My routine had a sequence of alarm sounds lined up in my “clock” application, to wake me for a tiring day ahead, while I ignored the piercing sound and slept for another 10 minutes, which undoubtedly used to be the best few minutes of my snooze cycle.
Getting ready in the morning, rushing to work, walking by the mirror to gaze at the perfect reflection and a nice flick to my hair was how it would start every day.
My day would start with organising welcome letters, followed by a series of emails, organising work for the day, logging into Airbnb, interacting with guests and sorting prices. Oh, I forgot to mention, I work for “Short term rentals”. Well, that’s my profession.
As everyone around me was trying to keep calm and think positively, I followed suit. Everything around me, however, was changing so abruptly. It was a complete revelation, no office, no task lists, nothing to look forward to but hope of a start over
My idea of fun during the day was looking forward to my lunch break, blathering in the pantry, trying to sneak around and get some more minutes off from work.
Life was going as it was planned, well almost there.
But alas, all of the above vanished in thin air, as the news about Covid-19 hit UAE among the other countries in the world.
The fact that I work for a rental company made the pandemic lockdown even more upsetting and unsettling.
The sole purpose of the company is to host guests that come on a vacation. As everything came to a standstill, the very nature of my job haunted me.
Everything started to collapse in front of my eyes. All the bookings getting cancelled, flights delayed, fear, refunds, calls, clarifications. I was going through an absolute nightmare. It was like biting the bullet.
Truth is, I didn’t want to let the guests refund. But it was something that was inevitable. Every refund, however, was continuously striking a thought in my mind, “Am I going to lose my job?”
An arduous task
Well, it’s an arduous task to survive if you don’t have a job.
But as everyone around me was trying to keep calm and think positively, I followed suit. Everything around me, however, was changing so abruptly. It was a complete revelation, no office, no task lists, nothing to look forward to but hope of a start over.
Suddenly, I didn’t require “a series” of alarm sounds to wake me up; the stress didn’t let me sleep either.
It’s funny how I used to despise replying to emails, as it would give me headaches. I would just ignore them sometimes but trust me, once they stop ringing into your email, it hits you.
These days, when I wake up now in the morning, if I don’t get an email or I have nothing to work for, it gets me worried. And I have questions lined up in my mind, like, what am I going to do afterwards?
Suddenly, I’m ready to even have extra work. Due to Covid-19, FOMO, or the fear of missing out, has become FOLO, the fear of losing out, for me.
And why shouldn’t I fear? Everyone is asking me to be positive, I ask how? It’s this despicable virus that should be blamed for everything, including my dark circles.
“Realisation”, a word that makes sense to me now more than ever. Like how we tend to stress ourselves for little things that we can easily ignore and concentrate on keeping sanity intact.
Now that a pandemic so brutal has hit us, all of those problems have started to shrink and we have started to realise that there are far greater ones ready to infest upon us.
Well, I have missed out on a lot of stuff while I had a chance but I would not have realised it unless I got this as a wake-up call.
I want to have an alarm wake me up again, to get ready, skip my breakfast, run for work, make mistakes, meet deadlines and be busy again.
With the economy opening up, there is finally a silver lining I had been yearning for.
Fajr Shora is a freelance writer based in Dubai
