Other People (Day 119 of lockdown)

An exchange in our home, recently, after we'd cooked one of our new dishes :
Daughter: Ooh, this tastes like other people's food.
Me: We are other people.

We looked at each other, realising how unintentionally profound that had been. Knowing my daughter, she probably high-fived me.

I love the fact that, under lockdown, I'm not obliged to interact face-to-face with too many people. It turns out, the virtual world has distinct benefits - especially for introverts. But I also love checking in with my friends, either on the phone, texting on WhatsApp or e-mailing, to hear how each one is handling this time of life. 

I'm very aware that not everyone is going through lockdown comfortably, and that for many people lockdown has been the harshest blow. I'm exceptionally lucky to be employed, to be able to keep up with my overheads, and to have wifi and all that it enables. I'm also lucky that the nature of my job lends itself to working remotely. I can't believe it took a global pandemic for us to see how ridiculous it was to continue working the way we had been - especially sitting in air-conditioned offices and crawling along in insane peak traffic, twice a day.

Almost overnight, the world changed. It changed how it went about its business. It changed how we worked, how we communicated, how we taught, how we shopped, how we connected with loved ones, how we entertained ourselves, how entertainers found audiences, how we exercised, how we channelled our creativity, how we held meetings, conferences, launches and concerts - and so much more.

And, in the process, as the world changed and people started using the term, "the new normal", we changed. We spent more time in our gardens or backyards, we slowed down and read more, we put effort into cooking more interesting meals, we took up hobbies, we started new forms of exercise, we watched different movies, we learnt new skills - all the time evolving, shifting, learning to go where the current took us, because that's what we needed to do, to survive.

Physically, many of us have changed. Some have gained weight, most have longer hair. Many men now wear beards, simply out of necessity. People talk about how they wear slouchy clothes all the time, and some women say they've ditched wearing bras.

I'm more interested in the other changes - the invisible ones. I know for a fact that I'm undergoing major changes in how I view life - and my life, in particular. I'll be 59 in 7 weeks' time, which is an age at which we think about what we've achieved, what our legacies will be, and what else we could possibly achieve, to leave a better legacy. We look back at our choices, celebrate the ones that worked out well and try to forgive ourselves for the ones that didn't.

Today is Day 119 of lockdown, in South Africa. They say it takes 21 days to form a habit. I know I've forged a whole new set of habits, under lockdown, and I know I'm not the same person I was 120 days ago. Do I like this Trudy? Ja - I actually do. She's used the time to do a lot of introspection and has sorted through some clutter, both physical and emotional. She's learnt to relinquish control over certain parts of her life and to embrace change, like never before. She knows it's a journey and that there'll be detours along the way, but she's keeping an open mind.

Most importantly, she's living every day to the fullest - exploring, learning, immersing herself in what she loves, and understanding, more than ever before, that pouring yourself into a few things that bring you true joy is far more meaningful than anything money could ever buy. 

 
    

Lockdown Day 108

What’s the biggest irresistible urge you’ve ever had?

For me, it was the urge to push, during childbirth. Despite all the reading I’d done, I was shocked at the intensity of the sensation. It’s like you’re not in control of your body - like something else is making decisions for you and you have no choice but to follow. To a far lesser degree, I feel that way about writing: if I feel the urge to write, I need to write.

When my children were younger, writing was generally something I’d do late at night, after all my duties were done. I’d also write whenever they were doing Saturday activities and I needed to wait for them.  I remember creating time to write by taking them down to a restaurant that had a kids’ play area; I’d sit in the parents’ area with my journal, keeping an eye on them and writing at the same time. In the many years that my children lived with each parent every alternate week, my routines were based on one week of being a single mother, and one of being a single woman, living alone.  Absolutely free to do my own thing when alone, I’d journal a lot more then.

Come to think of it, even now my writing happens either late at night, or on weekends during the day. But the urge hits me throughout the day. It’s just that my duties pull me in another direction. This is a constant source of frustration, to me.

I started blogging in mid-2009, after being strongly encouraged to do so by two people, 8 years apart  – a dear friend, as far back as 1998, and a life coach, in about 2006. I’ll always be grateful to them for getting me to start this journey. 11 years later, technology has changed so much but I seem to be stuck in my original style of blogging: lots of paragraphs of writing off the cuff and from the heart, with a photo or two, taken by me, related to either the content or my mood while writing.

I don’t always read my friends’ blog posts when they share them on Fb, but when I do, I find myself reading a few of their posts in one sitting.   I don’t know how important the number of views is to them, but to me, I’d continue writing even if no-one read my blog. Having said as much, I do check my stats occasionally.

This was a significant fortnight, for me. On 1 July, I went to my doctor, with flu symptoms. I was examined in the Isolation Ward and sent for a COVID-19 test. TEN days later, I received the official result: Negative. Only when I saw that word in the SMS did I realise how tense I’d been about the outcome. I hadn’t felt anything more than my usual winter symptoms, but because there are so many variations of how COVID-19 presents, I wasn’t entirely sure whether I’d contracted it or not. I was VERY happy to have tested negative, for many reasons.  

                                           The drive-through testing place I went to.

I’m sitting with my usual love-hate relationship with Facebook. I love keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances, near and far, and I particularly love seeing what creative people are doing. During lockdown, I’ve been buoyed by how others have coped, and been inspired to start little creative projects to reduce my anxiety and to just get through this unbelievable period of lockdown aimed at reducing the spread of a virus of global pandemic proportions. (I had to write that out in full, because there’s still something unbelievable about it all!) I love reading about interesting things around the world, often flagged in the form of links posted on Fb.  What distresses me are the awful comments people make, spewing hatred and showing the ugly underbelly of social media. For example, someone shared a post by a woman who’d been in an abusive relationship. She’d chosen to write very openly about the violence and to include graphic, bloody photos of herself after being beaten. To my horror, there were quite a number of misogynistic comments - people openly saying that she shouldn’t have back-chatted her husband, that men don’t like it when women talk back….. ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?!!!

That kind of thing affects me SO deeply, that I want to disconnect from all social media platforms and crawl into a safe space, away from the ugliness and violence, the cruelty, the misogyny – that persistent entitlement that men feel, despite everything that’s out there in the public domain. It breaks my heart that the patriarchal system we live in gives men permission to boldly write that kind of thing on social media without fear of censure or reprisal. It hurts me that practically every social network (not an internet reference) we form part of maintains the status quo of the patriarchy, and that women are still regarded as a minority, and othered – our voices indulgently listened to in board meetings, while the real decisions are made by men, some of whose only power lies in their being male. How’s that for privilege?

I’ve become sad again.  Don’t even get me started on how women support the patriarchy and oppress other women. Facebook is full of it.

And so I continue to go through life, controlling what I can, creating things that have meaning to me, speaking out wherever I can, knowing all the time that society has many other seemingly benign institutions that effectively keep women in check. Knowing that even in some of my circles of friends, there are certain topics I could never raise. 

                                    Been knitting beanies, recently, to pass the time creatively. 

My daughter asked me what I missed most, during lockdown. Besides my family, I couldn’t think of anything other than the freedom to go where I wanted to, when I wanted to.

Other than that, lockdown suits me to a T.

                          Yet another sunset I've been lucky to observe - Sat 11 July 2020