Mattis

This came at the perfect time for me. The biggest thing I felt was that there was no fear of missing out. I’m more introverted, and before that, I was trying to play the extravert. And at that time, there was nothing going on, so I didn’t have to play the game; I was more myself than before. That was the main thing: it was a very positive experience. I got to know myself more. Maybe during the later stages, when it was almost over but not over, I had a little bit of this anxiety about how to go back to that life before the crisis.

I’m a software engineer, and I worked from home, so it wasn’t a big change for me. And now, it’s hard to push myself back into the office, but I know it’s good to be there. I feel it’s better when the workday starts, and workday ends, but at home, it lasts hours longer.

I started pushing my training routine, so every day, I worked out and did running. Around three months later, I’m planning to run a marathon. It was something I discovered that is helping me. When you run, you don’t have any thoughts. For me, it’s a meditative state of mind, so you have this daily break from everything, and you are just on the road.

I missed cultural events, traveling, or the feeling that sometimes you can do things that you feel kind of pop at you at the moment. But nothing major. I didn’t have any plans that were canceled; just a few possibilities: a few festivals outside Estonia. I had an event I was planning to go to at the end of May, but it was postponed until December. It’s a sports event that I wanted to watch in Germany, but it was postponed, so it’s still ok.

I think the lockdown itself wasn’t hard for me, but the period after was a bit hard because it goes to normal, but it’s not the same as before: it’s a totally new world. I cannot make any travel plans, even though the flights are going, I have to be more careful with those plans because I don’t want to get stuck somewhere. I think it’s the new normal; it’s never going back there. It’s in the middle of something, maybe not exactly the new normal.