As I lie on a floral picnic blanket in my backyard, the sun warming my skin and my dog shoving her tongue in my face to share her excitement about the great outdoors, I think I’ll take a different approach to writing this blog. No more structured, planned tutorials—at least not this time. Throughout the chaos of the past month, I’ve tried my hardest to avoid thinking of the negative. All the cancelled events, the isolation from all my friends, the fact that the senior year I’ve been dreaming of for the past 3 years of high school has been brutally murdered by a tiny little virus causing enormous devastation. Through these trying times, I’ve tried my hardest to stay positive, to stay afloat, to just survive until it all ends. But by forcing myself to focus on the positive, I’ve simply suppressed the negative still festering inside. So today, I’m just going to ramble and release my frustrations and hopefully the experience will be cathartic enough to give me peace for at least today.

The biggest challenge I’ve been facing is deciding how to spend my time. Without the rigid structure of a typical schoolday and clubs and badminton practice afterwards, my usually packed schedule has been blasted wide open—and dauntingly so. Before, my only wish was for a day off to relax and do nothing and now that I have it for two months straight, I have no idea what to do with it.

Me at any given point in time during the day.

Now I’m the type of person who feels guilty for even taking a breath while not working on something productive. I’m a textbook workaholic. In my mind, anything that isn’t productive feels like a waste of time. I can’t binge Netflix shows without a nagging voice in the back of my head reminding me that I could be using these ten hours being productive. Now, because of coronacation combined with senioritis, I find myself void of any motivation to do work yet simultaneously guilty for not bettering myself with this huge blessing of time. I’ve spent lots of time painting and studying Japanese, two hobbies that were pushed to the back-burner because of school, but even those activities have been milked to death. And then, I discovered the revolutionary idea of relaxation.

Being the workhorse that I am, I rarely grant myself the time for self-indulgent activities like painting my nails or taking a nice bath solely for the fun of it. But now, with such an abundance of free time and a lack of things to fill it with, I’ve explored self-care more than I have in the past few years. I did a face mask the other day! So fun. My skin was so dewy. I regularly lounge outdoors in my backyard, simply soaking up the sun and reveling in the luxury of thinking of nothing else. It feels wonderful. But I still feel guilty.

I’ve been struggling to learn that self-care and relaxation, things done purely for enjoyment and not to be productive, are not only okay, but necessary. I’ve been trying to take time for myself, to take a break from constantly working, and simply let myself be. It’s difficult, but it’s the kind of challenge I needed in this kind of time. With so much free time, it’s tempting to jam-pack my days with twelve new skills to learn and instead allow myself to rest. But hopefully when I come out of coronacation, I’ll finally have mastered the art of balance.

My coronacation schedule.

To keep myself accountable, I’ve devised a simple schedule that I hope to stick to in order to not only ensure I get the most out of my days (and that doesn’t necessarily mean constantly being productive), but also to give myself some structure. Mornings will be reserved for schoolwork, which I will have to begrudgingly complete before I can move on to any other part of my schedule. Once I finish all of that, the afternoon until dinner is reserved for “productive activities:” painting, studying Japanese, cleaning, dancing, going for runs, biking, practicing piano, or trying out new things and learning new skills. Then after dinner, the entire evening is “me time:” relaxing, playing games, reading, or simply rewatching the entirety of The Office for the twelfth time. This is when I can do whatever I want, free of guilt, because I spent most of the day already being “productive.” Hopefully this schedule will give me some semblance of purpose and structure in these chaotic times and help me come out of this better than before. I already feel more secure in having a plan compared to my aimless wandering before. I have a good feeling about this.

Now, I’ve finished my schoolwork for the day. It’s time for lunch, and then drawing for the afternoon. As for the evening? I think I’ll be spending my “me time” revisiting Webkinz and Clubpenguin for my childhood nostalgia. After all, it’s my time.