Time for myself – Guest

A million questions flooded my mind as I prepared for the 4- week lockdown. I am the kind of person who is hardly at home. Now, for the next four weeks all I would do is stay at home. My biggest worry was how will I cope? How will I get through this?

After a couple of days spent dreading over being stuck at home, I decided to take an optimistic approach to life. I told myself to look at the brighter side of things and made a list of all things that were not possible for me to do when things were normal. I managed to come up with an extensive list of things that I could do. Here are a few things that are on my list. 

I will finally: 

• Have some time for myself.
• Have time to read all the books that I bought, but never got a chance to read. 
• Have to time to sleep in, without feeling guilty. 
• Have a chance to get some exercise into my daily routine.
• Have a chance to spend some time with my partner. 
• And lastly, I will finally have time to talk to my mother – which I haven’t done in a while as I never had the time.  

As always, I managed to build a routine to keep myself sane. My day now starts with a coffee, followed by exercise. I don’t need to rush to get ready, to beat the morning traffic – I can take my time to get ready, have lunch and then start work.  On my days off, I can read, sleep as much as I can and have hour long chats with my Mother. 

Not every day the sun is shining for me. There are days where I feel very low and very anxious. I just want to resume normal life, get back to my crazy schedule. Those are the days I spend an extra hour on the treadmill or go for an extended walk, if that doesn’t help call my mother. Something else that makes me feel better is just going over all the ‘little’ things I have achieved in the past 3 weeks. As I continue this journey through the lockdown period I remind myself of this quote from LOTR:

 “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

Sabah Moughal