A ‘Pandemic Reflection’: Losing/Finding Yourselves

During the early days of lockdown, I was feeling uneasy and uncomfortable. I consider myself a very active person: I get some side hustle going, my job at work also require me to travel, and as an extrovert I think I gain energy from talking with others so I go out a lot. I was also preparing for my master degree application and often do it from cafe than home. Everyday, other than Sunday, I spent more than 8 hours outside and it has been like that for awhile.

When the lockdown happened, I feel like I lose myself.

I know that I am lucky enough to still have monthly paycheck and has the privilege to stay at home. But, I wont lie that I have not really been at ease. I have no one to talk with — mostly because I do not want to reach out knowing everybody went through a difficult time and I do not want to feel like a burden to them.

At home, I once felt that I have no control over my time. I woke up early than usual because I did not had quality sleep at night. Right after that I would had helped mom to prepare meals and whatnots before facing the constant dilemma between working from bedroom or living room. Then came the endless zoom calls where you need to be 100% focus while suddenly your parent screaming for help — i.e ask us to prepare for lunch because it is almost the time (I am pretty sure many parents out there initially thought we were in temporary holiday rather than “working from home”), time passes by without you knowing and suddenly the night comes. I swear the days are just going: 7am, 2pm, 6pm , 3am. Repeat.

“Finding Myself”

Several days passed by, I somehow managed to stay sane. I found numerous ways to stay busy and be gainfully occupied. I have sorted out my cupboards, cleaned parts of the house that were previously overlooked, learn/relearn skills that I used to have when I was younger, and be part of an awesome community. All in all on top of doing my full-time job.

Surprisingly, I found myself more aware of the various sounds; birds chirping and wind blowing. Most of the time, I refuse to let my day ‘gone’ just like that and to my best ability try spending half an hour minimum to look up at the sky each evening. I used to believe that my only way (or fastest way) to gain energy is through talking with friends and exchanging ideas through a f2f talk. I think it is still valid but now it is safe to say that I can gain or restore the same amount of energy through 30mins home yoga, alone. (Yoga also help my mental wellbeing but that would be another blog post! 🙏)

On many important aspects in life, I sub-consciously trying to adapt.

On Work

• It is a global pandemic and no one prepare for this. If I feel uncomfortable, there is a high chance that my teammates also feel pretty much the same. I check up how they are doing on a 1on1 sessions and it helps improve the sessions quality — therefore improve the work outcome. It helps me to emphatize and they (hopefully) also find a ‘safe place’. It surely help me to navigate better (although there are still so much room for improvement).
• This is something that I never really think before. Without an hour (or so) traffic and wasted hours being on Jakarta crazy traffic, I can actually think and strategize better on work and on life. Many times these past months I found myself saying “Why I never thought about this before” “Can I try this method instead of that?” etc
• Familiar with this scenario? “.. halfway through the meeting you lean in, determined to get something out of this meeting. As the person starts talking, their screen freezes and you can’t hear them. Eventually, they unfreeze, but they seem to have finished talking. Did my internet die or did theirs? What did they say? As the meeting comes to an end, you eager to share your idea, you redirect the conversation and say your piece. But when you finish, no one responds. Was the idea that bad? Did I confuse everyone? Nope, I was on mute. The meeting finally ends and everyone waves goodbye. People drop out one-by-one until the meeting host leaves and it kicks you out.” If the mere thought of these situations makes you tired, then you probably face what they called Zoom fatigue. Discussing about this might take another post (I keep saying this, sorry) but this piece of article help me to understand how I cancope with this situation.

On Finance

To put it short, being at home with monthly paycheck and side hustle, I start to (re)ask myself these questions:

• If this pandemic still on for another months — or even years, would my saving be enough?
• Now that I do not have to allocate my money for going out and traveling, how would I spend that money?
• Do I need to have more income? What’s my financial goal anyway?
• What is the “best investment options” during this uncertain time? Should I re-think about my current strategy? (I should)
• Do I ever look and plan my finance, seriously?

On Relationship

I have been super blessed to have such a strong support system — my family and my friends — and sometimes took it for granted. Being in quarantine, I built somehow stronger emotional connection with my parents. We agreed on my schedule; when do I need to be super focus on work and I prefer them not to call me or make a noise in the given time. Sometimes at the evening, between calls, I made them a cup of tea and do a quick 15-mins chitchat. On the morning after yoga, I do sunbathing and talking with the mom. I learned that even though I have been always so close with my parents, we can still increase our relationship quality and learn something new about us every day.

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My friends are the best group of people I could ask God for. At times where I do not want to feel like a burden to them, they always reach out. We talked. We shared. We can be vulnerable with each other. Many, many times during our long chat or talk over the phone, we did not come to conclusion and we talk about just random things.. but I we are trying to ‘be present’ at anytime we can. We did not meet as much as we used to be, but, thank God, it does not discount our friendship quality.

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At times where I am being my vulnerable self, I also revisit my relationship with God. At times where what I can do best is to surrender, He gave me so much strength and on top of that He gave me new perspectives.

Conclusion + On Well-Being

That being said, I adapt. Things are not ideal but I am no longer sure that I lose myself. Of course we can never ‘find ourselves’ completely either because we keep evolving from time to time. This hard time, surprisingly, make me feel more like myself.

Of course there were times where I fail (again) to think straight; where things seems like going out of hand, things did not go as planned (I have another story for this) and I feel a bit ‘lost’ again but so far I survived and what does not kill us can only make us stronger, right?