Pushing Through Quarantine Laziness

I’m struggling to push through the quarantine laziness. Internships have been canceled, wrenches have been thrown in different summer job plans, and the underlying factor of the summer of 2020 for a college student is that motivation is at an all-time low.

Coronavirus sent me home three months early from college, meaning that I would have to get my work done at my childhood home. I originally had a well-organized and scheduled plan for how I was going to do my work while living back at home. I immediately tossed out that well thought out plan when online classes began after spring break. The three pieces of wood that I call a desk soon became a place to throw my college junk and day-old laundry. I would attend my Zoom calls from the bed, and then do all my homework from my bed or on a downstairs couch.

Something was off and I just couldn’t combat the laziness.

When school finally ended, I had all of these plans for what my summer was going to be. I thought I was going to work out, write every day, and do all of these productive things. I never thought of myself as someone who can just lie around all day doing virtually nothing except feeding myself occasionally and watching TV. Boy did I prove myself wrong. Every day seemed like a repeat of the previous day and I felt like I barely accomplished anything. My biggest accomplishment so far during this quarantined summer has been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. Other than watching the best show Nickelodeon has ever made, my time has felt wasted.

Thanks to TikTok my screen time has skyrocketed.

So has the number of times I have felt that gross feeling that happens when I stare at a screen for an hour. It’s hard not to compare my unproductive schedule when I am constantly reminded by social media that there are way more productive things I could be doing. People actually wake up before noon, mind-blowing.

So where did all my motivation go?

How do I get it back? I wish I knew how to answer these questions, but a vicious cycle brought to me by my own laziness.

I think I work best in high-pressure situations and being at home, I feel little pressure to do anything productive. Sometimes I try to imagine what my summer would have been like in a pre-COVID world. I see myself interning somewhere in DC, waking up early, walking around the city and always completing my Fitbit step goals and then I’m brought back to reality and Netflix asks me if I’m still watching. I know that having no pressure to be productive is a privilege, and I am very grateful that I can lie around all day, but nothing makes me feel worse about myself than actually lying around all day.

Quarantine has had a drastic impact on what I do in a day.

My motivation is way down and my laziness is way up and it has been a real struggle dealing with it. I feel like a lot of college students who were expecting to have a busy summer and are now hanging out at home feel the same way. Getting out of a rut is hard work, but just like with every problem the first step to fixing it is recognizing that it’s there. More than anything I am looking forward to the fall, hopefully going back to college will be an option and I will be able to get out of the rut of summer 2020. Until then I hope to fix my unproductiveness one day at a time. Accomplishing small things, and keeping as much of a routine as I can.