While lots of our day to day pressures seem to have been eased since lockdown, it appears that there’s a new type of pressure raising its ugly head and I’m going to call it The Lockdown Level Up.

The Lockdown Level Up refers to the chance to use this time to, in some way, ‘level up’. That might mean redecorating your house, learning a new skill, reading a tonne of books, transforming into a fitness fanatic, making a granny annex out of recycled materials…there are loads of people who are using this time to improve themselves or their homes in one way or another. But here’s the thing: those people don’t have jobs or kids or mental health issues, or health issues, or money worries, or sick relatives, or a volunteering job. In fact, even if you don’t have any of those things and you still don’t want to indulge in The Lockdown Level Up…that’s ok too.

Because no one said we had to do lockdown well…we just have to do it.

There seems to be this assumption that now we’re all locked in our houses, we are all sat twiddling our thumbs, melting into the sofa and watching all of Netflix. I don’t know about you, but since lockdown came into force, the only time I’ve had to sit down is for about 45 minutes on the sofa at the end of the day after I’ve put the kids to bed, done some work, cleaned and tidied the house, done the laundry and stuffed 3 bags of hula hoops and a glass of wine down my neck. I’ve made it through 3 episodes of Normal People but actually only watched about 43 minutes of the entire series because I KEEP FALLING ASLEEP. The odd half an hour me and my husband give each other to ‘have some space’ is usually taken up with hiding in the bedroom and scrolling Instagram or napping. The thought of saying, “Oh, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to take this half hour to spring clean my entire house, repaint the woodwork and fit a new shower,” is not only laughable but also painful to consider.

Can we blame social media? Nope. I know we all want to. It makes it so easy but here’s the thing: we are responsible for our own mental wellbeing. It’s not social media’s fault that it’s there. It’s not the poster’s fault that they’re proud of what they’ve done. If we don’t like it, we have to learn to shield ourselves from it by editing our feeds, cutting down our social time, or learning to recognise and believe that someone else’s achievement isn’t a reflection of our own value and success.