The newness of being confined to quarters is wearing off. I’m noticing the innate human tendency to normalize: I now have to remind myself out loud to keep up the twenty-second hand washing, scrubbing down doorknobs and surfaces, and other daily sanitation routines.

What’s more insidious is a feeling that managing the time during the day is difficult. What seemed like an endless stretch of minutes in each day, commencing with the dawn dread of a daily Twitter update, and ending with a late night of binge TV watching or reading a novel, seems to have shrunk quickly. Now it’s easy to feel the day has departed with nothing accomplished. In the past seven days, these have been done:

an oil painting started, but not yet picked up again (next week I will try again)

a one-hour online Feldenkrais session

online shopping for handmade face masks for ourselves and our kids on Etsy, and finding that it’s hard to get one in a reasonable amount of time

a tech webinar on how to make graphs with a programming language

income tax forms returned electronically to our accountant and a check mailed to the tax board

three Netflix parties

two grocery delivery requests initiated (this is stressful when you come to realize that they won’t have what you need and that the hardworking grocery and delivery workers are beginning to burn out and probably won’t be able to get you things on time)

a drop-in radio party with our son, the Austin bubblegum-rock DJ

two social Zooms with friends

testing the waters with airline and hotel refunds from trips canceled and finding out how unfriendly this process can be

In between these necessities and distractions, we’re trying to have a semblance of order every day. I’m finding that the schedule for most days will probably be four things to cover the fourteen hours between wake up and sleep:

cooking for an hour, either for a lunch or a dinner, but not both

going for a half-hour walk around the neighborhood in the afternoon, trying to find a new route every once in a while

coding for my software startup for a maximum of three hours, or painting for two hours, but not both

reading, napping, or watching a movie for a couple of hours

There are a few unexpectedly nice things that happen here and there, usually when we meet someone new or discover someone we know who lives in the neighborhood on our distancing walks. And the trees are all in flower along the streets, so we’re coming to appreciate the grand valley oaks all around us in their bright green spring leaves. We have ignored them for the 25 years we’ve lived here.

I’m hoping in the coming weeks to feel more stable and less anxious and drained about life in general, and will try to be able to give a little more to others. That would be an opportunity to grow.