This whole motivational slant to "free time" during this lockdown/quarantine is a farce. A significant % of people are furloughed, don't have job security and are now possibly working 2-3 jobs. So there is technically no real "free time" available to everyone universally.

There has been a visible spike in domestic violence/abuse cases because not everyone has the luxury of living in an emotionally and physically safe space. Let's differentiate between house & home. Home is a collage. It is cobbled from places/people that make us feel secure.

Not everyone's house translates to a stable 'home'. For homemakers, this is a particularly difficult time because their tasks and responsibilities have increased manifold. More expectations are being thrust upon them without sufficient help or support.

Let's also unpack how certain mental illnesses and psychosocial disabilities are exacerbated during a lockdown. Case in point - paranoid schizophrenia (using this label only for reference). Some therapy clients/patients have reported an increment in hallucinatory psychoses.

Kids living with parents who have undiagnosed mental health conditions bear the brunt of the relapses, psychoses and neuroses. As a result, we are also seeing sharp increases in child abuse cases. For some kids, schools or peer-centered environments are safer than their houses.

Some queer folk have been forced to share domestic quarters with abusive+toxic family members. They are exposed to repeated retraumatiziation/re-triggering+overt or covert gas-lighting with limited access to their chosen families. They're locked in ruminative anxiety+depression.

Pop psychology entrenched in spurious 'positivity' is a suspect pseudoscience. It has no real basis in research and/or application. We are not all in this together. Some of us are on steeper inclines and/or struggling to emerge from more abysmal depths.

'Precarity' is central of our experience during this crisis. We are creatures of reliable patterns. We aim to make sense of our ecological and psychological states by looking for some form of anchoring. At the present moment, most of our anchoring has been thwarted or uprooted.

Precarity defines our state of collective anxiety and anticipatory grief. Capitalist frenzy has championed contingent labour via hustle economics (aka gig economy). This means always teetering at the edge of insecurity vis-a-vis job security, health safety & social integration.

This pandemic is truly an unveiling of how what we are most in need of, is also mostly unavailable to us. Unlike widespread calamities of previous eras, this is not because of lack of resources but simply that a cruel form of deniability reigns our social order.

Anxiety is means to an end. It is actively encouraged. It is a constantly shifting goalpost. 'Competitiveness' & "Regimens' are instituted as part of 'growth'. If you are not using your time to learn something/do something/be something, you are 'wasting' it.