I wasn't 100% where a suitable place to post this would be, so I thought the OCD community, might be the best place to put it.
I wanted to talk about something that has been on my mind for a while but, I never really put it into words before.
As the whole world spent the best part of two years in a lockdown we've all been through a lot, have lost people we love, and weren't able to spend much time with people in person like we used to.
The lockdowns across the world were necessary, but, the safety they helped to provide for us all, hindered so many different aspects of our lives. It's a long time to spend cooped up. But, what I wanted to do was talk about some benefits I managed to take away from being on lockdown. Which is weird, let's face it, we would all rather that these two years didn't happen as they did, but, sometimes it's good to take a bad situation and give it a positive spin if possible.
Two days ago, while out celebrating paddy's day. I met a lot of people who I hadn't seen in a long time, usually when I was out in the pubs regularly. I would often bump into these familiar faces, they wouldn't exactly be people I would contact to go for a coffee and they wouldn't do the same back. But, I think we enjoy the company of one another, nonetheless.
I had a conversation though, with one of those people while out the other day and the subject of the lockdown came up and he asked me how I had found it. Through the conversation, we both started to speak about some of the benefits we took away from it and I thought I would write a post here to discuss a few of those positive things that I've taken away from what is hopefully the end of this chapter in our lives.
Introspective Thoughts
I had a lot of time to think, during the whole situation. About my life and what I want to do with myself.
I have always been the kind of person who puts things off, I'll do this, that or the other next week, next month, or next year. But, after so long of having no choice, I've changed. I want to travel, it's one thing I haven't done much of. Now though I want to see some of the world.
As well as traveling outside of Ireland, I'm hungry to get out of my town as much as I can. Usually, I would head off for nights out while playing gigs with the band, but, these two years have given me such a thirst to get out for nights out of town as much as I can. If there is something going on, from here on out I'll be trying to get out to it.
I've started that already, last weekend I went to Comic-Con, something I wanted to go to for years but, never did. I'm so happy to have gone because it was a good buzz, there's another one in August which I'll be going to as well and I'll be dressing up for it.
The weekend before that I was up in Dublin for a gig, some friends of mine were having an album launch in one of the pubs we used to play at, a lot before the lockdown and it was a great night. The last bus back was 11 o'clock which was terrible, so I rang a few friends and booked and filled a taxi bus for us all to drop us up and back down here. We all had a great night and it was well needed.
Reading
I started reading more than I ever have in my whole life. I've never really been a reader, which is fairly shameful. I've always been more into listening to music, watching stuff, or gaming in my free time. But, while locked up inside I barely did any of that stuff during the day. I started by picking up the game of thrones books, which I had wanted to read for a long time. But, all that spare time gave me the chance to do so. It took me about 9 months to finish them and now I'm eagerly awaiting The Winds of Winter. Reading helped me through it, because, without sounding too cringe. It teleported me to a different world. More than gaming, or watching stuff ever did.
Here's a quote I heard George R.R. Martin say, which is pretty powerful I think. I could have sworn in the interview, I heard him say the quote was by someone else. I couldn't find it online. If anyone knows if it is his own quote or if he is quoting someone else, let me know.
Reading I think helped me with my writing ability for my own stuff I'm doing. When I started out I was reading so slowly. I always kind of excused myself in the past by saying. "Well, I'll never be good at it because I'm dyslexic." But, no. I was able to work through it slowly, I'm still not fast and have to take a second look occasionally. But, I'm way better than I was.
Finance
I was able to look at everything I was spending money on before and completely cut most of my needless spending out. I stopped eating out, buying coffees, going to the pub, and even buying weed. I used to spend nearly all my money each week on those things and after cutting it all out I was able to accumulate savings like I never had before.
I was even able to invest in crypto for the first time during the lockdown. I thought Cardano was a good one to go for and spent over the course of a few months 1,500 euro on it, as it was going down. Fairly embarrassed to admit that, to be honest. As I was buying during that crash and it hasn't recovered. I started buying them at 2.50ish per coin and the final ones I bought were worth 1.20ish and now they're worth 70 cents each. So, yeah I lost about a grand, but, I'm still hanging on to them.
Giving Up Weed
I used to spend about 50 - 100 euros a week on weed. But, I started to get really anxious while on it. But, never gave up. During the start of the pandemic though that anxiety got so bad that I said to myself, this isn't helping and I haven't gone back to it to the same extent that I was. I had a lot of fun smoking and occasionally one of the lads will let me roll a one skinner but, I don't miss it if I'm honest. I would smoke literally every day. Now I can take it or leave which I never thought would be the case.
Conclusion
There have been a lot of negatives that I could write about all day, but, these are a couple of things that I have been able to reflect on and be happy about for the lockdown as none of these things would have happened without it.