Life in lockdown

Life in lockdown

Kia - who prides herself on her discipline - is examining the impact of coronavirus on her mental state

Yesterday I decided to close my laptop promptly at 5 p.m. The hours of my work week had taken on a strange, flat quality: a superficiality, like kicking sand with my fins.

I found myself flitting from one task to the next, stopping midway to check the news, check Twitter, check one tracker, and then another. Hours passed like this, followed by even more hours, so I promised to close my laptop promptly at 5 p.m.

Four hours later I was still on my screen, scrolling, clicking, linking, drowning.

It took me six days to have the discipline to write this post. It pains me to say this because I pride myself on my discipline; on sand; on let's-just-carry-on.

I'm not neurotic or fragile. I've been through too much shit in life to console myself by wringing my hands. You won't find me clutching my pearls or clenching my fists; I'm too busy getting it.

alt="Kia in the Telegraph">India Hobson/Fair UseKia has always imagined itself as a go-getter

There's a quote I try to live by: Discipline is the choice between what you want now and what you want most, and I've always been good at sticking to it.

Until now. I haven't been able to concentrate this week or month because the pandemic has pulled the rug out from under me - so gently and subtly that I barely noticed.

I was one of the wrong ones; Those who thought we should keep calm and carry on, even when my income fell, even when the WHO sounded the alarm. Keep and keep on, because that is the British way. But now I'm here and I can't concentrate.

It is not the fear of the virus itself, but its aftershocks that worry me most. See, where I come from, people don't have a safety net. They can't call their parents for a short-term loan, they don't have jobs they can do from home, they don't have a buffer or bulwark or some other euphemism to stave off a crash landing.

You could say that I move in three circles. The first is where I come from: Tower Hamlets in East London, which is largely occupied by working class people. This circle is the circle of dinner ladies (my sister) and supermarket delivery people (my brother), Uber operators (my brother-in-law) and shelf stackers (my nephew).

alt="Kia's neighborhood in Tower Hamlets">I Wei Huang/ShutterstockKia's neighborhood in Tower Hamlets

The second circle is freelancers, entrepreneurs and creative people who started their own business a year, five years ago, maybe ten years ago and slowly built up their business.

The third circle is that of the media set: authors, journalists and broadcasters who usually (but not always) have a safety net.

I'm worried about all three of these circles, especially the first and second. I worry about the lost livelihoods, the remortgaged homes, the ever-thinning precipice on which many of us balance. At some point, people can no longer afford a grocery store. To the elite, this seems exaggerated, but it is a living, breathing reality.

I've been particularly discouraged by the "stay the fuck home" messages I've seen on social media, usually issued by people who can afford to stay home. What they don't seem to understand is that some people need to go to work, some people don't have a garden, some people have mental health issues and need to exercise outside (which is still allowed, by the way).

alt=”Shoppers were aggressively told to “stay the fuck home””>Alexandros Michailidis/ShutterstockShoppers were aggressively told to “stay the fuck home”

It may be true that the aggression is not directed at those who have to venture out to work, but consider how my sister might feel if she reads "Stay bloody home" on the way to a shift at school as she enters the DLR, which remains open to the children of NHS workers.

As one commentator put it, it seems that "social distancing has entered our language as one of those terms that educated liberals learned and then (a day after they learned it) brandished like a club at others because they didn't know it. It has become a thing that they look down on poor people because they are incapable or too stupid to be as good as them."

The call to stay at home can be made without aggression or harsh moralizing or snarky comments about “natural selection in progress” coupled with a picture of a supermarket queue.

It's the people in these queues - those who can't retreat to a country house or have their food delivered to their door - that I worry about.

• alt=“Richmond Castle erhebt sich über der Stadt“>
• alt=“Blicke auf unsere Wanderung im Yorkshire Dales National Park bewegen sich aufs Land“>
• alt=“auf den Landweg wechseln“>
• alt=“Der Gipfel verlagert sich aufs Land“>

Not everyone can retreat to the countryside

After six days of trying to write this post, I realized that I can't brute force my way through this inertia. I can't sit at my desk and force myself to write a quote about discipline under supervision. I can't turn on my Freedom, put my phone down, make an effort, and get things done.

There's too much going on in the back of my mind. There is worry and fear and dismay - not just for those we will lose, but for everyone who will be left behind.

alt=“Living in Lockdown”>

Cover image: Lijuan Guo/Shutterstock

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