The COVID Diaries is an OPEN SOURCE audio project tracking life under quarantine for people all over the world. Each album tracks one individual on a regular basis through this experience, culminating in a slice of life chronology of life during a pandemic. All are welcome to submit/contribute their own COVID diaries. The more people we have making them, the more interesting and wide reaching the project will become. All languages welcome as well! contact us at with questions and submissions the.covid.diaries.musicproject@gmail.com


ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS:


Week1:

Hi! I'm Sophie and i'm lucky to have Antoine in my family. I live far from him however, being on the other side of the continent, in Montréal (Québec). I am a social worker. For a few years, I worked primarily with people living with intellectual deficiency (particularly young adults with down syndrome) to develop their autonomy and help them stay stimulated/engaged following their educational years. I now work for an organization helping the elderly, as well as for another organization focusing on improvement of accessibility to public places for people with physical limitations. Additionally, as a part time student, I am taking mental health related courses to complete new a bachelor degree. In Montréal, the atmosphere is still rather positive considering all that is happening with the corona virus. Very early in the crisis, my manager asked us to work from home based of the information provided by the government who already had indications about the higher risks of covid-19 for elderly people. By doing so, we were setting an example, to oour clients as well as to the rest of the population, by showing them the importance of staying home. Suddenly, all my appointments to go on site and meet people (students, volunteers, people in old age residences) and provide training were cancelled. My workload vanished which has had a big impact obviously. So i've been home now since the end of the day on March 16th and I only go out to get food or soap because we need to wash our hands. My plans for next week? So...this morning I went food shopping for hopefully the next two weeks. I would like to have to go out as little as possible because the atmosphere is pretty weird. The weather is beautiful so people go out for walks but when we arrive in grocery stores, we have to wait in line outside before being able to go in. In addition, at the grocery store I went to this morning, they had put arrows on the floor to direct foot traffic in a particular way through the store which gave a kind of apocalyptic atmosphere. Despite all of that, people outside the store were smiling and quite resilient. So for this upcoming week, since I have new food, I will cook and freeze some leftovers in addition to working on school work because my classes finish at the end of April. I will split my time between the work I can do virtually, my school assignments, cooking, and cleaning my apartment. I think my apartment will have never been this clean. I will also watch movies and tv shows I couldn't watch before due to a lack of free time. Overall, I'll try to stay disciplined, go outside when the weather is nice and try n keep some sort of healthy life balance.


week2:

When we talked, last week, it was the day I went to the grocery store and saw arrows on the floor to direct foot traffic. When there, I was thinking, ok that makes sense, they're putting measures in place to ensure physical distancing. However, that evening when i was alone, in the dark, in my apartment watching tv, it hit me ...how weird it is to now have to line up outside before going into the grocery store and how few people are there (no kids running around as usual) and you mostly see people’s backs since you follow the arrows; no faces. That's when i realized how weird our new reality is.

I do not know how it is elsewhere but in Montreal, with the nice weather, we see footage of groups of people walking together in parks even though the government is ordering us to stay home. So the people staying home, and only going out to fulfill their essential needs, are getting pretty frustrated seeing how other people are not taking it seriously. So this past week was a mix of following my new home-life schedule (work, school work, cooking, divertissements) and thinking about how we all have to work together to get through this situation but also getting frustrated with the people who continue to walk/run in the parks without respecting the 2 meters. Come on...

From home, for work, I made about 200 phone calls to elderly people to make sure that they are doing okay at home and ask if they need anything. I talked to many people who explained that they have family members who bring them food, leave it by their door and then have a conversation while keeping the required physical distance. It was very energizing to talk to elderly people who appeared to cope quite well with the situation, trusting the government actions, showing patience and understanding. I still feel that most people are doing fine, showing resilience, especially the elderly people I talk to but also younger families who find a way to teach and entertain their kids at home. There is however an increase of frustration in regard of the people who still not respect the physical distancing. It has been over 3 weeks of the new ‘normal’ so it is about time that they understand and respect the new rules.

We are at a peak in the number of cases of infection in the country and province so people have to understand that it is not over, we have to accept this uncertainty and that it is not because we get nicer weather sometimes that the risk of contamination disappears. The threat is invisible but real and we can't let our guard down.

