The COVID-19\/Novel Coronavirus worldwide pandemic has changed everything and everyone is finding their own way of coping.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure to what end, but I thought I would put down a few observations about my own personal strategies \u2013 possibly as a marker to look back on next week, next month or next year.<\/p>\n
In many ways, the stay indoors, socially isolate, talk to people mainly over the Internet lifestyle sounds a lot like my preferred way of living. But it turns out there\u2019s an awfully big difference between a lifestyle chosen and a lifestyle enforced.<\/p>\n
In the Before Times, my week was rather unstructured and quite unpredictable. Some days would see me up early, suit on, and meeting corporate clients or delivering workshops or seminars at banks, law firms, ad agencies or the like. Some days I would be meeting friends, talking about creative projects such as a new play, or being the public face of one of our podcasts. We maintain an office in Camden so some days I would be there, cranking through admin, talking to Gina or Alex or Ned about future plans, or meeting our bookkeeper or accountant. When I\u2019m editing podcasts, I prefer to work from home. Some of these \u201cedit days\u201d are spent entirely in my dressing gown. Often, I end up working late and at weekends, so I\u2019m rarely up early unless I need to be. I\u2019m blessed with living only a 40-minute walk from the West End, so sometimes I\u2019ll walk into town to see a movie.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve learned that what I need to keep myself happy and rested \u2013 since I don\u2019t get weekends off in any meaningful way \u2013 is one \u201csnow day\u201d per month. On this day I need never get dressed if I don\u2019t feel like it, and spend most of my waking hours eating cheese and watching old movies \/ Doctor Who episodes. It\u2019s preferable for all concerned if I\u2019m alone in the house.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, in the last two weeks, all of that has changed. And I\u2019ve had to change with it. So I\u2019ve made some deliberate choices about my schedule which may be the opposite of what you\u2019ve done if you previously had a fairly strictly routined working life.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m setting my alarm for 8:30am every morning, and trying to do 20 minutes on the exercise bike each day, starting no later than 9:30am. Since I get most of my exercise from walking, and I won\u2019t be doing as much of that, this seems like a sensible way to burn some calories, and not just spend the day in bed. Then, I shower, shave<\/u> and dress. I rarely wear t-shirts in any case, so I\u2019m typing this in a business shirt with cufflinks. If I\u2019m not seeing people I don\u2019t live with, I sometimes don\u2019t shave for several days. That can\u2019t happen anymore. With no access to a hairdresser either, that way madness lies. I\u2019m not prepared to come out of hibernation looking like the wild man of Borneo. (Is that an okay thing to say?)<\/p>\n
10:30am to 6:00pm are working hours \u2013 this includes editing podcasts, but it also includes all the other usual things: replying to emails, updating websites, financial planning, conference calls and so on. At 12:00pm on Monday and Friday, we have a regular company catch-up (there are five of us) so we can stay sane, stay connected, and plan together. At 6:00pm every weekday, Deborah is recording her Instagram Live series \u201cThe New Normal\u201d so I can be on hand to help with that and when she\u2019s up and running, I can sign off for the day.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m making a real effort to keep the flat tidy and stack the dishwasher and\/or wash the dishes each night. We\u2019re continuing to pay our cleaner \u2013 who used to come three times a week! \u2013 but she\u2019s no longer visiting our home and cleaning it. Coming downstairs to a clean kitchen is a good and important start to the day. Going to the supermarket involved queueing outside for twenty minutes (standing 2m away from the person in front) but once inside, most items were available and most shelves looked well-stocked.<\/p>\n
I suddenly have a very active virtual social life! I spent one evening with old university friends on Zoom, celebrated a friend\u2019s birthday on House Party and I\u2019m looking into whether it might be possible for my monthly poker game to go ahead virtually.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m trying to do as little work as possible in the evenings and at the weekend. Often, Monday\u2019s Guilty Feminist has to be uploaded on a Sunday evening, and that\u2019s fine, and we\u2019re planning on recording an episode of Best Pick on Saturday. But last weekend I mainly spent watching Pixar\u2019s Onward<\/em> (very good) and Tiger King<\/em> on Netflix (with friends on House Party for bants).<\/p>\n It\u2019s just over one week in and this is working for me so far. I know I\u2019m lucky. I have no kids I\u2019m trying to home school, I have money in the bank (at least for now), I have a wonderful partner to go through this with me, a team of motivated and talented people working on our business and a pleasant home environment with fast Internet and three adorable cats. Many people around the country are far worse off than me, which is why I\u2019ve also filled in the form to volunteer for the NHS Responders. I\u2019ll let you know how that goes soon.<\/p>\n Stay safe. Stay indoors. Wash your hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The COVID-19\/Novel Coronavirus worldwide pandemic has changed everything and everyone is finding their own way of coping. I\u2019m not sure to what end, but I thought I would put down a few observations about my own personal strategies \u2013 possibly as a marker to look back on next week, next month or next year. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-Ec","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2493,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492\/revisions\/2493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}