How I rediscovered myself during Quarantine.

I am a software developer and quarantine for me only meant taking my work home. During these four months of quarantine, my perception of myself changed a lot.

When quarantine started, my life and the routine it had was suddenly disrupted. Let me give you a picture of my life before quarantine. On weekdays, I used to wake up everyday at around 8am. Got ready went to office, we used to play the various indoor games in the premises for about an hour. Then I would start working till lunch-time which was a time where our team sat together and talked about everything that was going on in the world. Then it was work time again till evening when we played and had tea and snacks and sometimes made plans to go to a mall or have a house party. Weekends too had become a routine where you either went out to party.

So you can understand how everything changed with quarantine. I no longer knew how to pass my time. I dreaded weekends because I had no office work and thus did not know what to do with my time. I started welcoming late night meetings since it gave me something to do during that time. I started sleeping early waking up even late since that was one way to kill time 🤷🏻‍♀️. But I am also a foodie and now since I could not eat out, I started learning and new new dishes. I looked forward to this part of the day and started watching all kinds of cooking videos and making them.

Slowly as time progressed, I started digging in my past for other hobbies I had before my job and my busy lifestyle started. I tried my hand at art. I also tried to bring back the discipline I had in my life before. I started thinking and planning out my day in advance. This made me happy and look forward to the day. I filled my free time with everything I loved doing — like art, dance , cooking.

I started learning some choreographies, adding my own twist to traditional recipes, adorning my room with my craft.

Egg curry, LEGO ship and Fish curry (Bengali style)

Street style Noodles and chilli paneer and a random art on my wall.

I also felt particularly happy during the day and starting learning new technologies and playing around with a raspberry pi which I could never do before because I never had this much time on my hand. I started rediscovering my passion for coding and learning. I started creating new challenges for myself. Here is a pic of motor controlled by a raspberry pi. I started my journey into robotics with this one during quarantine.

This quarantine, I have started appreciating myself more and loving myself even more. It made me realise how much “LIVING” I missed earlier in my race to finish before deadlines.