Welcome to the only blog that fist bumps you when you open it, because, you know… viruses.

If you decide to read this article, you’ll stumble upon some thought-provoking ideas that could potentially make you and I less awful human beings (keyword: potentially), who on a daily basis promise to only watch one more episode, then go to bed… then end up watching the whole series.

Let’s dive in!

What do you get when you socially isolate millions of people, urge them to remain indoors and make it difficult for them to find meaningful work?

That’s right, legions of depressed people or some insane group of people doing wieird challenges on Social Media! Okay.. I just called myself insane.

Wouldn’t you agree that nothing has all of the ingredients for the ‘Emotional Breakdown recipe’ quite like a shutdown evoked by a pandemic. Lack of face-to-face socializing and Rotaract events? Check. Financial uncertainty and shortage of food? Check. Lack of regular sunlight, and access to basic necessities, night outs with friends? Check. High uncertainty of one’s safety and security in the near future? Check. Unable to meet your girlfriend or see your crush at a Rotaract event? Check. Tons of free-time to refresh news feeds a thousand times per day? Double check.

Surviving the sixth week of lockdown, I’ve been finding it difficult to wake up in the morning. I’ve been putting off work until the evening and sometimes even the night. And then sometimes the next day…or even two days later…or sometimes not at all. My club secretary would tell you, how long it took for me to compile this article. Felt like an eternity!

The problem is that there’s just so much damn time to do it…

Whereas before I had long overly packed bus rides to work, meetings, calls, Rugby matches almost everyday, and also I had night outs with friends, rotaract events to get to by a certain time. Ughh, how can I not mention the traffic, which seemed like it drained out half of my day. When you’ve always got a place to be, you’ve always got a clear idea of how much time you have to get everything else done. And when you know how much time you have to get everything else done, you then feel social pressure to make sure it gets done.

But remove those events, meetings, happy hours, and dinners, and suddenly, there’s no reason to get anything done before the evening. In fact, there’s no reason to get half of this stuff done today rather than tomorrow… so let’s do it tomorrow!  And tomorrow never comes… does it?

What does the future hold?

Glad you asked!

These past few weeks, everything is still a bit new and intresting, but it seems like we are effectively going to be living in Groundhog Day for the next few months. Sure, right now it facinates you to be working from home or to be glued onto netflix. But a month from now? It will be like a bad song stuck on repeat… for months. The worst part is that there is no expectation as to when this will end and when our lives will revert back to normal.

With no long term accountability on any of us, we backslide to think short term and look for the most satisfying thing from time to time. Ultimately, we need a sort of a long haul vision for ourselves to assist us with exploring the everyday choices, and to give us something significant to think and talk about, apart from how many people were infected today.

Alright! I’ve decided to assume the worst. Assume we are going to be in lock down for the next six months or more. I’ve asked myself: if I had six months where I had to stay home most of the time, and everything else in my life was cancelled, what would I do with that time?

In my case, it would be to study well enough, so that I am prepared to sit for my ACCA & Data Science exams as soon as things return to regularity. In normal times, I would hardly find any time to exercise and keep fit or even to master a new skill, but now with an empty calendar and tons of free time, a six pack and me turning out to be a pro in Graphic designing & Video editing is totally possibe. So, why not do it? And bear in mind, you possibly would never get an opputunity of this sort ever again in your life. A break from the regular daily chaos…

And that’s my new goal! Because, the benefits of goals aren’t in achieving them, it’s that they give us direction and meaning. Isn’t that what we are looking for these days? Direction and meaning… And I believe that there’ a silver lining to all of this empty meaningless time: it does wonders for one’s creativity. Remember, self dicipline is key! But let me also say, if self dicipline is hard, you are doing it wrong!

In the mean time, don’t avoid your fear. Embrace it. Use it intelligently. And don’t let it boil over into panic and acting like a psycho in the supermarket line. We’re all in this together, after all. There are quite a nummber of leading epidemiologists in the world, people who have studied viruses their entire lives, people who have successfully helped eradicate and stop the spread of HIV, SARS, H1N1, Ebola, etc. Before you and I even knew what a coronavirus was, these people had been studying it for years, all day, every day. The good thing is that they constantly keep updating their twitter profiles with latest information and guess what… you are just a Google search away.

Stop reading stupid posts you see posted by your uncle on facebook or forwarded on Whatsapp. Stop listening to talking heads on mainstream media. Be skeptical of any news article not written by a scientist or doctor or not based on the work of a scientist or doctor.

Stay home. Stay safe. Stay sane. And don’t leave the house…

Note: The article contains extracts from different reads to which my thoughts were drummed into, as an attempt to help my fellow Rotaractors, who probably are in search of productive ways to spend their time in lockdown.

Rtr. Haaziq Fuazi | Email: haaziq.hf@gmail.com