People had been using this phrase: the new normal. Restriction was what we had to accept as normal. It was not sitting well with myself and I heard many people say that too. We understood why we had to stay home but it did not mean that we were able to deal with it graciously all the time. It reminded me of those summer afternoons when I was young and Mama forced us to take a nap after lunch instead of what we wanted to do which was to go out and meet our friends. Back then, I obeyed because I did not like being yelled at whenever I disobeyed. Getting yelled at was not a pleasant experience. So I guess you can say that it was easy to get me to comply with anything. Just yell at me. I stayed home and never left home because I did not want to be yelled at. I didn't like what was going on but at least I would not be yelled at.
I am used to working from home at least once a week. Our bosses gave us that privilege and I took advantage of it whenever I could. It had always just been an option for my colleagues and I till now. These days, we did not have a choice. We had to work every day of the week within the four walls of our home. For those who had kids, they had to figure out how to learn how to share the internet bandwidth with each family member.
Family members used to have their own space and their own lives outside of their houses on weekdays. It was only on weekends they had to mostly share their space and time with their family; but everyday was now a weekend.
We stopped looking forward to weekends around day fourteen of the lockdown. It was no longer the two days that was special and different from the other five days.
My best friend told me that he could not work from home. He was one of the unlucky ones whose livelihood was impacted by the lockdown. The day before the official start of the quarantine, they thought that they could work from home and were allowed to take their computers home. On the supposed first day of them working from home, they were told by their managers that their client did not allow for the work to be done at home. Since they were not working, they would either use their paid leaves or not be paid if those had all been used up.
My thought was that this was not normal. It might be new but my mind refused to accept it as normal. But I guess, It is what it is.