When Quarantine Life IS Your Normal
As everyone struggles to stay productive from home, this somewhat seasoned housewife takes you through the highs & lows of the “stay at home” lifestyle.
Several weeks ago, I started writing about the experiences of being a homemaker. I scribbled down witty observations and intense rants in a cubicle in Griffith’s Library, my Tuesday workspace. It was a ritual I had begun to look forward to every week, working out of the library. The article was supposed to be a calling out of the micro aggressions faced by our kind, targeted at those who “can’t imagine just staying at home” or those who’d “die if I didn’t go to work”. A thought did cross my mind about whether any of this would be relatable and if I would just be furthering the stereotype of a bored housewife, but then a worldwide lockdown happens. Suddenly, all of you are in MY world.
And I’ve been watching you cope as quarantine tightens its noose on social lives worldwide. Many are using this as an opportunity to “inspire”. I see posts with checked and enumerated to-do lists. So many hobbies being pursued, a lot of dalgona, all the challenges.
Almost a month later, back on this draft. As a result, this article could very well be a mish mash of three separate articles.
Oh, it was necessary to add that. You need to know that heavy procrastination was involved. You probably know the feeling, what with a good month’s experience of the lockdown life - something us regular non-office working, stay at home wives/moms call everyday life. I hope people now understand that it takes a special kind of mental strength to stay home and be productive. The urge to keep wearing mismatched nightwear, getting into an endless limbo of app switching or drowning in one app (looking at you IG) even with tasks at hand, a sudden urge to wash dishes, put things away, straighten a carpet, just as you sit down to get some work done… AMIRIGHT?? The challenge of self discipline is more if you work alone, work from home or for yourself.
To me, lockdown was upsetting not because of unexpected change, but because it was a reflection of my regular life.
If this current situation has made people confront the possibility of life being a bit pointless and a giant question mark in terms of their futures, say hello to someone who has been dealing with those concerns in varying intensity every few days. The concept of working from home has been almost a year long ordeal for me.
I remember my own time as a full time worker being full of a very recognizable, tangible, charged kind of productivity. Work was fast and if I found the time to run inventory on quality of work or think of personal goals, there was little time to dwell on it. Setbacks felt like tiny blips because the next day was going to be just like this one, just as many opportunities to aim for optimum output. Even two years in, things felt fresh. Perhaps the knowledge that in time, like everything in life, this job too was going to feel inhibiting was what allowed me to easily nod to moving overseas as a partner. What this meant for me in terms of employment was never at the forefront of my mind, and I can’t completely explain this. I’m a sucker for new beginnings and regardless of the number of ‘starting out’ roadblocks I have experienced in the past, with every move, I somehow still feel enthusiastic about big change.
Resumé Update: Homemaker with Hobbies @ WorkFromHome
I also thought this would be the perfect situation to create more content of my own — be it videos, blog entries or finishing a certain podcast started in 2017. I could go on photo walks. I could finally write a screenplay, even! Being a novice in the kitchen, I expected a learning curve there. I also had to reactivate my driving knowledge and there was the task of getting acquainted with aspects of life in Australia — knowing where to shop, errands in a new country etc — nevertheless, I welcomed it.
The first job of a homemaker came with some surprises.
Turns out we are all not born experts in the many, many facets of running a household. It is also a never ending job, overwhelming at first. Do you really know the meaning of all the settings on your washing machine? Getting clothes to be white is not as easy as the commercials. Stain removing is a whole chemistry project depending on what’s been dropped on what surface. What type of cloth do you use for dusting and what is the lifespan of your average microfiber cloth? Can you clean a mirror streak free? And don’t even get me started on cleaning a shower.
I would find myself typing all these questions and more into YouTube, and somehow every task took roughly 2–3 hours. I still remember the first week of housewife life where the only thing I did was laundry. Putting the clothes in the machine, hanging it out to dry on the communal clothing lines, then bringing them back home, folding them all, and putting them in the closet. That’s the other thing about chores, they’re understood in a single word or sentence but there’s many sub tasks to ‘cleaning your closet’ or ‘doing the dishes’.
I remember this one time I slaved over a dinner spread and when the guest finally arrived, he said he was too sick to eat anything. After hours of clean up and stacking leftovers in the fridge, I wondered what was the point of it all. It felt so anticlimactic. I couldn’t explain the empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. Was that disappointment? A vivid lack of fulfilment? In some way, had I placed some of my self worth in just the occurrence of this event? And by it not happening at all, somehow my effort was negated and though I had hardly been idle, yet again I felt unproductive. It’s an odd feeling — doing things yet not feeling a sense of accomplishment but I’m coming to realize that the feeling is a frequent visitor in a housewife’s life. Perhaps because most of the tasks are considered common knowledge and so upon completion, it is easy to undermine your own effort with a ‘well, about time you got that’. In a 9–5 work environment, you just don’t deal with the kind of boredom, overthinking, and zero validation that house wife life brings. Boredom rooted in a lack of purpose.
Pet project land wasn’t the creative outlet I was hoping it would be.
Starting trouble and procrastination were familiar but more dangerous foes in this new isolated life that was controlled heavily by my mind and emotions, not a physical boss or deadline. Not to mention, I was still struggling with household chores, taking way too long to do seemingly simple things.
And maybe I was a little idealistic, seeking out 3–4 hour chunks of free time to get started. I rarely got that kind of time and in those moments, I couldn’t just summon focus and concentration. I guess that’s what happens when there’s a rise towards doing work that doesn’t feel like work/work you love with a proportional fall in disciplined mindset.
My new normal has been focused on developing better discipline
- If your internet strength weakens or you somehow damage your phone during thEsE cRaZy TiMeS, I trust that you too will be forced to confront the tendencies that keep you in a loop of dissatisfaction.
- A period of forced isolation can also make you notice what you love, habits that are benefitting you and ones that aren’t. You too will reevaluate meaning, and your definition of a good productive day multiple times.
- Because many of my housewifey tasks are ‘mindless’, I have grown accustomed to observing my mind and you might want to do that too, especially if your mind is getting the better of you in these times. This is why I’m mostly frowning when hanging the clothes out to dry because in my head I’ve had a whole altercation with an irrelevant person from my past. My mind runs marathons. Catching thoughts and tracing their origin becomes a game but is also a healthy spiritual practice.
- As a housewife, I’ve learned that routine is in fact not always a great thing. You almost want to avoid the rut of predictability and make space for randomness and bouts of inspiration. Routine worked for regular life because you were trying to maintain order in chaos. Staying home is already a predictable environment so don’t go into your room 9–7 and miss out on the chirping orchestra and beautiful sunset!
I hope I’ve made you feel a bit better dear reader, by affirming that it is indeed scary, lonely and routinely disappointing to feel motivated when living & working from home. There are positives to my isolated housewife life too. I’ve mentioned a few as part of my new normal and maybe I’ll do a piece on just the positives real soon, but for now here’s to coming up with your own unique metrics for a new normal ❤️
