This social media maven is a pro at staying home, it’s staying asleep these days that’s the hard part.
Marnely’s cookies, just one of dozens of baking projects she’ll tackle in quarantine. For recipes check out her blog at cookingwithbooks.net.
My business partner bestie Marnely tries to stay sane with an average of three cookies a day, an affinity for backyard birding, a slew of new supplements, and a bedtime routine for the ages. Here’s her story.
I thrive on schedules, and working from home is no different. As Angela’s business partner in Shored Up Digital, she knows this about me. I’m a stickler for appointments, being on time, and having a plan. I’ll never be described as a “go with the flow” kind of person, it’s just not who I am and not how I thrive at life. My life revolves around a physical daily planner, where I jot down meetings, things to do, and reminders. Added to that, a Google Calendar Angela and I share, but everything that’s on there is in the planner as well. Writing things down helps me remember, or so that’s what I try to tell myself. I started my first planner back in 1996 when I was eleven years old. So that should explain a lot about me.
Like many residents on Martha’s Vineyard my year is split down the middle: May through October, I actually leave my house and walk the four minutes to work, where I’m a sous chef at a private golf club. I work about 8-10 hours a day in the kitchen, and get our social media work done early in the morning before going into work. November through April, it’s a different world. My daily uniform changes from a chef coat and black pants, to a fluffy white robe and pajama pants. I work from home, all day, every day. Sure, I have meetings and leave the house, but mostly, I’m home.
Then COVID19 took force and all of the sudden our lives were flipped upside down–for most of us. For me, the biggest changes were adapting our business clients’ messaging and learning to deal with this newfound stress and anxiety. But I digress - let’s start from the beginning.
Early on, as we heard about this new virus, I kept on with my day-to-day life. I believe my lifestyle is a healthy one, so I decided to up my supplements and really focus on strengthening my immune and nervous system. I bought new pill boxes to sort all the pills. I organized and researched even more than I already did. I wrote a full blog post on how to “Create a Holistic Medicine Cabinet.” It’s what I do when I start to sense things are getting out of control.
As this virus evolved, so did my anxiety. I had a panic attack. I cried for no reason whatsoever. Nightmares arrived and my sleep was a far away dream. I needed to get a grip of this before it got a grip of me. Thus, I put my organizational skills in play, made a large list of things to achieve and started taking my supplements consistently. I created some self-care moments that helped me get a hold of the raging anxiety I faced on the daily. As someone that lives and breathes social media, you know I’m not feeling well when a day goes by that I don’t show up on Instagram stories or post on Facebook. Friends will message me with “you haven’t posted, are you okay?” which seems silly, but it’s true.
It’s day 15 of isolation at home with my husband and we’ve only been out twice, for groceries and the bank. We have enough food for a month, so we don’t plan on any more outings anytime soon. To finish up this blog post, I thought I’d take you through what a “normal” day for me is during this time.
*Note: I've added bird watching notes throughout my day in italics, per my usual bird watching routine, that distracts my work but gives me more joy than sleep these days.
7AM - 9AM: Depending on how well I slept, this is the time frame I get out of bed. What truly wakes me up is the sound of the morning doves pitter-pattering in our window bird feeder. They don't get that they're a bit too big to be inside that window feeder, so they tuck themselves in there but make more noise than anything.
Next I turn my phone on, scroll social media platforms but make sure to not look at my inbox until I’m at my desk. I softly get out of bed (my husband will sleep at least two more hours after me), wash my face, put on my robe, and walk out of the bedroom.
If I'm up before 9am, the birds still haven't visited for breakfast yet. I assume they had a snack really early around 6am. My husband tends to fill our feeder up daily with black sunflower seeds, but always forgets the mealworms. I have just started with the meal worms, as they attract bluebirds. We've gotten a few here and there, but not as often yet.
9AM: Plug my phone in at my desk, open laptop, and fill up my water jar. Pour coffee grounds into my coffee maker, decide on a coffee mug, and brew. We have blackout curtains in our living room, and depending on how I feel and how the weather is, I’ll open or close them. Settle into my desk with water and coffee, and sit at the desk with my phone to reply to any social media messages on our accounts. I’ll then finish my coffee and look at my laptop, where Gmail, Facebook, and Slack are always open.