For next week, I don't intend to change my habits, there is lots of cold and rain in the forecast so I hope people will stay inside more. I will keep calling elderly people every day and doing school work. There are only 20 days left this semester and am looking forward to completing my certificate. That keeps me motivated, because the absence of the dynamic conversations during regular class makes it more difficult to stay motivated when working on school work just by myself. At least I can see the end of that. I still have to cook and it is time to be creative, try new recipes. Yesterday I made a recipe my mother used to make when I was young and it was comforting. I try to stay up beat, not watch the news too much aside from the prime minister's daily report. I don't keep up with the death tolls because I do not think it is healthy to drown in bad news. We have to trust that the people in charge have the knowledge and understanding needed to manage the crisis. I'm trying to keep a well balanced life, find new ways to add a little bit of diversity in my daily routine while confined. It's strange but it is what it is.


week3:

Sophie / Week-3

Week number 3... well really it's the 4th week since the Sunday when the first confinement measures were announced and I am thinking WOW! already one month, time is passing so quickly and I've managed to keep busy because we've put together new ways to go about work. The first month zoomed by while I was also careful, during the first few weeks, to stay active by cooking and cleaning to avoid going from being extremely busy to having nothing to do.

This last week, I sometimes asked myself which day it was. It's weird because I am usually very mentally organized and now I could see the teachers assignments coming in on the university platform and I was thinking oh, I'll work on that tomorrow so I ended up postponing a few readings which might give me some trouble because the session is ending in 13 days. So this past week, I was a bit confused... I'm known to generally have a very good memory but this past week, I forgot one of my friend’s birthday which is something I never do. I'm usually very good at remembering these types of things. I remember having had a weird feeling that I was forgetting something on the day of my friend’s birthday but I only realized, 2 days later, what I'd forgotten.

It’s funny to think that my birthday is this coming Tuesday. Last year my birthday was pretty much 2 weeks before I was diagnosed with professional burnout so at this time, last year, I was not in a good place and ended up cancelling all the events I had scheduled with my friend’s to celebrate my birthday in order to spend the weekend sleeping because I was so exhausted. Now i'm wondering how I will spend my birthday this year. I expect to spend my day on the phone and I can’t wait to see what a birthday in confinement looks like. I got two JoLouis cakes which I will stack and hold together with some cake icing to have a birthday cake to me from me. I'll try to document my birthday in confinement too somehow. Compared to last year, this year I am feeling good but it's the atmosphere around that not very favorable to a birthday party. I do not usually make a big deal of my birthday but this year, I am not the one deciding to not see anyone on that day and it puts all that in perspective.

I don't go to the store often. I went once to buy something but then, a couple of days later, one evening, I had a sore throat and started to panic. Then I realized that my job, during the week, is to call elderly people so ultimately, I can easily speak 3-4-5 hours non-stop during a day while, the rest of the time I do not talk to anybody since I live alone. So I realized that it is probably just that my voice was a little tired from all those calls. However, before I really thought about the cause, I had the time for a little panic. I was thinking... "i shouldn't have gone to the grocery store. It is easy to get quite stressed when experiencing covid-19 symptoms. I never take my temperature unless I really don't feel good but that evening, I checked my it every hour to make sure it was not getting too high.

That's kind of a good portrait of my last week, obsession and being very attentive to how my body reacts, what’s happening with me, how long is the incubation, when was the last time I went to the grocery store, did I meet a lot of people? I have been much more tuned into myself during this past week if I compare to the two previous weeks when I was more observing the environment and the people around me.

People are still resilient and creative. They still find ways to deal with the situation. The elderly people I talk to are still doing well, they are also exceptionally patient and resilient. The people over 90 years old, whom I talked to, all made analogies with the second war mentioning the fact that food was rationed and they had to stay home. So I was thinking, WOW that is something when your reference is the WWII. It’s true, what's impact the entire planet since that war? that’s it. They told me this week: ‘I have to listen to the new rules, we do not have a choice. I have a roof above my head, I have food, I have people who love me and contact me to make sure I am doing well. it’s ok, at least we are not at war.’ My gosh, they are right! So listening to these people helped me recognize the fact that I am safe at home and even if I freaked out about a sore throat, I shouldn't have.

