Quarantine Week 10: How We're Doing & What We're doing

Y’all… I just stumbled across our Social Distancing: Week 1 blog post and was —shocked— by how much has changed in the past 9 weeks. This has been quite a horrible roller coaster ride, hasn’t it?

Back in early March when I wrote that post, I had absolutely no clue what we were up against. I discussed the importance of staying home, sure, but also mentioned small gatherings were okay if you kept distance (the CDC was still saying this at that time), and overall I just seemed kinda optimistic. Well, now, we’ve seen timelines for “getting back to normal” go from Mid-April, to Mid-May, to… maybe not for years. Even as states in our region try to reopen and ignore the threat of a second wave.

For us personally, this time has been a wild ride of ups and downs. At first we felt massively productive by being forced to stay at home, which for us is a workspace, and a place we’re constantly drawing inspiration from in order to produce content and projects here and on all of our social channels. I remember Matt expressing guilt at how productive he felt through all of this. That momentum didn’t exactly keep up. We’ve both fallen into depressive slumps here and there, argued about whether certain activities are risky or not, had days when we didn’t feel like doing anything and nights when where we couldn’t unwind. We’ve also learned way more about viruses than we ever cared to know, relearned how much our political leaders suck, and fully realized how essential human contact and community are.

It’s been a horrible, weird, and confusing couple of months. And we’re the lucky ones! We’re lucky to still have a job and be able to work from home, we’re lucky to be healthy, and we’re lucky to have each other for company. And even so, it’s still been terrible.

Shit am I supposed to try and stay positive?

Let’s throw in something “fun,” I guess. We’ve gotten really creative about quelling our boredom! We’ve baked pretty focaccia breads and tie-dyed some stuff that came out super cute and some other stuff that came out super not cute and we’ve worked out a bunch and tinkered with our plants and completed DIY projects and cleaned every room of the house and then slowly made them all messy again. A never-ending loop of trying to find something new to keep ourselves occupied.

We’ve turned to consuming movies and new TV shows at, like, an unprecedented rate. We started a thing where we watch a scary movie every night, which lasted for a week and a half before abruptly ending when we watched The Conjuring and I realized I can’t handle paranormal horror. So then we switched over to thrillers and science fiction things and that’s been helping but there are only so many movies to watch.

In case you’re interested, here are some movies that we’ve loved: Her, Ex Machina, The VVitch, The Invitation, The Conjuring & The Conjuring 2 (only if you like being terrified!), and Annihilation. And some all time favorites: Parasite, Hereditary, Midsommar, Get Out. We also started and finished watching Ozark and highly recommend it. Our most recent obsession is The Good Fight, which is dramatic and hilarious soap excellence.

So, let’s of screen time has been happening but that’s OK.

And then there’s our house hunt.

For the past year we’ve been eyeing Spring 2020 as when we’d finally be able to buy. We’ve spent the last couple of years aggressively saving money and doing a lot of soul searching for where we want to live and what we want these next few years to look like, and finally decided that buying a home in New Orleans was the right thing to do. And we’re ready to! But, like, the pandemic has made the whole ordeal weird. Going to see houses during all this is kind of a process, and the market seems a bit weird with not many houses coming up for sale.

I’m pretty much very set on one neighborhood that is kinda small and doesn’t have a lot of new houses on the market even during normal times, but with everything happening there are even fewer available. We did end up finding a house we love, and we have a backup offer on it. It doesn’t look like the first offer will fall through, so we’re most likely back to the drawing board. The house search has given us some excitement during this time of boredom, but it’s also maybe added a bit to our existing pandemic anxiety, so that’s not great.

Anyhow, the truth is that we’ve been fine, but we’re also kinda mentally struggling just like everyone else. Our online community has been a saving grace during all the weird, so thank you so much for being digital friends and keeping us company through it all. Hope wherever you are and however you are that we make you feel a little less alone too.

xoxo

Beau (& Matt)

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