the new normal

It's 6.30 AM on Friday 13th March. My second alarm is already blaring and, as usual, I don't remember snoozing the first one. A routine that started as a happy accident is now a religious imperative, else I'd be late for work. The kind of late that forces you to decide between being late but having showered, or turning up to work having barely washed. In honesty, I actually used to opt with the latter - but having done it a few times I can promise you, I regretted that choice for the rest of the day. So these days, when faced with the choice, I prefer to take that essential shower and be done with it. At least I'm not uncomfortable for the rest of the day, and thinking and then over-thinking how disgusting I feel and how people have definitely noticed . It got so bad that to this day, I still carry a tooth brush in my work bag. Let me tell you that has came in handy a few times - although that was mainly so I could crash at the home of any friend, family member or, tragically, one night stand I liked and could still do my morning ablutions in the shower block at the base of the office building. A tooth brush teamed with some deodorant and some dry shampoo and I was practically set. Yep - I was a hot mess.

I've been towing the line for a while now though - cleaning up my act. I stop the alarm at 6.40 AM, ruffle my greasy mop of hair and count to three, willing myself out of bed for a shower. Cranking the water on I'd open the window and prepare my wooden-handled safety razor and shaving foam while the water heats up. I'd start with the shampoo, an SLS-free formula from Herbal Essences. I don't condition my hair anymore, so afterward I'd squeeze some Tee Tree and Mint shower gel into the bristles of my shower brush for a thorough scrub. Lastly I'll finish off with a daily scrub from Green People, which I actually only use just before I'm about to shave. Ablutions done and water stopped, I'll quickly squeegee the walls and the glass panel of the wet room-style shower cubical before I dry off. Every two days or so I'll have a shave, which is by far my most favourite type of self-care, at least in the strangely satisfying category. Once done, I'll rinse my face with water as cold as I can cope with, then dab on a bit of moisturiser. Lastly I'll spray on some after shave, just to make sure those pores are closed.

7.30 AM rolls around and I need to leave the house to make it to the train station on time. Before moving out of the family home, I'd either need to drive myself to the train station, or phone a taxi if my car was off the road. But these days, I live so close to the station that, at rush hour, it actually takes longer to drive to the station than it does to just walk - regardless of how late I am! Don't get me wrong, it doesn't make it any less tempting when the weather is crap - but I usually just don't have the time. So I'll grab my work bag and a coat, and sometimes a brolly too, and head for the station. Often, in my dazed rush to get ready, I'll find myself half-way down the street asking myself, "Did I lock that door?" So I'll end up marching back up the street again to put my mind at ease. To this day I've never got back to that glossy red door and found it unlocked. That said, there was one Sunday I woke up after a house party and found someone had left the door lying wide open. Fair to say I've been paranoid ever since.

On a good day, I'll catch the 7:45 AM train to Glasgow City Centre. I do often miss that train and end up on the 7:56 AM one, which ends in me bursting in through the office door 10 minutes late, sweaty from the power walk and often soaked with the rain. On the train, I'll stick on a podcast. I've been listening to Matt D'Avella and The Minimalists a lot recently, although there are many more I want to start. I had first discovered minimalism maybe a year prior, but was yet to really start practicing it. Like all things in my life, I tend to think about them constantly until I frustrate myself into action. If I was feeling particularly anxious or short of breath, I'd take a moment to myself with the help of the guided meditation app, Headspace. I'd pick the topic I wanted to explore, press play and close my eyes. The narrator takes you through the steps from start to finish, and when you open your eyes, you have either arrived at your station or are nearly there. It's great! It was the only moment of calm and clarity I would allow myself, which made it feel all the more important, even ground-breaking.

If I had the time and was in the mood, I'd often stop by a coffee house for a latte. Usually this meant Starbucks, but sometimes, if I wanted coffee that tastes good, I'd go a bit further out my way for the sake of Laboratorio Espresso Bar. Their espresso is great, but I'd usually settle for the Americano so it lasts a bit longer.

