5 things I’ve learned in quarantine
I sat down to do the math, and realized that I’ve officially been in quarantine for 165 days. That’s insanity to me, now, the idea that the past 165 days has felt like the longest period of my life so far...but has equally gone by in an instant. As this has been a global shift for all of us, no matter who or where we are, it seems important to really digest the changes I’ve made in my life since March 16th of 2020.
Because our lives were put on hold this year, it might be easy to assume that it was all just a waste. When we first realized that this was not going to be just a 6 week lock-down, I panicked: What about all the goals I set for this year? How can I just sit around and not pursue growth or change? What am I supposed to look back on? I only get a decade in my 20’s and there goes a year of it!
But, 165 days can really change a person, even if they’re at home for 99.5% of that time (I still grocery shop).
#1 If I’ve learned anything in 2020, it’s that you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything wildly different in order to gain what you are looking for.
I feel as though I’m a profoundly different person since March, and have made a lot of valuable internal changes, without my external reality having any effect on that growth. Now I’m wondering, and jittery with excitement, about how much I could accomplish in 165 days in a post-pandemic world, now that I’ve learned how much personal growth and feelings of success really do come from within.
If you’re feeling like you didn’t accomplish anything in 2020 because of lockdown, I encourage you to participate in this journaling exercise too.
Here’s the ritual
Set a timer on your phone for 5 minutes, sit comfortably in a private + quiet space, close your eyes, and watch 2020 play out in your mind—like a movie. Imagine where you were in February / March, and recall all of the good and the bad that showed up for you in the past 9 months.
After the timer goes off, sit with a notebook and make a list of fun + fulfilling things you’ve been able to do during this lockdown. Don’t feel discouraged if you didn’t read a book a week or crush a workout challenge or learn how to play the violin. Write down anything that was fun + fulfilling, 2020 can be the year that you learned how to make banana bread. Life is allowed to be that simple, sometimes. Do not discredit an accomplishment just because we are conditioned to believe that accomplishments are grandiose and stereotypically impressive. Everything that you do in a day that brings joy to yourself + others is an accomplishment, you are extraordinary for living each and every day of the past 9 months.
Now that you have the list of fun + fulfilling tasks, I want you to make a list of problems you’ve overcome...big or small. Did you start the pandemic drinking every night to cope, whereas now you can calm your nerves with tea instead? Did you panic about your health and safety, to wake up and find you are just as physically well as when this started—maybe even healthier? Do you live alone, and have now noticed your own ability to spend time with yourself has helped lessen your fear of “loneliness?” If you’re in lockdown with friends, partners, or family, how has your relationship with these people enhanced? Do you have new traditions, like Friday night board games or Sunday morning walks? Big or small, list all of it out.
By making these lists, I can guarantee you will prove to yourself that the past 9 months were not wasted, they just didn’t fulfill you in the way you expected. But that is another lesson I’ve personally learned this year:
#2 You never get exactly what you expected.
True expansion + joy + beginnings can come from uncertain or surprising circumstances. This is truly just the universe giving you exactly what you needed in the exact way you needed to receive it, it is up to us to interpret the highs AND the lows as gifts + opportunities that lead us down our own distinct paths. To say that 2020 was a waste would be selling yourself and your everyday life short.
Ask yourself
Do I only feel as though I’m living a (successful, purposeful, fulfilling, exciting) life if I am constantly “doing” things to fill my time?
Do I need (x) restaurant, vacation, bar, store, gym, etc. in order to feel as though I’m actually participating in life?
What about staying home and baking banana bread feels “wasteful” to me?
Have I been conditioned to believe that only productive, externally validating tasks are useful for my own growth and happiness?
It’s okay if the answer is yes to all of these questions...it’s okay if you’re feeling disappointed in how the year treated you, and it’s definitely okay to be mourning the time that has passed.
But wouldn’t help you to feel even a little bit better if you made these lists of accomplishments, and found a way to celebrate all of the big or small ways you showed up and continued to live your life—dismantling the illusion that productivity + external circumstances are the only metrics to prove your purpose?
Celebrate this year, celebrate yourself, make note of the changes you have made… you have every right to call 2020 an accomplishing year; it’s your reality, you can control how you perceive + describe it.
To inspire you, here are a few more lessons + accomplishments of my own from 2020:
#3 slowing down is not a weakness
Before the pandemic, I used to see change as something abrupt—instantaneous. This is partly because a lot of the biggest changes I’ve experienced in my own life were the product of unexpected + overwhelming external circumstances that were out of my control, and I’d have to play catch up over night. This pandemic has of course been an unexpected + overwhelming external circumstance that was out of my control, but the opposite reaction ensued: I was not forced to catch up, I was forced to slow down.
If you know me personally, you probably know that I am not a “slow down” kind of person. If you don’t know me personally, it’s very nice to meet you as this more evolved version of myself, but here’s the rundown on my old ways: I honestly cannot recall a time in the past 6 years, excluding vacation or holiday or now, the pandemic, where I had a “slow period” in my life or in my routine. The idea of hustling was my idea of an honorable lifestyle: working multiple jobs while being a full time student, immediately jumping into a fast-paced corporate environment after college, hurling myself into extra online courses or hobbies that would keep my free time occupied. My token response to “how are you” was always: busy, things are crazy right now, just on that work hard play hard shit, you know the drill.