Next week, I will try to find a way (funny or not) to document what happened for my birthday. I also got an Easter egg and I've formally prohibited myself to eat any of it before Easter. In my case, I need to maintain some discipline with chocolate. I will also try to do like the elderly people I called, take it one day at the time since we do not have a choice. I feel privileged to still have a job and earn a salary allowing me to live, pay my rent and not have to fill out a bunch of government forms and be stuck in the system waiting to obtain emergency money. Thanks God! I don't make a lot of money but at least I don't have to deal with the additional stress of not having a salary. So, I will continue to work, my semester at school is coming to an end so I will work on my readings and school assignments. We have online exams with access to support materials and the classes are pass fail instead A-F. I'm happy about that considering that the COVID measures are impacting how I do my school assignments so the new scoring will not impact my overall GPA.

That's it i think: Easter, my birthday, school, my job, calls to elderly people, try not to freak out because I have a sore throat considering that I make phone calls for 3-4 hours/day ...yep, that about it.


week4

I got older! As expected, my birthday arrived and I received some snail mail. As I was saying last week, the fact i wasn't able to choose not to be alone for my birthday was weird ...but social networks and phones allowed me to receive a lot of messages. Despite the fact I couldn't go sit and enjoy a good time in a bar or a restaurant with people, it was a good birthday.

All stayed pretty stable during this past week. I've continued to make phone calls to elderly people. It has been over a month that quarantine is mandatory for elderly people. Since, for my job, I usually meet with groups of people to provide awareness toward how to act/behave to well treat and respect elderly people, I was wondering how that knowledge, I have and usually share, could be transmitted in our current time considering that the quarantine does not seem to be over soon, at least for the elderly.

So I decided to develop some note cards to provide information and make awareness towards what is well-treatment of elderly people because that is sadly the population dying. In addition, the covid-19 crisis sadly shed light on the very difficult situations existing in many retirement homes/homes for the elderly, people who are not autonomous anymore and/or are very sick. It was discovered that in some of those houses, there was an unacceptable lack of workers to care for their elderly people. It is not good at all what’s happening in some of those houses. As a worker for an organization who values the well-being of elderly people, I felt I had to do more than only conduct courtesy calls. I do know that the elderly people really appreciate those calls but I suddenly had the desire to provide additional information and felt a boost of energy for my work during the week while creating visual content and proposing different versions of the information to share. Doing that helped me stay engaged/focused on my work.

Now, i am completing my semester on Thursday this week. I still have two exams to complete but i think it will go well because I received very good results on a school assignment I completed during the quarantine, an assignment I was not sure to have understood what the teacher was looking for but based on the results, I got it very right. haha. That good score reduces the stress associated with the takehome exam since being allowed to use your documentation/notes in support of the exam does not guarantee you get good scores. So that gives me some reassurance to know that I already have a good set of results in, and feel more comfortable to think ‘it will be what it will be’ with the exam I have to do at home ...and that will be fine.

So, for the upcoming week, it will be about seeing if my suggestion note cards, for general population and regarding how to support elderly people, will be accepted by the committee of the organization I work for. I still have two exams to complete and I will be done with this certificate. So, at my next outing to the grocery store, I will get a bottle of wine or something else to celebrate, by myself, the completion of this certificate on which I have been working for two years ...so I am pretty happy to be done.

I try n stay in touch with my friends. I have friends who have kids full time at their home (and had for over a month) so we try different ways to have fun together such as exchanging pictures. I try to stay in touch with all my friends, we send each other messages and fun stuff. We talk about different things avoiding focusing on how long the quarantine feels and how much we would like to be allowed to get together in a park to have a beer. Yep! Everyone is in a hurry to go have a beer and chat in a park.

Here it is still too cold to be able to enjoy the nice weather on our balconies. I have not be able to do that just yet. It is mid-April but we cannot really enjoy being outside. It is still quite cold, grey and humid outside which does not help. If we could have a few days in a row of sunshine, that would help. All the elderly people I talk to are in a hurry to get nice weather and be able to sit on their balcony. For many people, their balcony is their only access to the outside so they are eager to be able to do that. Am also eager to be able to sit on my balcony. We do not give up. I do not know what will happen. We trust the people who govern us during this crisis and we do not have a choice but to listen. I also think that more and more, people (maybe not all of them but the majority) who did not believe in the covid problem have started to understand that it is really serious. We have been at home for a month doing nothing...

I take it easy. I mean we are at that stage ...it will be a week, another week, and another week, one week at the time. At worse, we will have two week period to see what we will be told to do. I am taking the easy going approach/mood.