Isolation has cured my FOMO…or has it?
The days since March 23rd have unfolded in a very similar way. I wake up at around 7am, then take a walk in the woods with my husband. An unbroken week of sunshine has lit the twigs atop the bare trees and turning the morning mist golden morning after morning. Once home, I read, cook, have a bath, and write. Perhaps in the afternoon I head out again for another walk. Then in the evening we watch a film, usually about the great outdoors or travelling, vicariously living the life we might otherwise be living were it not for the lockdown.
This is not everyone’s experience of lockdown. I am really lucky not to be juggling home working with young children. My parents and my husband’s parents are looking after themselves during corona virus. No major plans have been ruined, and, on top of this, I am spared the worry of having anyone I know succumb to the virus — although I know that is only a matter of time. Yet despite all this good fortune, I had not expected to be enjoying this lockdown as much as I am. Why? Because I had thought the isolation would be hard. In reality, though, it has removed my Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).
Abundance of time
In BC, (Before Corona), a day to myself was a rare thing. It therefore brought with it the pressure that comes with all rare things — to embrace them, to seize them, to make the most of them — which of course increases the chances that you won’t do any of that. A typical day to myself would have meant trying to do all things on my bucket list — walking in the parks I love, brunches with friends, a class I have always wanted to attend, a dance show, a trawl across the city to a coffee shop I quite liked. Then, at the end of the day, exhausted, a guilt that the smaller tasks in life were not accomplished — I did not do any writing. My bathroom is still a mess. I failed to bake a cake.
Now, let’s look at the difference AC. Days to myself are in abundance for the first time since I was a student. Forget that. Even as a student I had essays to complete, classes to attend, boys to howl over. These days are in abundance for the first time since I was probably about seven years old. And, like a seven-year old, I am not pressuring myself — mainly because seven-year olds don’t, and also because to a seven-year old, time is not a real concept and a day left to one’s own devices is not a rare thing.
I do not go to bed with a sense of unease that I did not sort out my taxes today, because there is always tomorrow, or the next day. I do not put the pressure on myself to ‘enjoy’ my free time, because these free days, this free time, is not in short supply — probably for the first time in modern history.
…And lack of choice
So we have more time than ever before. However, what is really making a difference to this isolation experience (for me), is the lack of choice on how to spend this time. So many of the things we could previously do have been restricted — which means, for me at least, my FOMO has been vastly reduced.
Myself and my husband can’t, for example, see any of our friends other than by video call. This has instantly eliminated all planning (location, activity, even thinking in advance) and increased spontaneity. Drink tonight? Why not. No one is busy doing anything else. We get to see our friends at the moment we have the energy and inclination to see them, rather than the BC days of planning it ahead, when we are of course still excited to see them but future mitigating factors (fatigue, distraction) can still come into play.
And this is only the beginning of the restrictions. I can’t go for a swim. I can’t go to a class. I can’t go to the dog shelter and walk a dog. I can’t go into town and have a coffee. I can’t go out for dinner, to the cinema, to the theatre. In fact, the only things we can do in our leisure time is walk, cook, read, listen to music or watch films. I can’t even bake the proverbial cake because the shops seem to be out of eggs. And funnily enough, this is ok. In fact, it is bliss. The very absence of the things I feared missing out on is turning out to be a huge advantage.
BC, I had no idea of the pressure I was putting myself under. Yet AC has thrown it into sharp relief. The lack of choice has brought me a deep sense of calm, disinfecting me of all the ‘shoulds’ and instead opening up the space for dreaming, for a vast horizon of ‘coulds’.
For the first time, we have the opportunity to not just to understand that too much choice as a society is bad for us, but to live it. And in living it, I feel a sense of ‘living’ and ‘being’ that I don’t think I’ve had since being a child. I wonder if we embrace this, rather than rail against it, we have something to learn?
…Or has choice just disguised itself?
The rapid spread of corona virus across every continent in the world is deeply unsettling. The social isolation and lockdown of business is seen as a temporary thing, after which everything will return to ‘normal’.
Yet to hold onto the old ‘normal’, I am seeing a new kind pressure building all around me: productivity. People boasting about the workouts they are doing, the virtual classes they are attending, languages they are learning, webinars in which they are participating, novels they are writing.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this. We have things we need to continue doing at this time — course and classes, doctor’s appointments, calls with relatives, work. Going further, exercising the body and engaging the mind is actually necessary to keep mentally healthy, and pouring our efforts into skills that will help shape a better future is a brilliant use of time.
However, transferring our old lives online and maintaining them zealously also assumes that things will return to ‘normal’ at a defined point. A holding pattern until things ‘calm down.’ Perhaps they won’t. Or perhaps they will, but they way we conduct our lives will be forever changed. This virus is one of the most major events of the last hundred years, and things changed after previous major events — the Second World War.
Indulging in this frenetic productivity is also unleashing a new type of FOMO. Rather than fearing missing out on something happening in real life, we now fear missing out on all the new activities open to us thanks to the extra time bestowed upon us. In recent days, I’ve felt a creeping sense that I ‘should’ be mastering new software, learning yoga at home, writing flash fiction — which has taken me out of my newly acquired enjoyment and back into the headspace and pressure of BC. This is a ‘normal’ I would very much like to let go of.
If we hold onto our old ways of thinking, our old pressures, our old FOMO, we might not be setting ourselves up for a very different future. If we rail against our new set of restrictions rather than embracing them, we might just be wasting our energy and putting off the inevitable.
This does not mean don’t be productive. It means giving ourselves the time to adapt and then welcoming productivity when it naturally arrives — rather than forcing it upon ourselves. Otherwise, we risk burdening ourselves with the very choice from which we’ve been given the opportunity to escape.
The corona virus is a terrible thing. Not just the virus itself, but what it has done to the world. I know of families kept apart, dear friends whose livelihoods now hang in the balance, whose hard-won plans are now in tatters. Outside of this, I know people are struggling to eat because they have no work.
However, if you are lucky enough to have your basic needs met, could some positivity can come out of this darkness too? If being given an abundance of time and an absence of choice might highlight some of the unhealthy but unrecognised behaviours of BC. And if we embrace this, could the world look like a better place once we reach AC?
