Lockdown Lessons 2020: Books, Games and Whips

When the lockdown began, I was pretty chill about it. Sure, I can stay at home. No problem. Been doing that for the past four years. How hard can it be?
And indeed, the lockdown brought few changes to my everyday life. My husband started to work from home full-time, I ordered my groceries online instead of going to the store, and that’s about it.
It also meant no more BDSM-munches or visiting friends. That was tough. I had just started building a social life with new friends, and now it was like I had lost them. We kept in contact through WhatsApp, but that’s still not the same. So how did I cope?

Reading

For the first time in a long time, I’ve started to read again. I subscribed to Bookchoice.com. This website supplies its members with eight audio- and e-books per month. Their genres range from regular novels to romance, to historical fiction and thrillers. Having less choice isn’t that bad, as it turns out. The books are all in Dutch. The company used to have an English version too, but it was shut down last year. It’s quite refreshing for me to read in Dutch again, since I haven’t done so in almost twenty years, barring the exceptions of course. And in Dutch too I can study the techniques used by the authors. The only thing I really miss is books from the fantasy or science fiction genres. But I’ll read those separately when I find one.

Meditation

The other coping technique I’ve begun is meditation. Every day I pick a guided meditation on the Insight Timer app. It helps me to centre and to calm down. I’m at a 140-day streak right now. I’d never gotten this far without the lockdown. Especially in the beginning, this helped me to fall asleep. Nowadays, I often use a morning meditation.

Games and Exercise

My husband and I have kept up our daily walks. I’ve not done much else, exercise-wise. I should have done more yoga-exercises, but I can never do them more often than occasionally. We’ve played a lot of Animal Crossing New Horizons. I will say one thing I’ve learned from this game: patience.
The game plays in real-time, and it forces you to wait for updates to your environment or for when new villagers arrive. It’s very different in that respect from most games, where you can just push ahead and play through all content. For someone as impatient as me, this was an eye-opener. Sometimes you have to wait for the necessary upgrade to arrive and there’s nothing you can do to change this, except cheat. I liked that aspect of the game very much.

Spankings

That past couple of weeks, the BDSM play between my husband and me has intensified. We have played at least once a week, which I think is a record considering the exceptional circumstances. We’ve done the weekly spankings, and we’ve even used extensive bondage. For us, this is a significant change. We’re very good at finding excuses for why it’s better not to play. This goes for both of us, so to now almost play every week is something to celebrate. We’re pleased with this development.

We’re Okay

So no, I’ve not studied how to play the violin, quantum physics or philosophy. I’ve taken a step back, reconsidered and focused on the things I did have. I have my cats, and they are healthy so far. My husband and I are healthy at the moment. I’ve kept in contact with my friends, and by now we’re starting to see each other again.
I’m immensely grateful for the fact that my husband and I are doing so well with just the two of us. We can handle this, which, to me, means we can handle anything as a couple.
I hope this will be the only lockdown I ever have to live through in my lifetime, but you never know. At least I’ll know I had the strength to get through it once, so I can always do it again. I just hope I won’t have to.

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Books I’ve Read

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