Clinging to sanity:The monotonous cycle of lockdown life

You stayed up until 3am watching Tik-Tok, you slept for a maximum of 5 hours, now are you ready to endure an additional 6 hours of screen time?

You force yourself out of bed - the warm, inviting bed - into the brisk, cold air of your messy room. The laptop is once more turned on as you change your top in an attempt to look presentable and put together; whilst the bottom half of you, well that says otherwise. The bottom half says you’re over it, sick of it, tired of it. From the chiming sounds of emails rolling in, to convincingly neatening up your hair and face, you prepare for the hours of screen time to come. “Cameras and mics are compulsory for today’s meeting”, the dread kicks in, and the repetitive cycle begins... The cycle goes on and on and doesn’t stop. We try our hardest to make every day feel distinct and feel separate. But somehow it always ends up the same and inevitably blurs together: curled up in bed with binge-worthy snacks, a social media black-hole and the unending feeling of loneliness. Although that over- whelming feeling may attempt to tell you ‘you’re alone’, we don’t buy into it, if we did why would we all relate? Why would we all feel the same way if we were truly alone?

The day never seems to end, and it becomes a monotonous cycle: work, chores, social media, self-care, clinging to sanity, hope, work, chores... We’ve all seen the movie Groundhog Day, now it’s as if we are living it. A continuous cycle. A never-ending day.

But it’s not all bad! We find ways in which to fracture the norm and feel excitement again. Like the original -OG- lockdown; trends like baking came about, Tik-Tok became a safe space to create and enjoy content, we exercised more, hosted zoom quizzes and ate a load of junk food! I know you all did it, a somehow awkward yet enjoyable night on zoom with friends and family, baking cloud bread and cheating to win that quiz all whilst dancing to savage love in the kitchen.

Of course, a newfound love we all developed over lockdown- baking! From traditional family recipes, to Tik-Tok life hack recipes that were plastered all over your for you page, we all tried to replicate the food from restaurants that we were all missing. You’re going to look me in the eye and tell me you really never even considered making whipped iced coffee or cloud bread or even banana bread (an acquired taste). Ah those were the days. We took a nationwide lockdown and turned it into something positive: a chance to learn a new skill, to master an old one or to spend hours aimlessly scrolling on social media instead. Well, the fun isn’t over yet, there’s always tomorrow to make another batch of bread and trial the new recipes. I guess that’s the perk of the Groundhog Day. All the time to yourself you could ever want or need. But perhaps 7 months may have been too long.

But you held out another day, you made it. Once again fooling your boss with the ‘WIFI’s down’ or ‘cameras bust’ trick just so you could make that brew or scroll the socials. Time yet again to change back into the comfy clothes and curl up in bed. What shall it be tonight: a Netflix binge session, another tik tok craze, or dare to be bold and venture through twitter? Settling in for the night once more with your healthy dinner of ice cream and crisps with the same sentiment every night ‘it’s lockdown I deserve to eat crap’.

Written by Rebecca Leonard & Becky Ashworth

Photography by Beth Slattery