“Do you remember Zoom?” - My Life in Lockdown
“At the very worst, this whole Corona thing will be over by the summer anyway” I says to my mate Niall on our way to Burrito Thursday during the last week of February. He nodded in agreement and the conversation moved to other items on the agenda over one of Toltecca’s finest drenched in Cholula. Within two weeks all schools, offices and gatherings (Burrito based or otherwise) would be put on hold and potentially altered forever…
As Ireland is now in the grips of a second lockdown nearly 6 months after the first one, there’s no better time than now to write a post about my own life in lockdown. Since March, we’ve been inundated with thousands of updates, hot takes and people’s experiences in lockdown and I’ve always felt mine couldn’t really add anything of value. Having said that, I feel the same way now but am writing this post more as a personal time capsule that I can revert back to in a few years and hopefully laugh.
I say laugh because unlike many people, I’ve been completely unaffected by the Pandemic in any real way. I’ve not lost any relatives, friends or even acquaintances to the virus and have been able to work from home pretty much as normal.
The last few months for me have consisted mainly of watching the news, meeting friends and family when I could and gaining a new found appreciation for the more important things in life. Those things being mainly ITV’s “The Chase” and drinking at home (not usually at the same time)…I also became an Uncle for the first time to little Fionn which has given the whole family a lift and more importantly, something else to talk about.
The last blog I wrote was in the lead up to the Irish Government Elections in February and it’s humbling to look back now at just how blissful things were when all many of us had to worry about was a housing crisis, a hard Brexit and what was then a broken health care system. Now, the biggest challenge we’ve been facing is an invisible one that has pressed pause on most of the things we’ve always took for granted.
Despite these massive changes, it has been nice to see the #We’reAllInThisTogether mantra encourage the vast majority of the public (if not golf friendly Oireachtas members) to do their best to help lessen the impact of the virus. As a country, it felt like we’d bought in to making sacrifices that would save people’s Grannies and get the country back open again.
When this seemed to work and that by comparison, Ireland had gotten away with a lot of the hardships other countries had endured… it was hard not to feel like we’d somehow conquered it. I even got to be a part of a uniquely 2020 spiritual moment when the local parish committee asked me to get my drone and help film their “Socially Distanced Decade of the Rosary”
Like many people before the pandemic a portion of my mind was always thinking about how I could be doing more. More in work, more with family and friends, more comedy gigs, more videos, more blogs (this one clearly not as much) and generally try to plan what’s coming next. There was a strange re-assurance in the early stages of the pandemic when I realised that by sitting at home and going nowhere I was doing everything and more.
In fact, the best thing you could do with your time was nothing. For the first time in my life having no plans and going nowhere was best for everyone. I turned 28 in June and even the fact that at that age my Dad was a married, home owner didn't bother me because I'd just learned to use a skipping rope properly and re-watched Breaking Bad! It also only took a global pandemic for me to move in with my girlfriend so there’s one life step completed and so far so good.
Is there anyone out there back having Zoom quizzes? I think part of the unprocessed trauma that we’ve all experienced this year has been our relationship with Zoom and other apps like House Party! Back in March these were great new ways to “Stay Together Apart”. Now they act as a reminder of how they just distracted us from a fear of what was to come. Now even with my incredible range of general knowledge from The Chase, I’d rather rub hand sanitiser in my eyes than login to a Zoom quiz with loved ones!
It’s that same fatigue associated with Zoom calls that I think we’re all experiencing now during lockdown 2.0. The endless stream of news stories about a mythical far away vaccine and the lack of anything else to talk about with people has taken its toll. Comments from friends like “Did ya hear the Rona can stay on surfaces now for 4 weeks?” or “It’ll probably be three years before we’re out of this” are all just noise at this point.
Sometimes it’s as if countries and governments spin a wheel to devise the steps they'll take and we all look on as cluelessly with no end in sight. I'm not meaning to sound like I have any better answers because it's becoming clearer every day that nobody has them. I sit at home and watch friends in Australia live next to normal lives - almost as if they're in on some joke at our expense.
I recently started watching Game Of Thrones for the first time. Another under-appreciated aspect of this whole thing has been actually getting through shows you’ve put on the long finger for years. It says it all about 2020 that I’m using one of the most gory and violent storylines ever depicted as a daily respite from the storyline we’re going through. Both the Stark family and RTE presenters frequently note that “Winter is Coming” in almost exactly the same ominous tone.
When I began writing this blog months ago, I hoped to post it when this whole thing was over. I'm posting it now instead at a time when we’re back in lockdown. The pictures from my trip to the shop were supposed to have a nostalgic feel to them by now but sadly, they just reflect that “new normal” we’ve heard so much about. The signs in public spaces may never come down, the sanitising stations will become more and more creative, the perspex glass will be here to stay and the Burrito Thursdays will have to wait a while longer…