My actual daily routine under lockdown ⏰

Hello, grownups!

This was going around Twitter the other day and it cracked me up.

We've all heard by now that routine is the best way to stay sane and give structure to your days when you're stuck in the same bloody place all the time. That's fine and dandy except if your daily routine involves eating lots of snacks.

So in the spirit of honesty, here's a pretty accurate rundown of what a normal day looks like for me in lockdown.

I wake up at 5:30am on most days. Always have (I come from a family of farming people). This is especially easy at the moment because of this:

But do you think I use all this extra time to do glorious and productive things? Do you think I use this time to practice mindfulness meditation or yoga stretches or working on my novel?

NOPE!

But I sure do use this fact as a self-loathing stick to beat myself with all day (you don't even have any EXCUSE - you wake up at 5:30am JEESH why aren't you DOING MORE WITH YOUR LIFE).

Mornings

• Wake up. Find that my cat is sitting in the corner of the room staring at me (How long does he do this before I wake up every day? It's a mystery). Make awkward eye contact. Feel shamed into getting up to turn the bath tap on for him.
• Walk to my study and check my messages (I keep my phone in another room at night as extra motivation for getting out of bed).
• Cat is at peak cuteness for the day and insists on being picked up and held. Wander around the house showing him interesting things and telling him what a Handsome and Important Boy he is.
• Make my first cup of coffee. "Coffee" is a generous term. It's freeze-dried Nescafe Gold and I drink approximately 63 cups of it over the course of the day.
• Cram some of last night's dinner into my face.
• Let cat out so he can try (and fail) to kill bugs in the garden.
• Drop off a cup of coffee next to my partner and pepper him with questions about his dreams (he's usually still sleeping at this point, cursing my existence).
• 50% of the time: be very wholesome and responsible and write Morning Pages, get dressed then get straight to work. 50% of the time: climb back into bed and watch 3 year old John Oliver videos for several hours.
• At 6:30ish on a good day, 9:00ish on a YouTube-hole day: do the best 2 hours of work I'll do. Because I know this is my best working time, I try to use this time for writing, and make sure that I haven't checked my inboxes yet, so I can focus on what's most important to me rather than to someone else.

Daytime

• At the point when I find myself getting distracted and opening Twitter (usually around 10:30) I have a stretch and go chat to my partner, who is now actually awake.
• After my break, I deal with my inboxes (Slack/WhatsApp/email/Asanas/Zenhubs etc.) and make a to-do list for the rest of my day. I'm wildly overambitious about how many things I'm going to accomplish. I usually try to put a couple of fun things on the list, too, for motivation.
• Cat returns from attempted bug murder spree and takes up his customary position snoozing on my desk/on my laptop.
• Do tasks until lunchtime.
• Okay, I said lunchtime, but I actually mean 11:30, because I am a tiny child and I get ravenous (also, may I remind you that I wake up at 5:30). Make a salad with avocado and chia seeds and microgreens (LOL NOPE it's probably a hunk of bread with some mustard smeared on it if I'm feeling FANCY).
• Take a break. Potter around the garden and threaten my plants into growing better (I believe threats work better than compliments). Wash the dishes if the situation has become truly dire. Watch TikToks with my partner. Stare out the window saying wistful things like, "remember restaurants?"
• Get back to work. Do more tasks, but it's diminishing returns for the rest of the day, honestly.
• Get bored. Start hunting for snacks / making "motivation playlists" / reading the news and then cursing myself for reading the news.
• I try to schedule meetings from 3-6pm, because I have no energy for anything else by this point.
• Call it quits at 6ish on a productive day or 4:30ish on a less productive day.

One day I aspire to have a writing hut like Roald Dahl.

Evenings

• Let the cat out for his evening zooms.
• Try to hype myself up enough to go for a run. It's a chance to go outside! You always feel better when you do it! You don't want to die at 40 because what if Nick Cave brings out another album and you never get to hear it BECAUSE YOU'RE DEAD FROM NOT RUNNING! Succeed about 30% of the time. If I do go for a run, I usually combine it with some Nature Thievery (bringing home a bit of a plant because I'm trying to learn the names of all the local flora).
• Draw the spoils of my Nature Thievery.
• Try to maintain the remnants of a social life over Zoom. Right now, that involves a lot of pub quizzing over Twitch and playing Don't Starve Together with friends.
• Have dinner with my partner and cat. Make a large portion "so that we have enough leftovers for lunch the next day." Proceed to eat everything except for a token few mouthfuls that will sit on the counter overnight until I eat them for breakfast tomorrow.
• Wash the dishes like responsible adults!*
• Favourite time of the day: climb into the bath with my book. Stay there until I have dissolved into Sam Soup. After living through the Cape Town water crisis, I am determined to enjoy as many baths in my life as possible.
• Climb into bed and retract all limbs under the covers. Exclaim loudly to my partner, "Look, I'm a blanket worm! I have no arms!" He'll laugh, even though I make this joke every single night. Bless his socks.
• Watch the first 9 minutes of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer until I fall asleep.
• Yes, it's probably 9:30 at this point. Fuck you, I woke up at 5:30.

*HAHAHAHA nope.

Wishing you snacks and a better daily routine than mine,

Your friend Sam

Updates from Sam-land

• Marvel's Jessica Jones: Playing With Fire is coming out on May 28! You can pre-order the whole season now. I also wrote a small piece about how much fun it was to write for my favourite Super Hero.
• I'm going to be hosting another livestream fundraiser next week, this time talking money basics for artists & other creative types. I'll share more details with you about this soon, but please spread the word to your artist buddies.
• Some of you have been asking about this - fear not, Manage Your Money: a Guide for Teens is still coming out in September!
• I've been working on another top-secret thing that I can't tell you about because it might not happen and I don't want to jinx it but I am so freaking excited. There's a big important meeting tonight. I'm even going to wear make-up and a bra. Hold thumbs for me.