Internet Fam- Hello. I’m still on that fiction ban. Let’s see what it’s doing to me. “ Thanks for tuning into my channel! Leave a comment below! 🙂 ”

The wind is pushing nature around, bullying the trees by my window. The leaves are pressed and released against glass, scratching to get inside. It is endless morning. The weather in Melbourne has turned, complying with self-isolation. If you relax your gaze back into that endless morning light, back to the day’s first waking sensation, today will feel cozy instead of suffocating, until your eyes fight back to refocus. We have been released from the taunts of sunshine drenched days, stretched out by an extra lit hour, while helpless we watched by our windows. My tan is fading. 

I have allowed myself complacence. My nails are long. The nail edge is now a quarter inch white and strong. Little pearly half moons hang beyond the padded ends of my fingertips. When I write, with a pen, the edge of the nail of my index finger presses a pink crescent mark into my thumb. I know I’m writing a golden sentence when I forget about the crescent shaped pressure. I have adjusted my routine to accommodate my new fingernail length. The world is a different texture; I navigate using the soft pads of my fingers with the delicacy of a braille reader. When I touch things in this manner I thank my eyes for still seeing. I tap at glass surfaces, like my phone, and the habit irritates me. It irritated me long before, it irritated me when the girl’s at work tapped their acrylic nails. I used to be a netballer, we kept our nails trim. It stopped us from scratching out the eyes of our competition because our coaches thought all little girls catty. We knew how to trick them by bending our hands back from the wrist.

I watch my hair grow, I don’t have a choice. No hairdressers. No hairdresser girls from work, tapping their nails allowed. Good. It turns out they aren’t essential. I just want you to know I am allowing my fingernails to grow. I don’t allow my face to go unwashed, or my teeth to go un-brushed or to luxuriate in pajamas all day.  But I want the power of this particular long nailed choice and to feel the consequences unfold in a way that doesn’t delight me. To stay inert as time passes and manage longer and longer claws as my new hobby. I want to live around something, an impediment maybe.

I still want the power over my life to make choices I don’t agree with.

SJ xx

NB to future me:

We’ve been on the serious end of lockdown for about a week. This is the start of week three of lockdowns.

We eased into the concept with a lenient looking lockdown beginning 23rd March 2020.