Today has actually been a pretty good day. I managed to get out of bed not too late, take some time to ramp up and then spend most of the day working, until dinner time. It’s still dreary and grey here, with intermittent spells of rain, but I got enough sun on Friday that it’s not dragging me down quite yet. But I’m hoping the weather improves soon.

I’ve been spending as little time as I can listening to the news and thinking about Coronavirus happenings. I heard that Virginia just announced a 70-day lockdown. It now seems likely that this will stretch into the summer. My birthday is in the middle of July, I wonder the situation will be then. One of my friends pushed back their wedding from May to August, and another may have to do the same for their summer wedding.

After about three weeks of social distancing, I think I’ve managed some amount of acceptance and routines. The days are more or less the same, a little boring, but not hard. Over the last week I’ve managed to develop habits and routines which help me beat the urge to stagnate and do absolutely nothing. My stress response is unfortunately to shut down and just hope that the stressors go away, which is not a very healthy strategy. I’ve been working on improving that over the last year, but this crisis has been something of a boot camp to make that happen faster. It’s been uncomfortable, but I feel like I’ve come out of it stronger and more stable.

For the rest of this week I’m hoping to keep up the routines and practices that have been working, and try to be more productive. As I’ve noted before, I’m in the group that is lucky enough to still be employed and paid, not have to leave the apartment to do it, and also have no caregiving duties. For me, being productive is a way of maintaining sanity, and, to paraphrase Gandalf, to do what I can with the time I have. Keeping busy helps me stay sane, which in turn helps to stay safe and take care of people around me. I hope you all find your ways to do the same.