Quarantine Journal. Day 842. The sun beckons us from the windows of the apartment, but we remain unable to descend the stairs of our apartment to bask in it due to the ongoing pandemic.

Not really.

In reality, I am going into Week 6 of lockdown this week. My social distancing began on March 21 when I made the decision to begin staying home. Shortly thereafter, it became a mandate rather than a suggestion.

Adapting to the lockdown hasn’t been easy. When this began, I brushed it off. After all, as someone who is generally an introvert too begin with, I am used to staying in during the evenings. I don’t have much of a social life, to be honest. After moving to Richmond in late 2017, I’ve made very few friends. Making friends as an adult is hard. Making friends as an autistic introvert adult is even harder. So this was going to be easy, right?

I quickly found that wasn’t the case. I realized my small outings I would make, whether it’s my daily trip to the gym, my weekly trips to pick up groceries, or those random trips to Target where I just roam around aimlessly, were more valuable to my mental health than I had thought. These things became luxuries I could no longer participate in.

For groceries and other necessities, I found delivery services sporadic and had to fight for time slots. People continued hoarding. Through a little strategic planning on Instacart & Shipt, I was able to ensure a steady delivery of groceries so I wouldn’t have to go out. After all, I live with someone who works in a hospital, so it makes sense for me to self-isolate more than the average person.

For workouts, however, that was difficult. I was using a backpack loaded with books for the first week, doing quick 30 minute workouts. They weren’t excessively intense, but enough to push through. I just wasn’t feeling it. Then it was made easier by the fact that my box was kind enough to loan us equipment to weather this. I took out a dumbbell, a kettlebell, a jump rope, an ab mat, and a PVC pipe. I muddled through the next week, but I still couldn’t get consistent.

My coach was kind enough to write something up for me he thought might make sense and get me on track. It definitely helped. The fourth week, new programming was launched in the gym’s app for at-home workouts with just some dumbbells. I managed to track down a pair of 25 pound dumbbells. The next two weeks, I was fairly consistent on the workouts, getting in my scheduled sessions each day. I still wasn’t bringing the intensity I thought I should be doing, and the data showed that.

Looking at the data in February, I see a very distinct level of strain that I exerted. The first half of March showed a similar set of numbers. Then things fall off from there as I exited the box and started working out from home. This validates, through data, everything I’ve been feeling since social distancing began.

I had a good talk with my coach on Thursday. We discussed some of the things that have been going through my mind since this began. The key thing we tuned into was my need to stop beating myself up. This, above all, seems to be the biggest issue with pushing harder.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been keeping “Habit Tracking” sheets updated in our online group for the gym. For this week’s tracker, I went through everything I wanted to do, both fitness and personal, and dug into what I really wanted to achieve.

I decided to keep my macros the same this week, and instead focus on increasing the volume of work and the exertion during the WODs themselves. I will be using the prior week’s data to compare to workouts this week. At the end of the week, the objective will be to compare the weekly strain from my Whoop band and ensure it increases week over week.

On my tracker I’ve also started to include personal “projects” that I want to complete. This week, I want to spend at least 30 minutes drawing, block away 15 minutes a day for general writing, 15 minutes for reading, and during the week pull together one video for YouTube.

As I look back on the prior week, my reflection is rather simple... I needed to work hard, work smarter, and refocus my efforts on what I really enjoy. I get distracted, or I feel like I can’t do something perfectly, and I never complete what I set out to do. Perfect is the enemy of good.

Perfect is the enemy of good. -Voltaire

This coming week will represent a change in thinking, as I focus in on my overall goals and work to dispel negative thinking. Form good habits, focus on getting activity in to move the scale and move my work on personal projects, and achieve the things I really have been wanting to do for some time now.