Measuring out my life in coffee spoons

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 

Ever since I came across this poem while researching for a project, the image has stuck in my mind - measuring one's life with coffee spoons. As the poem examines Prufrock, the prototypical modern man's tortured psyche, this line stood out for me because of the monotonous repetition in life that it captures with such careful precision.

I definitely cannot relate to Prufrock's age and circumstance, but I do relate to the carefully controlled and predictable life that lies behind this simple action - now more so than ever. 

Since the lockdown started five months ago, it feels like I have been stuck in the same day, reliving different versions of it. It is incredible and also disturbing how so much has changed in the past few months and at the same time, so little. 

When the lockdown began, I had barely had any time to decide how I felt about it. And being a rather introverted person, I did not really mind staying home. I was anxious, yes and worried too. But most of all I was busy. I kept cleaning and sanitising everything like a maniac. With more time in my hands that I had ever imagined, I was being quite productive - reading a lot, writing some, learning a new language, finding new hobbies and returning to old ones. Mostly, I read (scared that I won't be able to for long if I catch the virus).

I have always found comfort in what is known, what is predictable. So now that I have settled into a new routine, a huge part of which includes online classes, it should be fine, right?

Well, it isn't. I feel really foggy and tired all the time, and my sleeping schedule is worse than ever. I have become really moody - snapping at my family at the slightest. Needless to say, the mood swings are soon followed by feelings of guilt and despair.

While online classes initially had me up and about by six, they have begun to lose their novelty. They had brought some semblance of routine into my life and well, I kind of missed learning too. However, where I had been paying attention and taking rigorous notes, I can barely stay up, nowadays. In the last couple of weeks, I fell asleep during class, thrice.

It is so difficult to stay motivated when you are stuck in your home for five months. Frustration and anxiety are my new best friends and they don't seem to be leaving me alone for long. And whatever concentration I had is up in gone. I have been flitting from task to task and getting annoyed at ridiculously trivial things such as my poor internet connection that seems to worsen whenever I have a class or my room which ends up under layers of dust only days after I clean.

The only daily activity that does not get on my nerves is my morning cup of coffee. It is the only sameness in the days that actually keeps me sane, helps me pull through. There is something comforting in that same cup, the same taste of the coffee. It's like a buffer period between the night's sleep and the day's activity, when the day has started but not quite, and I can enjoy the drink forgetting for a moment that the rest of the day will be the usual dull drag. Perhaps the reason why I cherish it so much is that it is one of my only daily activities that I used to do before this lockdown, that I still can.