (other than the one
boring thing I will say, which is to try and move, because exercise really will benefit your mind, I think): do whatever you feel like you
want to do at the time. Take each moment as it comes, and do what you think is going to make you happy. But try to balance this with some amount of introducing small activities into your life. For example, I've started doing colouring, writing, and more baking. You may
even find that you would start naturally filling your time with a variety of activities anyway,
because you would naturally want to change your day up.
As crappy as it sounds, we all are
just sort of existing at the moment. We will stew, we will watch
TV, we will live out this surreal reality. I hope you all navigate this time okay. It
will pass.
With extra love and wishes of happy pondering,
Evie x
Post a Comment