I'd swing the office door open, drop my lunch off in the fridge and arrive at my desk through a tidal wave of 'Morning,' and 'Sapnin' from all directions. I'd dock my laptop and wait for it to power up, while finishing the last of my coffee. I go through coffee like an F1 car goes through petrol. Then someone would perk their head above the desk dividers and say "Snout?" while holding out a packet of Sterling Dual Capsule cigarettes. A rotten habit I had picked up and after two years was trying to kick, much to the dismissal of my colleagues of course. "Nope, I've quit," I'd say, to which they'd follow with "Aye, ye said that last Friday morning." And to be fair to them, I did. But often, all it would take was a few pints in the pub after work on a Friday and I'd be over the road in a newsagents buying a new packet. "Is it not a bit early for that anyway, you've just started," I'd say, to which they would tut and walk away, gathering others as they went.

I'd then spend the day like I did any other day - in a whirlwind of chaos. Responding to emails, instant messages, ticket updates and phone calls and balancing work I needed to do with meetings about work I needed to do, and meetings about meetings. No time to waste, no plan of attack, and no real idea if I was making any noticeable dent in my workload. Often I'd feel lucky to manage a lunch break, and since we aren't paid for them, we're contractually entitled to take them. Yet even still, many don't, but still find themselves neck-deep in work. Work that is ultimately someone else's work. Work that serves the goals and values of someone else. It really is true what they say, if you don't set your own priorities, someone will set them for you.

Then the email came. The email everyone had been waiting for but at the same time, didn't think would actually come. The email was titled, 'Important Company Update Regarding The Coronavirus.' With the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, the company made the decision to temporarily close all offices, effective Monday 16th March 2020, with all employees to work remotely until further notice. For the rest of the day the office was in turmoil, with people prepping their desks to be broken down, un-cabled and taken home for starting work from home the following Monday. In the aftermath the office looks like a ghost town, abandoned and eerily quiet.

Nearly 6 months later and the provisional return-to-office date has been pushed back again until at least January 2021. At the time of announcement, I realised that meant we were not even half-way through our working from home period. Naturally, a wash of emotion came over me in that moment that sort of panicked me. As a species, a country and as individuals, we've all been through so much already. For the most part, I've been taking it in my stride. The only real time I've found myself panicking was when I went for the food shop late one Saturday afternoon, having spent most of the day hungover. I got to the shop with a list of things I needed for the week and found that the vast majority of stuff I needed wasn't there. It was like I'd arrived at the set of a zombie movie. People were manic. Many of the shelves were barren, completely stripped of goods people wouldn't even normally buy. Getting your hands on tinned butter beans - a staple food for the vegetarian home cook - was a near impossibility.

I found myself having to re-write my shopping list on-the-fly based on anything I could find that I could make work. Now I'm usually quite happy to wing it, but I think the fact I wasn't expecting it caused a bit of a panic attack in the shop. Besides this one, I've only ever had one other panic attack in my life, back when I was an apprentice and standing in the busiest train I'd ever seen with two men on either side of me shouting at each other. It was a sitch! So having only had one in my life, I did not cope with it well at all. Short of breath and struggling to think straight, I grabbed enough to see us for a few days, paid and left quickly. I took the lift to the car deck, loaded the boot with the 2 or so shopping bags and perched myself on the bonnet for an anxiety-induced cigarette. Most of my cigarettes were anxiety cigarettes, where in fact a 5-minute walk every few hours would have done the trick, maybe even have prevented my picking up the habit.

Really it was from that moment, sitting on the bonnet with just 3-days worth of food in the boot, smoking the last of my cigarette looking out over the car deck at the trees in the distance, with the panic attack subsiding, that I realised some changes needed to be made. Perhaps lockdown was the best thing that could have happened to me after all.

~Aedan