Lockdown Round Two! スタート!
We are three weeks into the current lockdown. It has been extended for another two weeks and there is no visual of ending any time soon.
The politicisation of this pandemic by our doing nothing, credit taking and blame shifting Prime Minister has been covered by my previous blog. Also, the partisan stance of the current Federal Government has been laid bare and the Coalition Government doesn’t seem to care about what general Australians think as long as their donors continue to support them and their core voters continue to vote for them. Such is our Federal Government at this point. There is nothing much we can do about it unless we vote them out and replace it with another government. Though even that how much would change we don’t know.
However, there is one thing we can do during this winter lockdown – that is to keep ourself sane and stay healthy.
Read a lot of reports and articles about people crying and sobbing and feeling lonely during the lockdown. Human being is a social animal and I am not those people, so I do not understand them and don’t want to play too light on their experience. However, my own way of dealing with this lockdown, I can share.
Since I have been generally described by some of my friends as an ‘aggressively independent’ person, I don’t know whether my way of dealing with the lockdown would help, but thought I could do my part on this to help out those who are interested.
For me, being locked down in my house is never about myself. It is for the greater good of our community. Is being locked down good? No, definitely not! Is it necessary during a pandemic? Most definitely. If we can take the ‘I’ out of this lockdown equation, we can gradually shift the focus to something else. The less ‘self’ in this equation the lower the urge to overthink our personal needs during the lockdown, but care for other people and their well-being. For me, this is a way to establish open and honest support for each other, without being physically present with others. People said phone calls and virtual meetings are no comparison to physical touch and presence, but as I said, we are in a lockdown, so it will be more positive to appreciate what modern technology allows us to do even when physically apart, and make the best use of it. Is it ideal? No! But it is making full and good use of what is available to stay connected. Again, it is less about ‘what I want’ but more about ‘what I can do’.
The other thing I discovered during this lockdown is that physical exercise can help distract you from the need of emotional dependence. I am an actor, so my body is my tool for my trade. As a result, I need to keep it in reasonably good condition if I want to continue with my trade. I used to go to the gym and to the pool to stay healthy. However, since the lockdown started, and even after the gym and the pool were reopened, I am still cautious about going to a public training venue. As such I started to follow YouTube training videos for my daily exercise, so that I will not blow up like a balloon. It is during this process that I noticed that the more attention I paid to my body health, the less I think about what I need emotionally. I am not a big fan of cluttering my house since I renovated it a few years ago, but I did buy, at my friend’s advice, a kettle weight to further improve my body strength, and seeing my body health improving, I felt that my focus and satisfaction factors have shifted to my physical well being over my emotional needs. I still keep in touch with family and friends regularly, especially my parent, whom I haven’t seen for over a year, but a focus shift had helped me to build satisfaction over my physical health, so I know that I could come out of this pandemic looking healthier, and hopefully better.
Another way to deal with the time when I need to think about my needs is food. Many of the people around me, including my parents, knew for a fact that I am not picky about food. I eat to stay alive and pretty much that’s it. I am not a person to spend lots of money for food experience although I will appreciate good food from time to time if suitable occasions arise. I am notorious for cooking a large amount of a certain dish and eat the same thing for the rest of the week, so I could avoid cooking during the week after I finished my work day. However, I am willing to invest money into equipment or apparatus that could make cooking easier and no fuss, hence, I replace a normal hot plate cook top with an induction one, and forked out $1,600 for a multi-purpose cooking machine. Even that, I only make simple things. However, during this lockdown, I started to look into all those more complicated recipes available with the app that came with the machine. I started trying out different things with all the equipment and appliances I have. When I succeeded, I have more recipes under my belt, and when I failed, I developed the determination to make them successful. This new found interest in cooking had helped me with increased level of interest in my grocery and weekly cooking. And helped diverting my energy to something else instead of my personal emotional needs. For me, developing an interest that you never had time to do because of probably a very busy social life for some of you might help you to rediscover yourself and hence take the load of the emotional need to connect with other people all the time off a bit. Again, that’s my personal experience.
Of course, what I do may not apply to everyone, as I said, I have been described as ‘aggressively independent’ in many occasions, so I could be an extreme case. But I think it is fair for me to share my approach so in case it is useful for someone.
In the meantime, stay safe and strong everyone! Just remember that you are not alone. We are in this together!
