On a lighter note if anyone wants tips on surviving quarantine or a lock down I have months of experience at my disposal, perhaps a blog is in order.
The response to the tweet has encouraged me to share a bit of my own experience. It will probably sound rather self evident but it really helped me over the months of solitary detention. I’ll keep adding tweets to this thread as things come to mind so keep checking back. 2/n
Firstly establish a routine & try to stick to it. In all the months I was in HNSJ (Hari Niwas Sub-Jail) I stuck to a routine as though it were carved in stone. The routine gave me a sense of purpose & stopped me feeling aimless or lost. 3/n
I woke up & went to bed around the same time EVERY DAY. No lazy Sunday morning lie ins for me. Get up & get ready. Having no where to go is no reason to spend all day in your nightsuit. I lived in trackpants but I never slept in them or sat around in my PJs 4/n
Fix your meal times & stick to them. I ate my meals on my own. Put it down to the habit of boarding school & my need for structure For me it was breakfast at 8:30, lunch at 2 & dinner at 7:30 with a mug of coffee at 12 (after the doctor had checked my BP) & evening tea at 6. 5/n
Exercise, exercise, exercise.I can’t emphasise this point enough. I was fortunate to have space & access to the grounds in HNSJ to get outside but even when the weather didn’t permit I exercised indoors - walking in the corridor, up & down the stairs or just endless burpees 6/n
I used a couple of apps which were really helpful because I had workouts downloaded on them earlier. Nike Training Club & Fitbod (both on iOS & probably Android as well) were great for workouts of varying intensity & equipment levels. 7/n
Day 5 by now anxiety is a major problem. I never thought I’d feel claustrophobic or trapped in an open room but there were times I felt the same way as I remember feeling while being inserted in to a MRI machine. Fresh air really helped - deep breaths near an open window. 7/n
There a couple of apps that are very useful to help deal with anxiety. Two that I can think of are Headspace & Calm. They involve in-app purchases but the free content is also very useful. Otherwise just some soft music & deep breathing will help enormously. 8/n
