Day Eight: The Positive Lockdown
Day Eight: April 3, 2020
Global cases: 1,115,662; Deaths: 59,174
Egypt cases: 985; Deaths: 66
The Positive Lockdown
Alya Gharara
Political Science Alumna
Class of 2019.
The lockdown is not a new lifestyle for me. The reason is that I am already living the post-graduation depression. I am currently unemployed and my daily activity is to look for available vacancies. However, I decided to use the lockdown to beat depression.
Since the announcement of the lockdown last week, I decided to face new challenges as to make my daily routine more entertaining.
The first challenge is to keep myself busy from overthinking. As I mentioned above, I am already depressed because of my unemployment. So, I decided to keep my mind busy by reading new books.
Today, April 3, 2020 I woke up at 9:00 AM and had my breakfast. Then, I decided to continue my first challenge by making a cup of tea and read a book. I was more excited today than any other day because I am reading a book by one of my favorite writers.
I finished three books last week and today’s book is the fourth to read. I always feel better after reading a book. The reason is that reading usually increases my imagination which helps me to stop overthinking and escape from reality for a while.
After reading in the morning, I usually go and tidy my room. I decided that today I should clean my wardrobe. This activity sounds boring, but it made me very happy because I found out that I have many clothes and now I have a few ideas for new outfits.
The second challenge is to have a healthy lifestyle. I consider a healthy lifestyle under the lockdown to be rather difficult because I noticed that staying at home has pushed people to pull out their inner chefs. It is always a lovely feeling to have delicious snacks and food while binge watching your favorite movies or series.
Today, I was about to fail my second challenge because I was too lazy to leave the couch and go jogging at least for thirty minutes around my house. However, I yanked myself desperately off the couch (oh, but it was so comfortable!) and went jogging for 45 minutes. Of course, I did stretches to maintain a good fitness level.
The third challenge is to keep myself away from social media. One year ago, I succeeded in quitting Instagram and deactivated my account. However, I am addicted to Facebook which is full of negative vibes such as rumors, negative posts on COVID-19, etc.
For today, I think I failed my second challenge because I logged in to my Facebook four times every hour. I also believe that I failed this challenge since the first day of lockdown because I am always on my Facebook account.
But two days ago, I received a notification from an application that the time I spend on my cellphone was lowered by twenty percent than the last week. Can I call it a partial success? I do not know …
The lockdown has a positive effect on my mental and physical health. I also believe that the lockdown strengthened bonds with my family.
As nighttime set in, I sat with my family and kept listening to one of their daily conspiracy theories on the spread of the Coronavirus.
For The Caravan’s previous diary entries in Arabic and English go to our COVID-19 Special Coverage page.
