Life Post: Social Distancing at Home

In the week since my last post, the school where I work has closed because of the state of emergency declared in Japan. That means I'm officially social distancing at home and haven't left the house in more than three days, though I'm probably going to have to go to the grocery store either today or tomorrow.

While many people have been talking about struggling with this, I'm honestly more than fine at this point. This, of course, comes with the disclaimer that I've only been doing this for a few days whereas people in other parts of the world have been stuck at home for much longer. But at the same time, I feel like I was kind of built for this. Left to my own devices, I'd stay at home for days on end anyway and not think much of it. I have a list a mile long of things to do, and all of those things are things I can do at home. I'm not even close to wanting in that regard.

Most of my anxiety is still from the disease itself and the effect it's having on the world. Thinking about it too much does get me into a less than ideal mindset. However, that hasn't been much of a problem really.

While I was still working, I was checking the internet for updates on COVID-19 constantly, and it was really wearing down my mental health. I was worried I might do that even more once I was stuck at home, but the opposite has been true. I'm still checking some information and seeing some things on social media, but I'm not obsessively checking the news for updates like I was when I was still going to work.

Because of that, I feel much calmer at home than I did before. I'm reading three books right now (I was in the middle of one before being stuck at home), and I've been writing and such as well. I have plenty to keep myself distracted for the moment.

I can only hope that nothing gets worse either here or anywhere else, but I know that dwelling on what may or may not happen won't do me any good.