Lockdown Lethargy

I had planned to have the attic cleared out and redecorated by March. I thought the garden would be a source of pride and joy by June. I was sure I’d be back running 10k by August. But it’s October and I’ve achieved none of the above. Some days I don’t recognise myself. I feel like Mr. Lazy living in Sleepyland. In the Roger Hargreaves children’s book, it takes two hours for a kettle to boil and three hours for bread to toast. My reality is mirroring this fiction right now as every task feels far more burdensome than it did this time last year. I work feeling tired. I cook feeling tired. I walk feeling tired. I read feeling tired. I just can’t shake my lockdown lethargy.

“Keep busy. Don’t slouch around. Get up in the morning, get dressed, have a plan.” This is the advice given in The Guardian by a woman who has lived on an island in the Inner Hebrides – one of the most isolated communities in the UK – for 40 years. I would have said the very same thing last year to anyone feeling listless or anxious. I’ve always believed energy breeds energy. The more active you are, the more you’re likely to feel like doing. But right now – today – I feel about as interested in going for a walk as I am in Melania Trump’s beauty routine, and the pious advice of those who are fortunate enough not to feel this way makes me want to curl up in the foetal position and hide my head in my hands.

I used to be someone who ran at 6.30am before work. I’d often take my dog for long walks two or three times a day, until he’d stubbornly lay on the grass as if to say, “Enough already”. I would regularly park my car on Fitzwilliam Square rather than in the Brown Thomas car park just so that I could incorporate more movement into my day, and Dun Laoghaire pier was my regular lunchtime wander when I worked in the coastal suburb. I’ve never been a sedentary person. I don’t need a Fitbit to know when I’m moving enough and when I’m not. These days I’m not. These days I just can’t seem to manage it.

This lockdown lethargy doesn’t floor me every day, but it’s happening too often for me not to wonder what it’s all about. Since writing the previous three paragraphs of this piece, I’ve fallen into bed and slept for over an hour. I contracted Covid-19 in March and suffered chronic fatigue throughout the summer, but this current lethargy feels different – it’s more sporadic for one thing – so I don’t think I’m experiencing what’s being termed as “long Covid”, where individuals show symptoms of long-term exhaustion as a result of the disease.

I think, like a lot of others, I’m simply suffering from the emotional wear and tear of working from home and social confinement.

The New York Times is calling my lockdown lethargy “pandemic fatigue”. It describes the sheer frustration and weariness people are feeling now that a second wave of restrictions has been imposed. We’re all in the midst of an unrelenting Groundhog Day of Netflix, Zoom and leisurewear. I’ve never been a party girl, festival goer, or concert lover, so perhaps I thought I could handle another lockdown easier than others. But I miss my local pub, the nearby restaurants that recognise me and my sisters, the wine chats with close friends who are a much-needed source of support when life goes awry. And although I live beside two beautiful parks, I miss walking outside of my locality; Bray to Greystones, Glendalough, the Sugar Loaf. It’s silly really because an autumnal palette is just as mesmerising in Dublin as it is in Wicklow, the leaves just as crisp underfoot, but it’s the sense of occasion that’s been lost. Heading down to Wicklow to a favourite walking spot, stopping off in a cosy bar for a pub lunch and a cheeky lunchtime glass of wine afterwards is the nicest way to spend a weekend afternoon. A takeaway coffee in the local park can’t compete, at least not when it’s on repeat day after a monotonous day.

It may sound ridiculous to compare the coronavirus to an invisible jailor, but there are days when lockdown feels like lock-up. The same four walls have defined our existence for most of this year, as has the absence of friends and sometimes family. Like prisoners in cells, we can go outside only for exercise, and like lifers, we’ve no idea when it will all come to an end. Inmates view time as the enemy because they have so much of it and no control over how they spend it. Sometimes the days stretching out before me feel more like a mountain I must climb than a pathway I can happily skip along. It’s no yellow brick road, let’s say.

Once upon a time, “time” was our most precious resource, but this year – like in some perverse fantasy or an episode of The Twilight Zone – we’ve had an abundance of it. The phrase “time pressure” means something entirely different than it did 12 months ago. We all feel obliged to make the most of the unprecedented extra hours we’ve been granted, but the pressure of this coupled with the lockdown lethargy many of us are feeling simply leads to feelings of guilt and inadequacy – about all of the things we thought would have been possible during a year away from the traditional 9-5 grind. Last month The New York Times ran an article about individuals who had grand plans for self-improvement during lockdown, but who have since torn up their to-do lists. One of the men featured explained, “Time has seemed to be on this slipstream, where things are either moving very fast or very slowly, but nothing is really getting done.” Exactly.

The author Alice Walker once said, “Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.” This is the conundrum we’re in right now. I’ve heard the pandemic referred to as a marathon, not a sprint, and certainly some days I feel like an inexperienced long-distance runner who is nowhere near the finish line. I spoke to a friend of mine on the phone yesterday and she told me that joining a (socially distant) running club has brought her back to life. Like that woman quoted in The Guardian said, you’ve got to have a plan no matter how exhausting that seems right now.

Maybe a running club would work for me? I recently wrote about how most of us are missing the everyday sparks of connection that office life used to provide, and it’s this connectivity that appeals to me about a running club much more than the exercise itself, which I’ll probably struggle with initially. I guess there’s no easy answer to lockdown lethargy except to try and push through it, and hope that tomorrow will be a better day. All I know is that I need to get my tired ass out of Sleepyland one way or another, because more than anything else, I’m tired feeling tired.

Marie Kelly, October 2020.

What are your thoughts dear reader? The comments are open for you below…