How not to count the hours during lockdown
JUST A THOUGHT: “You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”—Jonathan Safran Foer
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SURVIVING ON A BUDGET:
Being in a two-month-plus state of Luzon-wide lockdown, we learn how to budget our resources more conscientiously, more adequately. We never know where the next batch of food supplies, groceries or toiletries will come from, or when.
Being home-based, we eat more frequently than before. After breakfast comes morning snacks, then lunch, merienda,
then dinner, then chichirias,
then midnight snacks of milk, cookie, or fruit. Munching 24/7 on anything has never been this hectic. Jaws can hurt. Pockets can ache.
Then again, we also learn to recycle food over and over again. There may be enough stock in the freezer, but who knows how long they can last?
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NO TO BINGE-WATCH: In terms of entertainment, which we resort to quite frequently these days, we apply the same budgetary procedure. We also scrimp on them.
I don’t binge-watch. I watch new episodes of my newly discovered Koreanovellas piece by piece, one episode, or at most, two when I can’t contain the excitement, per night. By the way, they’re called K-dramas now.
I save the rest of the episodes for the remaining days, weeks of the Great Lockdown.
I keep myself busy during the day with my plants, some writing, my music, my siesta, my coffee break, chats via Messenger or Viber, the news, my Facebook account, my reading, my afternoon walk. Repeat this cycle at least five times more each day and you can get the true picture of my mental health.
I reserve a special window at night, after dinner, for my Koreanovella, a newly discovered interest. It keeps me looking forward to some excitement at night, an event.
The feeling isn’t unlike going to a town ball yesterday when I was young, or to a special sit-down dinner of good food and aromatic Sagada coffee with a matching slice of dark chocolate cake at The Manila Hotel. It raises my excitement level, ups my happiness index.
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ENCOUNTERING HAPPINESS: We are currently watching a romantic 2018 series, “Encounter,” which tells of an office romance between a woman CEO and a new male hire at the hotel’s PR department. It’s about two young beautiful people, who come from different backgrounds and generations, sacrificing, giving up everything to be together.
The 16-episode series has been keeping me entertained during these dark times that I don’t want it, like true love, to end just yet.
So, I watch it slowly but surely, episode by episode, page by page like a book (rereading Alberto Moravia’s “Roman Tales” now), not bothering to search and research about the story, or the show’s history.
I want Song Hye-kyo and Park Bogum to surprise me as my daily dose of surprises these days consists of nothing more than bad, depressing news.
There’s always news of people getting the virus, of others you know expiring from it, creating real fear that the virus just might be standing by the door, close to the bougainvillea.
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MY OWN SWEET TIME: I want my share of entertainment to unfold on my own terms, in my own timeline, in my own sweet time. I find comfort in watching two beautiful lovers, with a certain age gap between them, keeping me company at night, in the absence of true, real, physical friends.
They make me smile, laugh, cry, delight in the beauty of young, delicate, restricted first love. I get kilig to the bones, too.
In these days of uncertainty and fear of the unknown, I turn to movies, Koreanovellas, and books to assure me there remains more to life than keeping oneself locked up for days on end. Nakakaloka.
So, even as I entertain myself, I keep a budget in mind. Like a typical Batangueno, I refuse to spend it all in one sitting, in one big splurge, such as on food or any happy treat, lest I will have none of it the next coming days.
It’s pretty much the same with tasks to do. I reserve some tasks for the rest of my quarantine days, just to keep me busy and sane. I am done cleaning up my home office cabinet, clearing files, doing a Marie Kondo.
I’m afraid that as the number of infected persons keeps rising, we shall be confined in this state of mind, this halfa-death sentence, for a much longer time.
I dread the day shall come when I shall no longer have things to do at home because I have completed them fast and furious.
I hope and pray that specks of dust shall settle on the floor again tomorrow or that dry leaves from my own bougainvillea or the neighbor’s narra tree shall continue pouring in on my garage, just to keep me occupied. I realize I enjoy sweeping dried leaves and other throwaways on the ground.
That’s why I save, I budget, no longer money, which doesn’t come by these days, not even in trickles. I scrimp on tasks and time, what to do with time, what to eat during this time, what to read or watch at a certain time of day.
Perhaps, at the end of this Great Lockdown, I can apply for a post in government. I can head the Department of Budget and Management, which will never have a slot for dear old, scrimping, time-and-budget-conscious me.