The Bluejays are the first, and the loudest, to visit. Dear God, I sometimes think an eagle is out there because they are SO loud. They come in sets of two and are one of the few birds that will eat from the feeder together.
9:30AM: Take a break to make breakfast smoothie, which is currently whatever frozen fruit we have, some greens, bee pollen, flax seed, cold brewed herbal tea like lemon balm, and elderberry extract. I make two jars, one for me to bring and drink at my desk, another in the fridge for when the hubs wakes up.
This is AM prime bird time, where the Chickadees (our state bird) come out in droves to feed. I'll see warblers, cardinals, titmouse, and woodpeckers.
9:30AM - 12PM: Online work whether it’s emails, scheduling content, browsing and reading to see what’s new, looking at Google Alerts and sharing links with Angela on Slack, replying to messages, and creating compelling social media graphics on Canva.
Everyone goes home, except the Woodpecker. He'll stay there for hours eating and pecking the side of the house.
12PM - 1PM: I take a break to make lunch, usually leftovers from dinner. I’ll eat lunch at my desk, while watching something on TV like QVC or scrolling TikTok. It’s not the best way to eat, I know.
I say “hi” to Squirrel as I eat my own lunch. Some bird lovers tend to hate squirrels in their feeders, but I do not. I have two squirrels, both who I think are female but who knows, that visit our feeder and I love them just as much. They're funny and have their ways, but I do shush them away after they decide eating for an hour is okay. I have money for bird seed, but not millions.
1PM - 4PM: More of the same online work. Lately, I’ve spent way too much time scrolling the internet, and my body is hurting. I’m spending much more time online than ever. I should stop but it’s difficult with all the news and distractions. But hunger always makes me get up and away from it.
Woodpecker pecks.
4PM - 6PM: Depending on how involved dinner is, I’ll start defrosting, prepping, and getting into the kitchen to clean up a little. By this time my mind can’t focus on work, so that’s over for me unless there’s a “social media emergency.” Spend time with the hubs, cook, clean, catch up on laundry, the works.
It's dinner time - for us and the birds. This is prime time for Cardinal watching, and we have two couples. They are the sweetest and the other day I saw them kissing - or feeding each other? Either way, it was the sweetest thing. The Bluejays will come back with their wild, loud noises and they do this new thing where they take a sunflower seed from the feeder and then fly up to the gutter, where they peck the seed open. It sounds like a toddler is knocking on our door… for an hour.
6PM - 8PM: Dinner, alongside Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, always. We don’t miss it and love it when we get the answer before the Jeopardy geniuses, ha! We eat at our coffee table and on the couch - our dining table is a storage/studio space for my photography projects. The hubs usually cleans up after dinner and then we make tea and move to the bed for a Netflix show, reading, and relaxing.
Birds go to bed.
8PM - 11PM: I’ll fall asleep anytime between these hours, depending on how tired I am. But before I get into bed, I have a full ritual, that’s more important than ever: diffuse lavender and cedarwood oils, hot shower with lavender soap, hot lemon balm tea, magnesium cream to relax the nerves, CBD oil under tongue, melatonin gummy, brush teeth, change into cozy pajamas. I’ll tuck into bed to watch TV or read my current Kindle book, and drift to sleep, hopefully. I have been waking up at least 2-3 times during the night, between anxiety and nightmares, so my sleep, no matter how involved my bed time routine is, isn’t the best. But I try and that’s all that matters.
This week’s Headlines: With Their Restaurants Closed, Chefs Turn to Instagram Live to Inspire Home Cooks; ‘I was never sick enough to be tested’, It’s never too early to eat lunch (not so much news as music to my hears, and total allowance to eat whatever I want, whenever I want).
Currently Reading on Kindle: An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew
Best Tweet I’ve Read Lately: Baking bread from 4,000 year old Egyptian Yeast
Recipe I’m Making Every Two Weeks: Handle The Heat’s Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies - I make these and freeze, so I can have a freshly baked, warm cooking after lunch and dinner. Yes, I have about 2-4 cookies a day.
Next Food Project: This 72-hour pizza dough from Food52 because I still have a expired bag of 00 flour I want to use, for long fermentation processes and this is perfect
What we’re binging on: We just finished Ozark Season Three, so we’re moving on to Disney Plus (borrowed from best friend) and watching the full Avengers storyline. We started with Captain America last night.
– Marnely Murray