Strange occupations during a pandemic
I already touched upon that issue, but felt like it needs a follow-up, because this pandemic does not look like it wants to stop any time soon and so we may stay at home for quite a while.
There are undeniable perks to this. My home office is much more comfortable than my office is. I am less distracted by colleagues constantly walking in and out so I can concentrate more and not lose my focus so often.
Soon enough, however, you start feeling the drastic decrease in social interactions and you start compensating this. How? Urges and fixations.
To start with, I drink a lot of tea. Yes, those knowing me will say that this is nothing new. Except that I am back at almost two litres a day. Then, compulsive purchases. Here again, I can picture some of you ticking, saying that there is nothing new there. Not wrong. Except that the comforting effect of this activity is multiplied. And that’s how I came to buy a robot vacuum, something I had never even thought of.
Another aspect is how to mark the numerous hours spent indoors. There are the working hours, of course, but then again, it is not enough. There are many feeds on this, or hashtags, such as viewfrommywindow. On one of these dedicated live feeds on the newspaper Le Monde, I found a video of a 7-hour train ride from Bergen to Oslo. I sat on this train and it was probably one of the most beautiful journeys I ever did onboard a train. I had no clue though that these were filmed. Even less that I would put the video on my projector as background…
One of the nicer parts of the journey
It feels like I am aching about not being able to travel. True, but not that bad. When I think about, it is replacing the radio or worse, TV. So why not? It gives a feeling of movement and strangely enough, some focus.
But still, it feels a bit odd. Let’s if this keeps going when the quarantine is over.
Meanwhile, the cooking frenzy continues…
