Every day during lockdown feels the same. For those of you working remotely 9-5, the weekend still has some edge – you can now enjoy your evening bottle of wine without worrying about the hangover you’ll try to hide on Zoom, you can stay in pyjamas guilt-free, and essentially just lie in bed all day. Which is what the rest of us happen to be doing all the time. Which is why the weekend blurs into the week, on a constant cycle of forcing yourself to be productive at all times to make the most of this time we’ll never get back.

“Doing nothing is okay. In fact, it’s normal.”

But this mentality needs to stop. As a university student who has just finished exams through a pandemic, I should be able to think about my dissertation without an overwhelming need to write it in three days, or teach myself to code because I have nothing else to do. Doing nothing is okay. In fact, it’s normal.

If not for the fact that as I said, we’re in a pandemic, our mental health has taken a toll in the last few months- being locked inside, many of us unable to see our loved ones, and an ever growing feeling of unease about the indefinite future of this ‘new return to normal’, and it’s time to accept that we need a break.

“I can guarantee most of us wouldn’t be half as productive right now if everything was normal.”

I should be able to sit reading a book for a few hours, ‘Facetime’ my friends (because, although I’m incredibly jealous of those at university, I chose to stay sensible and not travel around the country just for the sesh) or have a nap without worrying that I haven’t done anything and have wasted a day. Because it’s not a waste of a day. It’s time needed to process everything that is going on, to take a break from academia, and to learn to not worry about everything that is going on.

It’s okay to not be productive. What’s not okay is forcing yourself into thinking you have to be productive at every moment. I can guarantee most of us wouldn’t be half as productive right now if everything was normal, and Miss ‘Rona had never existed. But that’s not the case, is it? Yet why should it be the case that we try to treat this situation like normal by filling up all the spare time that exists?

Battling a pandemic is enough, having to battle yourself by forcing yourself to stay productive is definitely too much.

 

Meg Amin

Featured image courtesy of @schmaendels via Unsplash.

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