Hello friends,
I hope this post find you all well and safe. These are weird challenging times we are all facing, where a lot of things have to be put into a new, fresh perspective.

I just started Week 5 of quarantine as I’m writing this. I don’t know about you but when I started self-quarantining I had a different vision of what things would be like: I thought I had finally the chance to be super productive and be able to tackle those things on my list that I usually don’t give enough priority to, lacking energy for or simply want to do more of. Lots of baking and cooking and meal prepping, trying a couple of DIY sewing projects, decluttering and reorganizing, reading a lot, blogging and getting ahead with content. Oh well, let me tell you right away that so far it hasn’t exactly been always like that.

As you might have noticed, I haven’t been posting on the blog in over two weeks, definitely been posting less and less on Instagram and, aside from home office, went from super productive moments to moments of doing absolutely nothing more than binge watching on Netflix for a big portion of my day (btw current recommendations: The end of the f***ing world, Atypical, I am not okay with this, Good girls).

And you know what? It is absolutely okay. It is more than okay indeed, necessary sometimes. If there is one good thing we can all take from this whole experience, it’s to learn to slow down, let go of rigid schedules and expectations and have a complete understanding and full awareness of our necessities, the present moment and the things we have control over.

Aside from these past few days (I have about 353425364728 unread/unanswered messages on Whataspp atm), I am overall reaching for phone and social media a lot more than I would. And being the internet now filled to the brim with all sorts of tutorials, lists of things we can do, profiles of people being their most productive selves (or maybe just making us think that they’re all their most productive selves), it can be very discouraging for those of us who really don’t feel like doing anything for a while and it can lead some of us to experience FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).

While it’s undeniable that we can all benefit from some extra time and more productiveness, why do we HAVE TO be our most productive, efficient, organized selves even if the current situation is forcing us to slow down as much as possible? Why do we have to keep doing more and more and more even if we’ve been put on lockdown and we are forced to rearrange our days and routines almost entirely?

Many of us do not have the chance to slow down at the moment. Maybe they’re still going to work or maybe they work from home and their workload has even increased. So I want to encourage all of those who have the chance to make a choice to be mindful and check in with yourself. Now more than ever we should prioritize our wellbeing, and self care can find expression in all sorts of things, as long as we find what feels good an do it. It is okay to accept and embrace the way you feel, good or bad, happy or sad, productive or lazy-ass, focused or distracted that might be. I borrowed an ebook from one of the local libraries and read more of it during the past two days than in the first two weeks I had that book. I got dressed as I normally would every day and had absolutely no shame at all in spending two days in a row wearing pjs and just going from armchair to bed and viceversa. I had super healthy and balanced meals and then had a few days in which I didn’t care what I was eating as long as I could prep, cook and eat it in 15 mins. tops.

And it is absolutely okay. It’s all about finding balance. It’s all about giving ourselves a break, embracing those days in which we feel under the weather without forcing ourselves to keep up with schedules, plans, programs, appointments, clocks, timetables.

It’s okay to not be okay, it’s okay to do whatever we feel like doing the most, it’s okay to experience the Joy Of Missing Out rather than constantly worrying that we are missing out on something: opportunities, time, fulfillment of plans or expectations.

This is how I felt over the past couple of days and truth be told I needed to let things just be without putting any pressure on anything. I hope you had the chance to check in with yourselves and take good care of your wellbeing too. What did you do recently to show yourself some love and care?

Stay tuned because I have some content coming up on the blog and something special for Fashion Revolution Week.
I’ll talk to you soon! xoxo
Jen