What to do now?

I see a bunch of LinkedIn “thought leader” types are out berating people, because isolation means they could be the next Isaac Newton or Dostoevsky or some shit. “Amazing how we all have this gift of time to use productively”. And there’s me rolling my eyes, thinking “I just want to survive, and hopefully not go too mad, and seriously dudes, do we really need another fucking mediocre book, please, for the love of god, do not become an author…”.

On the one hand, it’s great that there is a lot of enthusiasm about projects that people could do, and an effort to be positive about a really shitty situation. Some people prefer to throw themselves into activities to fill their time, because that is their way of handling things. And that’s absolutely fine. However, some of the exhortations to “learn that instrument, write that novel!” can also feel like pressure to be productive, with seemingly little recognition that this might not be possible for everyone. We will all manage this differently, we will all have different levels of comfort and stress and privilege, that will result in a variety of ways of coping.

I very recently did a blog post of things you could do in times of anxiety. The idea of it was things to try IF you want, IF you get bored and IF you feel super anxious and want a distraction. If, in fact, you actually want to lie under a blanket and cry, while repeatedly watching shit films, with your head going wtf, wtf… then YES, YOU CAN DO THIS (I have done this, many, many times).

After I started seeing some of these other sorts of posts, I started to worry that my post gave a misleading impression of what life with anxiety can be like*. Particularly going to a period of not leaving the house, as I did. It was hard. It took time to adjust. It’s still a work in progress.

So just to be very clear: you do not need to handle this situation well, or make coronavirus your bitch or something. It’s scary and shit and there’s a huge amount of uncertainty. Do not feel that you have to manage lock downs and pandemic time amazingly, because you do not. Do not feel that you have to pretend that you’re having a wonderful isolation experience, because you do not.

The good thing about this is that most of us are doing it, so there are a lot of people out there to understand what you’re going through**. The bad thing about this, is most of us doing it, and so it’s likely at some point you’ll be scrolling social media thinking “Oh, Oliver’s mum is handling the apocalypse well”. Fuck that off too. As ever, social media will distort some of this stuff. If the best thing you did all day was have a shower, do not worry. There will be many more of us who have achieved the same.

*although, I guess the other posts are more on brand 
**she says, ever so slightly bitterly, from her stance as a self-isolation hipster