Day Five of Social Distancing

The days will start like other previous workdays. But there will be a twist.

You’ll wake up at 7:50am, turn your lights on, do 45 pushups, enter the bathroom and do the things people do in bathrooms.

You’ll draw your curtains and open the window. You’ll brew your morning coffee and have it with Swedish cookies. At 8:20am, the time at which you usually walk to the tram station, you are ready to start work.

You’ll sit at your table in T-shirt and sweatpants. You don’t remain in your boxers because you’ve got to get on a call with your boss to discuss important things. Your mind tells you, “Things of global importance should not be discussed when you’re in your underwear.” You’ll wear a checkered shirt. The sweatpants will stay.

After the call, you’ll begin knocking tasks off your schedule. You’ll eat and get back to working. At 5:00pm, you’ll shutdown your laptop and look out your window. You’ll see people on the flats across standing at their balconies. They’ll be smoking, drinking a beer and talking about things like social distancing. You can’t join their conversation so you stare at them. They stare back at you.

It’ll then become an evening ritual. You all stand at either your windows or balconies around the same time every evening to look at each other from a distance.

You’ll communicate through the language of sight and silence. Even though you won’t speak, everyone will understand that you all said hello to each other. And one after the other, you’ll all head back into the walls that keep you away from the rest. At the end of week one, you are still mentally strong.