What have I done during lockdown?

I don’t know who’s been counting, but we are now entering what seems to be the one-hundredth week of lockdown. So please tell me I’m the only one getting tired of it? I mean sure a lot of us loved the first part when it felt more like a holiday – sleeping in, relaxing and just watching tv all day, not really focused on being productive. Now though, the prison sentence nature of it is starting to make me feel claustrophobic. You can’t go out when you want just to pop up to the mall to window shop, go out for a cup of coffee and all forms of work and communication being based on a screen might be starting to affect my eyesight. At least I can still go see my optometrist if it counts as an essential visit/check-up … My point is, I’m sure all of us are getting quite bored. However, being stuck at home all day and not being allowed to do all sorts of activities that could be considered ‘time-fillers’ means that there has been an opportunity to try out some new things and be more productive. That’s why I wanted to do a bit of a reflective piece to look back on everything that I’ve done during all of this extended time at home. From my social media streams, I see that a lot of people have been baking (I have been too), but I’ve also been doing a lot else. You see, I tried to use all of the extra time as best as possible to get things done that I haven’t been able to. So, here’s what I’ve been up to so far during quarantine. 

A heck of a lot of spring cleaning 

Spring cleaning always seems like a good idea to do when you have extra time on your hands … that is until you’re midway through it and realise you might have bitten off more than you can chew. Well, combine this with some mild OCD tendencies, and that equals a lot of long hours of incredibly frustrating spring cleaning. At first, I just wanted to start with my hoodies, but then that changed to all of my long sleeves, then my shirts and somehow my whole cupboard was suddenly on the floor. When I finally cleaned up that mess, and satisfyingly repacked my wardrobe, I moved on to my bookshelf and desk space. I’m not even going to get into the amount of spring cleaning we’ve done around the house because it would take me forever, but suffice to say I’ve spent a fair amount of time sorting and organising. At least everything will now be beautiful and organised when the world returns to a state of normalcy. 

I finished my door (finally!) 

I’m not sure how many of you read my blog at the beginning of the year about new year goals and how I wanted to finish my bedroom door art project (if you haven’t, why not read it here) but essentially I started drawing murals and quotes on the back of my bedroom door in chalk. It’s taken me an incredibly long time to finish this project because it isn’t exactly a five-minute task to do the illustrations, and I don’t like to rush and potentially draw something sloppy. I mean I’d rather take the extra time to make sure it looks pretty than be hasty and have to redo it. But, after over a year’s worth of slow but steady, it is finally finished, proudly displaying a little bit of so many things that I love. What do you think? 😊 

Actually exercised every day 

For those of you who know me well, you’ll know that I’m not exactly an Olympic athlete. I’m not hideously unfit, but there aren’t going to be any sports teams recruiting me any time soon either. However, I decided that I really wanted to change my lifestyle and improve my overall health (plus I want to be skinnier) so with all this extra time I thought why not use at least some of it to exercise. My dad was ecstatic and immediately helped me get into it by promptly moving one of the spinning bikes into my bedroom. I also did a running challenge where I ran 1km on the first day and then kept adding another kilometre for two weeks (so on the last day I ran 14km and had run a total of 105km). It really hasn’t been easy, and on some days I felt like I had to drag myself onto the treadmill, but I’m also really proud that I haven’t taken a day off. Plus, I’m finally starting to see the difference of all this new healthiness on my body, and I’m loving the results so as tough as it is, I’m just going to keep on pushing through. 

A mega fantasy movie marathon 

I adore Harry Potter. Always have. I guess there’s just something about an ordinary kid discovering he has magic and all of a sudden becoming part of this wondrous world filled with weird and wonderful things that makes me bubble over with excitement. So, as you might guess, I’m a big fan of both the books and the films and decided that with all the extra time, I would watch all of the Harry Potter films again. This is probably the 100th time I’ve watched these movies, but I don’t care – they were still just as amazing, even if I have the dialogue memorised. On top of this, I finally watched all of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies. I read the books a while ago (I just finished rereading them by the way) but my little brother always put me off the films because of how he described them. However, I finally had enough and decided to watch them anyway, and I absolutely loved them. It took almost 20 years, but now I’ve watched all six three times in the last two months – my reasoning is that I can’t call myself a fan if I haven’t seen the movies a few times. 

