The isolation journals: Day 3—there are no return flights.

Today’s prompt via Mari Andrew: Write a travel journal entry from your home, could be your living room, could be your bed. Write as though you’ve just arrived in a new place (because, in many ways, you have) and what you’re observing about the place and how you feel in it. Write what you see, hear, and touch, as though it’s all brand new. What are you learning about yourself in this different land, with all its deprivations? If you’d like to turn this into a visual entry, draw a map complete with notes about this foreign land’s customs, rituals, and routines.

Can you smell that? The fresh lick of paint, the sourdough bread, the aroma of not wanting to be seen wasting all this extra time we have? It’s everywhere. A mosquito masquerading as a ladybird. Both pests. But at least one is pleasing on the eye.

But who am I to criticise your choice of destination? I can’t. I won’t. After all, talking about your choice of vacation is a bit like discussing your kids. We’ll nod and smile politely, but we’re hoping you keep your photographs to yourself and really only care about our own.

It’s even worse when you don’t have that choice, when you’re confined to a destination that’s home but not quite home. Like Mr Tayto from the North. It’s kind of the same, but there’s something just a bit off.

So forgive me if I’m not bettering myself by making the most of over ripe bananas or wondering how many star jumps is too many star jumps for 6.30am. It all feels a bit forced. A bit out out but studiously avoiding English bars in Lanzarote. A bit discovering yourself on the same trip 560,000 others have taken to a remote beach in Thailand.

But don’t get me wrong, you do you. I really hope you loved it. Just don’t show me the pictures.

There are upsides to all this of course. I’ve almost completed Marvel Super Heroes 2. My record for made free throws in a row is up to 21. I no longer feel guilty for eating an entire tub of prawn cocktail Pringles in one delicious and crumb-filled sitting.

I’ve learned my son loves me in his own nearly blinded me with a Hot Wheel car sort of way. It’s taken six years and a worldwide pandemic to understand that he feels the same way about me as I do about him.

I’ve spent days wondering about what his little brother might look like, the kind of person he could become, and what the fuck we’re ever going to call him.

I’ve made more meals in the past six weeks than I did in the first 15 years of living with my wife and learned that my consistency as as a cook is as up and down as my success as a husband. A little less salt would probably help.

So now that I think about. Now that I write down what I’ve been doing these past six weeks. Maybe I am bettering myself. And my real fear is that I’m enjoying this time a little too much.

In fact, far from worrying that there are no return flights from this most surreal of situations, I think I’m really worried about what happens when there are.