After the sudden shock at the start of lockdown, I felt a sudden sense of freedom from societal obligations. I had all this free time! And no sense of responsibility! I could do all the things I’d been meaning to do for ages, since I was stuck at home anyway!

Of course, five minutes after that I realised that not all that much had changed for me, and free time would still just be a distant memory (not necessarily a bad thing – I love to be busy).

Many weeks after that, I’ve done exactly zero of the things I’d kind of like to do. The fact I haven’t done them just shows they’re not a priority. But if I did have free time in lockdown and got bored of reading and playing video games and websites, here’s what I’d do…

Learn to curl my hair

I’m not a girly girl by any stretch of the imagination. I own makeup – it’s covered in dust (sorry Cleaner Rachel, I’ve not been doing enough cleaning since you weren’t allowed to come round any more!). But I do have both straighteners and a curling iron, both of which are also covered in dust…and occasionally the odd spider.

Some of the people I follow on Instagram have spent lockdown doing hair tutorials, and I keep meaning to try them out. I used to have curly hair when I was little, so maybe there are curls hiding in there somewhere?! I feel like it’s one of those things you need to put a lot of time and experimentation into to get right, and even starting to think about it feels like too much right now.

Clear out the garage

I call the garage Groundhog Garage, because once or twice a year we decide to clear it out, and then just as we almost get to the end, we end up needing to dump stuff in there all over again (see 14 years of housemates leaving stuff + family leaving stuff + a billion Warhammer miniatures).

At the moment things are even harder to get to because our old dining table and chairs are in there too. But I’m hoping that once we get the rest of the house sorted (we’re getting a lot of work done over the summer and probably into the autumn), we’ll be able to sort something out for the garage too. Ideally to clear enough space to convert it into a room at some point…

Actually make a cookbook recipe

We have so many cookbooks, and I asked for the vegan Bosh cookbook for Christmas, and I still haven’t made anything from any of them. Joe also loves cookbooks, but unlike me he actually uses them and has his go-to recipes bookmarked.

I absolutely hate cooking (although I used to do a lot of baking), so he does most of the meals when we aren’t eating out or getting takeout. My jobs are stock control and washing up. But just for once, as a novelty, I’d like to try making something. Once per year seems like a reasonable goal ;)

Sort out my clothes

Ugh, clothes. For the past few years I’ve been of the Mark Zuckerberg/Steve Jobs school of “wear all the same things all the time, it’s one less decision to make” – except I don’t spend $300 on a t-shirt. But I’m definitely a “comfort first” kind of girl. To be fair, I was when I worked in an office as well – hoodie, jeans, no shoes – except these days I mostly just work in pyjamas and hoodie. I get that some people prefer to dress up, sit at a desk etc. because they find it helps their productivity. I’m not one of those people, because I can work anywhere, any time, and you’ll likely have to drag me away from what I’m doing kicking and screaming.

So my clothes are really disorganised. I have no space for anything. A lot of it doesn’t fit (size-wise, style-wise, occupation-wise). It’s spread out across three different rooms. I have about 40 pairs of jeans in 4 different sizes, but I always wear the same 2-3 pairs. It’s just…a mess. But I imagine the hell of Satan would rain upon me if I even attempted to sort the mess out, so it’s something for Very Far Distant Future Jenni to deal with, and Present Jenni will continue to pick clothes off the floordrobe and forget everything else.

Start doing Instagram/Facebook lives

Once I’ve curled my hair and dug out nice clothes and dusted off my makeup I could do Facebook/Instagram lives. I kind of like the idea of doing lives on my personal accounts, but also it feels like a lot of effort. Also I talk a LOT. (One time I was asked to do a half hour social media training session for a hosting company beginning with 123 and I’m pretty sure I talked for two hours. It wasn’t completely my fault as people kept stopping me to ask questions, but still).

The other main reason is that I’m not happy with how I look. I have permanent shadows under my eyes from too little sleep, and despite being in my thirties, I still look very young for my age (I’ve always had problems with people taking me seriously; I can sometimes see people thinking, “isn’t she cute?!” and Joe has to drag me away quickly before I lose my shit with them).

Anyway, enough about me! What is/was your lockdown wishlist? Have you done anything on it?