Resparked my reading addiction 

One of my favourite baby pictures is one of me reading a book. Some of my favourite childhood memories are of my dad reading to me before bed and reading has always been a comfort and favourite pastime for me for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, grade 12 left little time for pleasurable reading and all my travels and studying last year didn’t help my dwindling reading hours either, but this year I wasn’t giving in to those excuses. Thanks to lockdown, I have plenty of time to squeeze in some reading, and as such, I’ve been ploughing through all the books I’ve been meaning to read over the last two years but didn’t get a chance to. Lockdown has allowed me to completely respark my reading addiction, and now I can’t fall asleep without reading at least a few chapters. Once I finish my current read, I’m planning on rereading a massive stack of old favourites as inspiration for another hobby I have reignited … but more on that in a little bit. 

Blog post galore 

With all this time on my hands, I decided to stop being lazy and to actually get ahead on blog posts. I know I keep saying this to myself, and I never follow through on those promises, but now I am much stricter on myself. Since lockdown started, I’ve tried to stay about a week ahead of posts, and so far it has been working. What’s great about this is it allows me to focus more on what I’m writing without rushing. It eliminates the stress of potentially not getting a post done in time because I know that I’m ahead of where I need to be. Now what I’m going to try and do is write an extra post each week, so I can start building up a bank of extras. Just in case when everything goes back to normal, there is a surge of business where I have no time to write. I’ve also been doing some research into improving the blog, how to increase traffic etc. and while I’ve read a lot of helpful articles, the two that I want to mention are Lifesfinewhine, and Marina De Giovanni. Thank you so much for all the incredible advice you’ve shared xx

Trying to reignite my inner Hemmingway 

Another hobby that I’ve always loved is writing. In fact, I wrote my first short story at the prime age of eight and proudly displayed my pencil scribbles to my grandparents. It’s safe to say my writing has improved since then (at least I hope so) and creative writing has since then been something that relaxes me but also something that gives me a spark. You see, ever since I wrote that first story I’ve been nursing a dream to become an author. However, I went through some difficulties that stopped me writing and kind of quenched my creative spark. Now though, after some soul searching and a few other tips and nudges, I am happily writing again, and the energy and peace it gives me makes me regret stopping for so long. I’ve actually started a new writing project now, but I’m not going to share too many details about that just yet. I don’t want to jinx having found my groove again after all. 

Reigning boardgame champion (so far) 

Last but not least, with all this extra time and having one or two additional people in the house, one of the ways we’ve been keeping up on entertainment is by playing board games. My boyfriend and I played a ton together, but that’s not too new because we play board games often even when we aren’t stuck in lockdown. My older brother and his girlfriend have joined quite a few games, as well as my dad and my little brother, and I am happy to report that through all the games we’ve played (from Pictionary to 30 seconds to monopoly to Disney/Harry Potter trivia) I have either won or been on the winning team. Not to toot my own horn but *toot toot*. I’m just not going to toot too loudly because you never know when someone will knock that victory out of your hands, and considering my brothers are both smart and not afraid to cheat, I’m carefully guarding my title as current reigning board game champion. 

So that’s what I’ve been up to this lockdown. I’ve mainly just been trying to keep busy and stay ahead of everything that I need to do while catching up on all the fun activities that I’ve missed out on from being so overwhelmed with tasks over the last year. I may say that I’m starting to get bored, but I’m also not going to lie that I’m loving the opportunity to do all these things that I’ve missed so much. All I need now is to go out and watch a movie followed by dinner at a nice restaurant, and I’ll be good to continue with lockdown for another few weeks. Otherwise, thank you all so much for reading. Please don’t forget to hit that little like button if you haven’t already and subscribe, so you don’t miss out on future posts! But now that I’ve shared my news, what have you all been up to during this lockdown? Anything fun or exciting that you want to share or have you proudly just binge-watched movies and series the entire time? Whatever it is, absolutely no judgement but I want to know! Also, what do you miss most from ‘normal before quarantine life’? For me, it’s book and bath bomb shopping, as well as playing in the arcade with my boyfriend. But that’s all my news for today, so I’ll see you all next time! 

Lots of Love 

Blondey on a Mission xxx