We were FaceTiming with god daughter Stella the other day and all agreed on one crazy quarantine phenomenon. We have time enough to do everything, but just can’t get motivated to do anything.
When this whole thing started we thought we’d accomplish so much. All those long-delayed home improvement projects would get checked off the list. The garden would look like something out of Architectural Digest. And dining? We were all going to make Gordon Ramsey seem like an amateur.
So how’s that going for you? Probably about as well as it’s been going for Jamie and me.
Want to feel like a real slug? Consider what 23-year old Sir Isaac Newton accomplished while he was quarantined during the bubonic plague outbreak in 1665:
In the 18 months he spent in isolation, Newton laid the foundations for calculus, investigated optics, and determined that white light consisted of all components of the visible spectrum. The revolutionary law of universal gravity was also born at his home in Woolsthorpe Manor.
… Newton eventually returned to the university after the Great Plague, and he went on to become a professor. His discoveries during the quarantine, though, served as the foundation for some of the greatest scientific innovations.
Newton’s not the only one who accomplished more than I have during self-isolation. During later plagues William Shakespeare wrote King Lear and Mary Shelley created the entire sci-fi genre when she wrote Frankenstein.
Me? I write a daily blog item. Sometimes I take MLB.com’s baseball trivia quiz of the day.
What a loser.
Isn’t it strange how we all have all this time ,but no inclination to do the myriad of tasks that awaits us.
As Dustin Hoffman said in “Wag the Dog” – “this is NOTHING!” Me? I’m just shoveling the rut deeper.” After working from home for a couple of decades, I’ve realized Newton and Shakespeare were outliers.