COVID19, Lockdown and Mental Health
This is probably the 14th days of me staying at home; doing almost nothing, literally just procrastinating. I hate this feeling of being unproductive and currently on the verge of getting mentally broke. Desperately trying to get back to work because my work doesn’t need office space, it’s all remote and I have been doing & managing it remotely for the past 5 years. But things aren’t working nowadays, but why? I question myself.
This definitely doesn’t have to do anything with the home environment, because my home is pretty work-friendly. First, we are quite some distance far from the crowded part of the Kathmandu valley with a fresh view of Shivapuri forest from the backyard. Second, we have a small family with no kids, which means no disturbance. This is the side effect of the mental fear created by the COVID19 pandemic; a combination of fear and frustration.
I decided not to travel and stay home 5 days before the Government of Nepal announced the lockdown because I travel using public vehicles (which is not so safe) and love interacting with people over the cup of tea, this decision of distancing myself pretty ahead was such a timely decision. But marking yourself physically safe isn’t enough; marking yourself mentally safe is also very important. After struggling for quite some time, I am finally trying to control my mood and get back to work; phase by phase. Being fully productive during this crazy situation can be very difficult — I have started to accept it. So, I am following these three steps to cope with it.
- Decreasing the news consumption: News plays a very important role; good news, bad news — it just fills our brain full with opinions and makes you expressive (happy, sad, angry, frustrated) straightforward. So, first thing first, I decrease news consumption especially from social media. This helped my brain to create a fake scenario to convince myself that nothing happened; everything is running fine as usual. To fill the gap, I now have PUBG, TikTok and more importantly a family group who play Ludo on my mobile phone.
- Increasing the writing: I found a way to control the feeling with writing but rather than continuously pushing my opinion on Twitter, I have started to practice writing poems. If this continues, at the end of the lockdown I may add “Wanna be Instagram Poet” in my bio. Also, now I have more confidence in putting my opinions in the form of newspaper articles. Recently I published my first single-authored opinions in one of the reputed national daily.
- Rearranging the reading list: While the working list is full of mess with no proper schedule of what you are going to do after 1 hour or tomorrow, rearranging the reading list may sound funny but I found this actually useful. Rearrange the entire curated list as per your current reading desire; this will help shape your work schedule.
This is a very difficult situation not only for the individuals like me but for everyone, who have certain commitments and destinations with timelines. But that’s okay, things can wait — someone said it right “We know how to get the economy back but not lives”.
Stay home, stay safe :)
