Social Distancing: Current Thoughts, Dealing With Anxiety, & Coping

Now that we’re all social distancing, self-isolating or in actual quarantine, life feels a little quiet. At the time of writing this, I haven’t stepped outdoors in almost a week. I’m working from home, blogging at home, relaxing at home… Pretty much not leaving my boyfriend’s student room. Writing this, I really don’t have a plan for what I’m going to say. I don’t think this is going to be an advice post, or even a particularly positive post. It’s probably going to be another one of those ‘spew out your feelings and hope it resonates with someone’ posts. Maybe we can work through our feelings via this post on my tiny little micro-blog.

Social Distancing In A Student Room Sucks

The situation: I am a full time ‘professional’ and my boyfriend is a first-year Biomed student. My boyfriend moved into halls in September and I pretty much just never went back to my own house. Forgive me for being soppy for a moment but I love my boyfriend and I love spending all my time with him, which is why I didn’t go back to my parent’s house. However!

Any student, past or present, will tell you that student housing sucks (unless you’re rich and unfortunately we’re not!). Let me tell you about our place in particular:

Our student room is 4 paces in width (maybe 3 depending on where you stand), and about 6 paces in length. In other words; tiny. We have one small window covered by metal bars and on the ground floor facing a tall building. You can probably imagine how much light comes in here. The floor is navy and the walls are a yellowing cream colour. We have a horrible damp problem we cannot solve, and black mould keeps creeping up our walls no matter how many times we treat it with spray.

It’s not a place that inspires happiness or creativity. As a blogger and “micro-influencer”, it’s hard to get pictures for my blog or Instagram in here. I replaced the horrendous orange light we had before for a natural lightbulb. It has helped but can only do so much. If I didn’t have my boyfriend here, I would probably lose my mind in this place. Being stuck in here only makes it worse. We don’t get to move into our new place (not a student flat) until July.

Anxiety With Social Media & Blogging

I’m really struggling with my creative hobby. Everyone has their own opinion of what the best thing to do during social distancing is. Some say you should take full advantage of the free time and work on your personal goals. Others say times are too difficult for this and you should take advantage of the time to relax.

For me, I fall on the side of ‘work hard’. I have to, to make sure my blog can be my job in the future. I follow a lot of girls that work in similar circles, and while it is amazing to see them get to fully focus on something they love, it’s hard for me to watch. One thing I’ve been very lucky with during this pandemic is that my full-time job is secure. I can work from home during my regular hours and get paid, and I am grateful for that. Although, on the other side, blogging is my real passion, and if I had the opportunity to dedicate extra time to this, I would love to.

Because I can’t, sometimes I feel like I’m falling behind. Then I pressure myself to work harder. Usually, I’ll do a full 8 hours of work, and then attempt to work another 5 hours at least on my blog in the evenings. As you can imagine, my brain is fried by this point and I will waste hours staring at a screen trying to force something out, and then get upset when it doesn’t come.

After a well overdue meltdown over the situation, I’m now trying to organise my work in a different way that allows myself the time to relax. If this works, I’ll probably write more about my experience in a future post, and how I (hopefully) managed to overcome it.

Social Distancing Means I Can’t See My Family

I’m sure a lot of people will be feeling the strain of this, especially if you’re as close to your family as I am. When I say I can’t go home, I mean that it would be irresponsible, or impractical, rather than I physically can’t. I know for a fact my mum really wants us all at home!

I’m used to travelling home at least once a week to see my family but I haven’t been able to do so for almost two weeks now which is a difficult adjustment. Although, I think the worst part of it is that my sister is due to give birth to her first baby this week and I probably won’t get to meet him for at least weeks, or at most, months.

Luckily there are ways to see them without seeing them, thanks to FaceTime. My sister and I regularly visit each other’s islands on the new Animal Crossing game (lol) and it does help things feel a little more… Regular. I’m lucky to not be completely alone in this whole ordeal since I have the company of my boyfriend. Things are still difficult and strange, but every day it gets a little easier, and every day we’re a little closer to the end.

What Is Your Experience With Social Distancing? How Are You Coping?

I want this blog post to be a place for us all to vent out our frustrations. On social media, there can be a huge pressure to be positive all the time, and it’s just not realistic. We’re all going through something we’ve never experienced. It’s going to be difficult to adjust. Some days will be worse than others, and that’s fine.

Allow yourself to be angry and upset! Allow yourself to vent! I am happy to read and chat with you all about things that are bothering you. We all need to be there for each other, now more than ever!

Feel free to leave a comment sharing how you feel below, or if you prefer more privacy, my DM’s are always open across my social media channels.

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Love, Flossie ♡