Like most of us, I read every hour of every day. This does not mean that I drape myself over a chaise lounge and talk loudly of romanticism. No, reading begins for me as it does for everyone else: my phone alarm goes off, and I blearily turn it off to begin mindlessly scrolling.

I am convinced that the most common lockdown pastime is reading about being in lockdown

Having no reason to get out of bed before 10am, I might shift through the news to stay informed. I read about people protesting lockdown procedures in favour of “the economy”, but it is impossible to maintain my frustration; I feel as if anger is the correct response to what I see, but a person cannot be angry all the time. The result is a feeling of uselessness, because the situation is beyond our control and our capacity to respond is greatly restricted in these strange times. I try to avoid exclusively reading coronavirus content but despite my futile attempts, I am convinced that the most common lockdown pastime is reading about being in lockdown. Us humans can be rather odd at times.

Come midday and the afternoon, I sit down to start on texts for class. This is the bulk of what I read during a day, and can either be extremely interesting or mind-numbingly boring, often with little room for compromise. Once I have finished what was due, I begin proofreading. My most recent job was close to home: my dad has started his own business, and needed a hand checking his website for grammar and spelling mistakes (there were, shall we say, a few), but I have also read many theses from various friends. Having a literature background does not prevent me from proofreading essays from students of medicine, history, economics, or any other subject, though I sometimes need help with the big words. To counteract the dense nature of these texts I like to make some time in the evening for the books from my own reading list, which also grew greatly this weekend. Our unit has created a book cabinet, a shared document in which we list books we have available to share with one another. Who needs libraries?

Then, the cycle comes full circle. As we all do, a portion of my final waking hours are dedicated to more mindless scrolling, forming the bookends of the modern day: and of this blog.