Indoor Person

While we’re all watching society collapse while barricaded inside our homes, am I supposed to be learning some new skill or doing some amazing creative work? I’m really not. I’ve been carrying on as normally as I can, just in relative isolation.

I’ve never been one to bake my own sourdough bread and I’m not going to choreograph the three of us doing a tapdance in the kitchen and put it on … is it TikTok that everyone’s using? I’m not even spending my time watching videos of nurses and doctors and other people dancing and singing to entertain themselves. I’ll see those videos on the news or wherever, and they do make me smile, but I don’t seek them out. I’m not putting down people who do any of these things; they’re just not for me.

It sucks being isolated at home but I’ve found that I’m not really bored yet. I am enormously lucky that I can do my job from home easily and am enormously lucky that I have a job at all in this economy. So working all day in our back room fills the day, and there’s been some extra work to do as our company adapts. There is also parenting to do and making sure our son is doing his online work and keeping him busy when he would normally be at school. (We’re also lucky that our son is old enough that he doesn’t need constant supervision. Any parents who can work from home with younger children around have my awe.)

There’s still some more free time since I’m not driving two hours a day, but I’ve been filling it so far. I’m walking an hour a day before starting work, so maybe that will counteract the increased snacking and I’ll lose a little weight. I’ve started the early stages of spring gardening—might as well if you have to stick around your property. We’re watching our usual TV shows, new and streaming (I’m not interested in the tiger show I’m hearing about).

Mostly, I’m reading my face off as usual. I took out two books from the library the day before it closed. I wish I’d been smarter and taken out a bunch more books, since they’re not enforcing late fees, and even the book deposit outside is closed. I’m running out of new books here so I could use the library books. I have no problem re-reading old books, so I can do that. I can also look at e-books from the library, but I do love my old-fashioned paper.

But my rambling point is, I haven’t had to aggressively seek out new forms of entertainment. After a month inside, I’m bored in the sense that I’d love to socialize, but I have enough activities here to keep me busy. I’m learning even more that I’m an indoor person. You could sit me down with a stack of books to read and I wouldn’t notice the actual apocalypse outside my window.