It’s almost halfway into 2020 and there have been a lot of near-world ending events this year, that have been worthy of attention. But an exponentially growing virus wreaked havoc world over and forced people and industries into a major technical, social, and economic shift. What started as a few weeks of working from home and social distancing is now over two months into a lockdown which sometimes feels like life is slowly crumbling away in our best years.

I do have to be honest, I too began this journey with a bit of enthusiasm dabbled with what is now considered a perfectly healthy amount of possibly anxiety sustaining paranoia. And so I made myself have a routine. I’d still wake up early in the morning and get ready in my “casual yet going out-able” clothes, catch up with old friends a lot more often, devote more time to skin care, get back to my childhood love of baking, finish all the books I left midway, and turn my sister’s old room into an at-home gym.

But not a month into this and time slowly caught up. I stopped wearing anything other than pyjamas, began postponing calls with friends (tomorrow night is always better, no?), turned my kitchen into a failing DIY skin care routine, baked more cakes than anyone could finish, still left the books halfway through, worked out a total of only 3 days, and lastly got swallowed up in work. Now this last part: I have to admit that although I’m grateful to have as an anchor in these tough times, is slowly becoming what my life seems to revolve around. More than ever, I miss my office lunches, quick catchups over steaming hot cups of tea (or coffee if that’s your elixir), team meetings (in person), casual rants over the last marvel movie, and just seeing motivated faces ready to take on the day every morning. But being the only constant in quarantine with me, I am working longer hours than I ever did before due to unexplainable persistent delays that always crop up near the end of the work day. And to top it all off, it feels as though all the efforts I’m putting in day and day out are going unnoticed, leaving me to overthink any little mistake I made well into the night. Until I began dreaming about deadlines and layouts on spreads, only to wake up to more of the same.

And so a job which was supposed to bring me closer to books than ever actually pulled me away from words, my own, leaving my brain absolutely drained whenever I picked up a pen and paper. So today I just decided to pour my thoughts onto this seemingly digital diary entry that although may not be poetic is a respite in its own right. Here’s to relearning to string my thoughts into words that form blocks of their own, and hopefully something that will get me through this year into better, more write-able days.