Pockets of pleasure…

I never really ruminate on why I feel down, if ever I do.

I’m quick to feel, process, and push away those unsavoury moments of sadness, darkness, or tension.

But considering Covid-19 has had simultaneous socioeconomic, physical, and psychological effects on everyone – regardless of whether you think you feel affected on any level, on not – I thought it prudent for me to note what was perhaps making my content moments less prolonged.

Right before the initial national lockdown commenced here in South Africa, I took on a DIY project to brighten up the tiny closet I call home.

This project was not only to keep my active brain and idle hands busy, but also to capture the outside worlds feeling of glorious freedom and wanderlust, if only on one tiny little table I’d be bound to for the foreseeable Corona-affected future.

I managed to please myself with a pristine white corner saturated in pops of refreshingly cool and hazy colours…but after another lockdown extension, my contentment waned once again.

2 Weeks ago, I just woke up and was frank with myself: these four walls are my inexplicable reality atleast for the rest of 2020.

Hoping to return to my shared workspace for work, for the next great adventure abroad, to be able to hug my mother and feel safe and whole, is a fools dream.

So, I weighed up my means, and took the risk of moving across the hall in my building – easily (read: safely) enough since there is virtually no one around here.

Turns out: one of the main reasons for my melancholy moments cropping up more and more, beyond the worry of Covid-19, was because I haven’t lazed about with the sun kissing my face, is AGES!

I honestly thought my sporadic essentials runs to the neighbourhood mall, as well as the constant view of Table Mountain from my bed, was enough.

Nope!

My body has known the warmth of the African sun for more than 2 decades, and being without it for as many weeks as I’ve been sequestered, has actually impacted me psychologically.

It’s not even that I spend my regular days working out in the sun, or that I’m always in spaces flooded with it, but I usually do beach days in one of the worlds most favoured beaches (Clifton), and I take trips locally and internationally.