Sparkling Isolation – Day 12

What day is this?

A friend posted a funny meme today, remarking “In case you lost track, today is March 97th.” I laughed, then I thought to myself, “It really does feel that way. And what the heck day of the week is it?” Before last week, I really looked forward to the weekends when there were no shows at my theater. That meant that I could sleep in late, relax, be spontaneous about when I went to the gym, head into the city for drinks and dinner, maybe go to the Art Institute – all things that felt like ‘vacation’ after a work week.

With every day a day off – essentially – there is no such thing as a weekend. Not really. The days are blurring together and the only thing that keeps me focused on what day it might be is this ongoing blog, since I am numbering the days here. This is Day 12 – which happens to be a Sunday.

One of the bright spots in my schedule lately is an online class. In 2016 I took an extensive course to become certified to teach English as a foreign language (TEFL). About three months ago, the school offered a significant discount for a two-week online module to get an additional certificate to teach English online. I signed up for it with a starting date of March 23 and quite frankly I forgot all about it until about two weeks ago when I got a reminder.

I suppose the timing could not have been any better. I started the online class on the first full week of self-isolation and working from home. This has given me at least a short time every day to forget everything else and focus on completing all of the required tasks. Today I have to create a video and upload it for review by the instructor, so that took a good portion of my morning.

The downside of that, however, was that I reviewed the video and thought, “Dear God(dess)! I look old and tired.” I am hugely critical of myself and my own physical appearance even on good days – so today was a bad, bad day for me to have to see just how awful I am looking. Rarely have I ever felt quite so old, unattractive and generally unstylish as I am today.

I am sure some people who read this will remark, “That’s ridiculous. That’s not at all true.” Or at least I hope people think that. If I thought others were as critical of me as I am of myself I would just crawl under my bed and never do another video call again. But I have learned recently that I have to just speak my truth, and today my truth is that I don’t like myself very much today. I certainly don’t like how I look and to be honest, I am not jumping up and down with glee about my personality today either.

When I allow myself to spiral down the rabbit hole of self-loathing, I sometimes just have to take the whole depressing journey until I hit bottom, and then drag myself up and out again. I am sure I will be fine again soon, but today all of the angst in the world and the fear and anger that are swirling around the Universe have finally swooped into my apartment and are dancing a jig on and in my head. Dancing badly, by the way, and stomping a great deal. Perhaps that explains my current headache.

So whatever day this happens to be – Sunday or Day 12 or March 97 or whatever – it’s not one of my better days. The best I can hope for is that I will take some deep breaths, meditate, find something fun to divert my attention tonight, and hopefully sleep will help me process and release some of this so that I can feel at least moderately focused and productive tomorrow when I “go back to work.”

Sparkling Isolation is actually Dull Solitary Confinement today. The bubbles have gone flat. Time to break out a new bottle, I guess.

It’s only Quarantine if it comes from the Quarante province of France. Otherwise, it’s just Sparkling Isolation.