WFH Week 5 – I’m Struggling with Motivation During Covid 19

Did you know this post was part of a series? Check out all of my WFH recaps here!

This week has been a bit of a struggle. Fall registration is coming up which means that my calendar has been flooded with student appointments. I haven’t had time to do much admin tasks because of the back-to-back phone calls and Zoom meetings. As an introvert, talking all day is already pretty challenging but for some reason that challenge is amplified when working from home. Ironic, no? Maybe it’s because as an introverted millennial I hate talking on the phone. Or perhaps I struggle because I still identify my apartment as an introvert’s paradise – no other people around except for my non-talking dog (yes, she’s a people too). So anytime I do have to talk to someone it’s like there’s a disturbance in the force. It just goes against the laws of nature! No one should be forced to talk to someone from the comfort of their own couch.

And of course, there are the increasingly draining conversations I have with my students. While some of them are coping just fine with this crisis, others are really struggling. They lack motivation to do their homework, either because they’re at home and associate home with vacation or because they have increased their hours at work to support a family member who has lost their job as a result of Covid 19. Either way, they’re going through a lot. And as an empath, it’s difficult not to take on their burdens, the heaviness that weighs them down, the grief of losing their sense of safety and normalcy.

I ended up taking a few days off to recharge my battery because towards the end of the week, I was running on E. Even now, after having been off for two days filled with napping, long walks, Netflix and video games, I still feel heavy, tired and incredibly unmotivated. Getting up to write this post is a feat in and of itself. A small feat, yes, but I feel accomplished nonetheless. And that’s the lesson I’ve been trying to impart on my students as well: you have to celebrate the small victories. The “I took a shower today” victory or the “I did the laundry today” victory or the “I finally started that paper” victory. And now, I’m going to make my way back to my couch to watch some more tv and bask in the glory that is the victory of having finished this blog post.