The Pandemic Lifestyle

I don’t know how you feel but for me all the days are more or less the same ever since we had a lockdown because of the Corona/COVID19 pandemic. Before all of this I used to go to different places for work from Monday til Friday and the weekends I would meet my friends and we went to restaurants or bars or sometimes just met at home.

Well, with the pandemic all of this had drastically changed and of course the way we live with each other has also drastically changed. Grocery shopping became a real hassle, there is no way to enter without a mask and a shopping cart at most supermarkets and the new normal is to wait in line until you can finally enter the shop. Also the other new normal is that certain products are almost never available. Here in Germany when this whole thing started it was very hard to get flour, yeast, toilet paper, pasta and rice. Nowadays most of those things are available apart from yeast, that is still very hard to find most of the time.

I don’t mind being at home a lot, before I was also a lot at home apart from going to work. OK, now I work from home most of the time which is nice. I am blessed here, I am grateful that I can work from home because I know that for many people it is not possible and many jobs were lost due to to Corona crisis and lockdown.

I planned to travel this year. I wanted to go to Spain, the place I call my second home, and I also wanted to go to Shanghai. I’d say none of this is going to happen this year. But it’s ok. Then I will just go next year. So I am trying to make the best of the time that I spend at home. I bought a grill for my balcony and now it feels like I have an outdoor kitchen, I totally love that. The food I grill tastes amazing and it also is super healthy. Also I bought an ice cream maker and I can honestly say that this was another awesome investment for the home quarantine. I can tell you, homemade vanilla ice cream is such a dream. The grill and the ice cream maker totally support my Ray Peat inspired way of eating and lifestyle. I would have never bought these things without being home quarantined, that is for sure.

And now I am also learning how to bake with sourdough, this had been on my agenda for a long time already as well, but like it always is I was busy with work and whatever and also a bit intimated by sourdough but now I try to find my way around and to learn it. My first epic dough fail I had already since I had my dough fermented too long at room temperature and then when I wanted to bake with it, it was so sticky that it was impossible to use it for anything, so I had to throw it away. But it’s the process, trial and error and after a while you get the hang of it when learning new skills. And I will get there, I am proud of myself that I made it at least to make an active starter - because about two years ago when I tried a sourdough starter for the first time, I did not make it to have an active starter in the end - so that it worked out now already is a small win. Next step will be to really get a good dough I can work with and to bake with sourdough. I will get there for sure. It’s great, there are so many videos on YouTube to learn from and that is what I am doing now. I won’t give up until I succeed, that is the for sure.

For me the pandemic lifestyle really ain’t bad I have to say. I had always been a homie who loved spending time at home, being at home and cooking, baking, reading, designing, writing - and now I do a lot more of it since living the pandemic lifestyle. Restaurants and bars are open again, I went to a restaurant now a few times, I go to places where you can sit outside. That’s nice and here I think the social distancing thing is totally cool because there is more space between the tables and you have a little more privacy. That is one aspect I like about it.

Also luckily I live in a very nice area, very close there is a lake and a park so I can be in nature right away. Weather has been good so I try to spend time outdoors whenever I can and that is super good for my wellbeing. I think in Winter the pandemic lifestyle would have been a lot worse and depressing, now with the good weather it is not a problem because I have a balcony and because I can spend time outdoors in nature very close to my home. Right now I am glad that I don’t live in Barcelona anymore in crappy shared apartments with a complete lockdown, this would have been a real nightmare for me. But here I have a pretty apartment with a balcony so being home most of the time is not a problem at all.

Of course the whole Corona situation sucks but at least I try to focus on the aspects that turned out well for me and as you can see it’s quite a few. Also this is totally my motto to always focus on the good instead of on the bad because like that life is a lot more fun, a lot more rewarding and easygoing. Also I kind of redefined my goals so now I am working on making things happen. I know, it will still take some time but I now know that I am on the right track.

I wonder when things will go back to normal again. I guess that the pandemic lifestyle will continue at least about a year. I don’t think we will be living like this forever but I think it will be a total of 1 or 2 years, that was at the case with the Spanish Flu so chances are high that it won’t be much different for us. But let’s see what the future brings. I just try to be optimistic, to focus on myself and my goals and to work on that.