Busy used to be my favorite pastime, and after 165 days of self-reflection, I’ve realized it’s because I was terrified to go inward. By finding distractions or validation in all of my external pursuits + successes, I got what I thought was the ideal amount of dopamine and oxytocin to get me up + out of bed every morning. Here’s the thing, I relished in all of those ‘good-feeling endorphins’ with the added side effect of cortisol—extreme stress.
Here’s a quick rundown on how high levels of cortisol affects the body:
Fatigue.
Irritability.
Headaches.
Intestinal problems
Anxiety or depression.
Weight gain.
Increased blood pressure.
Low libido or problems with regular ovulation or menstrual periods.
In my “work hard play hard” mindset, I wholeheartedly believed that the only way to receive my good feelings was to deal with the added side effects that come from “being on my grind.” I thought—and you might have too, or still do—that these side-effects of hustle were just a fact of life. That you can’t have the good without the bad, that there’s a balance to it all and we have to make that sacrifice to be successful or feel worthy.
This belief, that is not true, is actually just a story I adopted from mentors, family members, and societal norms. And the scary thing is, most of the things we believe to be true can actually be dissected in the same way. Our core beliefs, that have been programmed into our subconscious mind, make up 95% of who we are: these are the autopilot habits / thoughts which fuel how we perceive others, ourselves, and reality...which influence the actions + reactions within us, and ultimately determine the quality of our lives. The other 5% is that dreaded space outside our comfort zone where we attempt to absorb new information or try new things, and our ability to actually maintain these new things is still in control of our subconscious mind.
Thanks to the work I’ve put into my subconscious reprogramming, I am learning how productivity and success are not synonymous with hustling or grueling work. It is actually the value of our activities, which is entirely in our own power to define, that can be used as a metric for our personal success. I feel I can accomplish more in a day now than I was ever able to before lockdown, because I am in flow with my actions...and not using the idea of “keeping myself busy” to burn out all of my energy + creativity.
#4 grocery shopping is f*cking magic
When the lockdown first went into legal effect, I—like many of us—used the first 2 weeks (or month probably) to veg out from AM to PM, completely paralyzed by the uncertainty, anxiety, and pain that surrounded me. I personally could not imagine doing anything other than drinking tequila, crying, and watching the office with all of my free time. Hey, it got me through those first few weeks, so I’m not going to punish myself for that. Once I realized that “freedom”—quotations because I believe freedom comes from within, not without—was a distant dream, it became clear that my “new normal” would need to be more sustainable.
Through a lot of trial and error, I found daily rituals that made me feel safe, energized, and at peace with my lockdown. The key to the quarantine ritual is to romanticize the f* out of your life. For example, I grocery shopped every Saturday and that was my new idea of a weekend bar crawl. I put together a cute outfit (a sturdy mask to match), made a list of delicious new foods I wanted to try, played my pump up jams with the windows down on the way there, took my time (at social distance) picking out my week’s worth of food, picked out a vegan candy + a specialty beverage to enjoy when I got home, and lovingly sanitized + unpacked + meal prepped my abundant haul of groceries. I’m not exaggerating that by making my trip for groceries into something that brought me joy made it just as fun as what I used to do with my Saturday morning—boozy brunches or window shopping. It seems lame when I type it all out, but my weekly grocery shop is something I look forward to, a light in an easily dark time, a joyful few hours in a sea of uncertainty—and that makes it magic.
#5 we are nothing without love
Before the pandemic, I spent so much of my time hustling + picking up extra gigs + sticking to my usual weekly schedule, I didn’t realize I was neglecting the most important thing in my life: the people I love. It was so easy to use my daily grind as an excuse to not call (so-and-so) back, or back out of a commitment, or put off visiting my parents because I couldn’t imagine blocking out an entire weekend except for during a holiday. When that hectic pace + myriad of excuses was literally ripped out from under me, I was left looking at the relationships in my life as my main source of joy.
And it’s hard to hit yourself with the facts, but I realized that if my relationships were truly my main source of joy, how can I expect to pull from that supply without giving joy in return? Without spending valuable (face)time catching up, venting, coming to terms with the state of the world together. We are not built to navigate this life alone, and I always gave myself some badge-of-honor for attempting to be “independent” and not “burden anyone” with my issues.
I had to sit myself down and say: hey girl, you’ve been a real a**hole with your time for a long time. Now all you have is time, what’re you gonna do with it? And I consciously decided to use that time to be with and comfort the people I care about most, I even went as far as quarantining in my high school bedroom for almost 4 whole months. The time I spent with my family, time I never would’ve had the opportunity to spend had it not been for lockdown, is something I will cherish for the rest of my life—domestic memories that I can access whenever I’m feeling powerless or lost. By giving as much love and joy as I could to those around me, I found that energy bouncing back at me tenfold.
I’m curious about what you’ve learned about yourself + others during this pandemic. Please send me a DM or leave a comment below about how this reflection has served you. I also encourage you to really celebrate all of the joyful things you experienced during 2020. It’s cliche, but our lives really are just a blank canvas that we get to craft + create.
Do not let the way others speak of + feel about this year influence your own perception of it. There is value and there is growth wherever and however we decide, but that’s the trick—we decide.
This was the year I drank 365 smoothies, and I’m damn proud of it.
Whatever you did and however you showed up is something you should be damn proud of too.
You’re a badass, so keep showing up that way and have another amazing week.