#Johannesburg

It’s Day 53 of the South African lockdown. Did you miss me? It’s good to be back.

I’m not sure if numbering these lockdown journal posts makes sense anymore, since I didn’t blog on Day 51 or Day 52. Skipped numbers might bother the OCD-inclined among you (and also me). But at this point I don’t know what else to do so I guess I’ll continue this way.

Today is Day 50 of the South African lockdown. This week was really hard overall. But I think today was the best day I’ve had since the lockdown started.

Around the two-week mark, when the president announced the lockdown would be extended from 21 to 35 days, I was trying to decide if I should continue numbering my lockdown posts. My friend Kate said I should. “You’re gonna want to know what number you’re on when you start to hit the 50s,” she said. I took her advice, but I also laughed because at that point I truly couldn’t imagine “hitting the 50s”. And yet here we are.

Welcome to South African Lockdown Day 49. Today I have some thoughts about Facebook.

I know this is not a cool thing to admit, but checking Facebook is one of the first things I do in the morning. “I have to use Facebook for work,” is an excuse I often use, and it’s true. I post on social media for a living and a large percentage of my blog traffic comes from Facebook.

It’s Day 46 of the South African lockdown. Today I have lots of face masks and lots of feelings.

A few days ago I asked Facebook for advice on shooting photographs while wearing a mask. My viewfinder was fogging up as soon as I put my camera to my face, and I kept missing shots.

It’s Day 45 of the South African lockdown. Happy Mother’s Day.

I started the day by doing what I do on most Mother’s Days: Opened my laptop and ordered an Amazon gift card for my mom. It’s not the most exciting present, but I know it makes Mom happy because she’ll receive it first thing when she wakes up and she can use it to buy exactly what she wants. Mom almost always knows exactly what she wants. It’s a quality I respect and envy.