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A Week in the Life of a 20-year-old During a Global Pandemic: Part II

Abbie's diary during the pandemic

I hope you enjoyed my opening blog to this diary series. This is my mid-week entry.

Tuesday 9th February 2021

This morning it was still absolutely freezing outside but it was the start of my work week. I crawled out of bed and hopped into the shower and got ready for the day. This shower morning was one of the many I dislike in the week as it was the day to wash my hair, I hate how much of my morning washing and drying this takes up! At the moment these simple but boring everyday tasks seem to feel harder and more pointless to do but I remind myself that my body looks after me 24/7 so I need to do my part of looking after it too! I also don’t think the cold weather and dark helps either but the mornings are starting to get brighter each day which is good.

I then took the super short commute from my bed to my desk (aka the other side of my bedroom) to start my work today. I am finding working from home interesting, some days I am super motivated and get so much work done but then there are days I feel the opposite. Today was one of those days, I just felt unmotivated with my work. I think this is because some of the meetings in place did not happen so I felt lost with my day and thus struggled to re-spark interest. I started a new role just at the beginning of Lockdown 2.0 so trying to get trained and be a part of a new team during this time has been difficult and maybe not how I envisioned. I preserved through and took some extra breaks to not exhaust my brain.

Once the working day was complete, I took my sister out in the car with me to go and collect a click and collect order. This was probably one of the highlights of the day to just get out of the house and see the outside world! We also stopped at the nearby Mcdonalds and got some take-away dinner as a little treat. I really enjoyed this little treat and was a nice reward for just getting through the last few months! It is definitely important to keep treating and rewarding ourselves during these odd times as we are all doing so much more than normal, and definitely have more stress too!

After unloading my click and collect order, I set about installing a new storage solution in my wardrobe. You may have read in my previous instalment that I was struggling with putting away my washing and felt like it was a big task, well another reflection on this was that every time I tried to put stuff away in my shelves I have to take out and refold everything to access the back. I took time to think about ways around this and ultimately decided that changing the shelves to pull out baskets would work a lot better!

I spent the remainder of my evening getting this done and actually feel so excited to put my washing away now as it looks a lot better and is more functional.

I did also discover clothes hidden in the back corner that had been there since we moved into this house just under 6 years ago – I was 15 at the time and I can safely say my style has changed. I think there is something relaxing about getting rid of some old items that are taking up space and also extra nice when you know you are going to donate them and make a difference to someone else too!

The time did fly past me whilst doing all this so by the time I had done some unwinding of the day, it was definitely past my bedtime! I think later bedtimes is the one thing I have been really bad at during the pandemic and is something I do need to work on improving!
Have you found this or something similar too? Speaking to some of my friends they have too, and it’s reassuring to know that I am not the only person and these things are common at the moment!
I will leave you with that thought and see you again tomorrow for my mid-week instalment.

Wednesday 10th February 2021

I awoke to another cold morning after a cheeky mid-morning lie in as I was working a later shift at work today! I once again completed some more orders for my small business and dropped these off at the post office before work.

Today was one of my favourite days of the week as it was my first day back in store after 2 days off and a day or two working from home (depending on the week). Although I look forward to this, I do find it a little stressful and it makes me feel a little anxious. We do have safe ways of working in place, such as mask-wearing, sanitiser stations and social distancing, as well as the most recent addition of temperature checks. This is the thing I find most worrisome as although I only leave the house to attend work or visit my support bubble, I dread the idea of the light being amber or red. Thankfully, it was green and I was able to go about my day and safely work among my co-workers!

I do feel very fortunate that I do still get to spend some time in-store and get socially distanced conversations with people outside of my household and bubble. My work has also tried to do many different activities and engaging events for us to keep up our mental health and to enjoy our time out of our homes. Today we had a scavenger hunt for chocolate eggs which was fun to find and discuss where we found ours!

I don’t have that much more to say about my day as I finished work at 8pm and pretty much got ready for bed. I did facetime with my boyfriend, just to check in and discuss anything about our days that was interesting. I think this is one thing we and a lot of other people are struggling with within their friendships and relationships at the moment, as the days are mostly the same. This being said it is still important to keep up these connections and experiment with different things to do together whilst apart.

Abbie, Lead Young Ambassador

 

 

 

 

Abbie Trussler
No5 Lead Young Ambassador

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