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The One With the Routine in Quarantine.

29 Oct. 2020 

   My alarm goes off, and I slowly regain consciousness, I reach over and hit the snooze, 5 minutes literally won't hurt anyone. I roll back over, tucking the pillow under my head and pulling the duvet back over my shoulders. I have nothing to be awake for today, but I'd prefer to not sleep all day. I get up after the alarm goes through a couple more snooze cycles. My quarantine habits are most definitely bad habits, things I can't continue to do once my two-week stay is over. As I'm waking up, I shower and get ready to hit the day. I then throw my mask on and head to the cafe of the hotel for a cold-served breakfast and a warm cup of tea. On days like today when I'm feeling productive, I run back up to my room and grab my laptop to bring back down to the cafe and work on either left-over schoolwork, a new blog post, or some training videos for Radley. If I don't return to the cafe, I'll sit at the small desk provided in my hotel room, or even just take my laptop to my bed and sit there while doing some work. I promise work in the cafe is much more productive due to the unending flow of free tea and water. In my room, I tend to get distracted by the TV that I turn on just for background noise. 

    The restrictions for quarantining in the UK limit me to staying inside of the hotel 99% of the time, with the allowance for me to walk to the local Tesco (a grocery store, there's no real comparison in the states except maybe Aldi) and to walk around a small park outside the hotel. I'm not really supposed to be out of the hotel for more than 10 minutes. This also makes it so I can't really go for a run unless its just laps around the little park because I can't be too far from the hotel. (So basically I'm not running because I am not a fan of doing laps around anything) The hotel doesn't have a gym or any place to work out, so I've chosen to take the stairs any time I'm going up or down. Being on the fourth level it is enough of a climb to make me feel halfway decent about my lack of running. I have laced up my running shoes and run some stair repeats just to get my blood pumping after an afternoon of sitting on my bed with my laptop. I am definitely going to go for a good run once I'm out of quarantine. 

    I try to keep in touch with my family as much as I can which has been nice. My mom has been calling me every day when she gets to work which is usually around noon for me. That has been a nice thing just to call and see how things are going back home. Unfortunately, when I get started working, those calls will be harder and will have to be done in the evening after my family is off work for the day. But in quarantine, calls are greatly appreciated. I've had a couple of my friends call me as well, which is nice because as I said, it's always nice to be able to talk to friends. Which brings me to a point that I'd like to make... CALL YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY! You don't even need a reason. Just call them to check up on them, everyone loves to get a call from someone who cares about them. 

    Now I'm not saying that being stuck in quarantine has been easy. As a natural extravert, it's been hard because I want to go out and meet new people and make new friends, but I have to force myself to stay in because if I don't do my part to make sure people stay healthy, then how can I expect someone else to? Especially if they are carrying the virus and they don't know about it. But staying in has given me some rest that I have needed for a month or so. It is kind of nice not running off to somewhere every minute of the day. My time is truly my time and there isn't any sort of schedule that I have to follow. It's liberating but it is also very dangerous as I don't have anything I have to do at a certain time which allows me to procrastinate.


Update: When posting this, I have been out of quarantine for a week. I do not have internet access on my laptop so I had to sign in on the school's computer. Sorry for the wait.

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