I came to the conclusion that the lockdown life in Mumbai feels a lot like playing a crazy video game in which we face challenges in each levels but also get rewards and perks if we pass said level. 

So far in September aka "Level 9 of 2020" we are still stuck in the same limbo, the government hasn't made much changes to the rules of the game, or at least none that I really notice at this point. 

We still get to go out for walks, all shops are opened, Malls are open (except restaurants and cinemas), and public transports are still very limited, out CM decided not to open the metro at this point and the number of local trains is still kept to a minimum. 

The real perks came from my super crazy restrictive apartment building management which announced that this month they will no longer ask residents to submit an authorisation grant to get a repair guy our a maid to come. Our cook is relieved that she also no longer have to pay for health check ups every 2 weeks just to enter our building (and only our building).

We still get served regular dose of condescension from the managing committee via WhatsApp reminding us that all that each cases of Covid declared in the enclave is all our fault and we aren't doing our part, even felt the need to quote Joseph Stalin to make a point, because nothing sounds more appropriate than dragging the name of a communist dictator to drive a point home in this crazy alternate reality that is 2020

I'm at a point at which I welcome every tiny bit of thing that bring me back to what normal feels like right now : 

Talking with a friend face to face, at home or in the park, going over to a friend for tea (social visits are allowed in our compound). Walking to the shops in my area to buy groceries instead of Dunzoing everything and being charged a bomb for delivery every time. Going back to a friend's home to teach her kids art once a week. 

They really sound like tiny little trivial things, but the thing that I craved the most, ironically as an Introvert, was meeting my friends every now and then, and I felt really deprived of it for months. It's not like I need to see people everyday, but having that option to invite a friend over for a cup of tea and chat once in a while does wonder for my soul, let's not forget we are a social species after all. 

This alone makes up for all the negative that this whole situation has brought us : loss of income, loss of work/life balance, and a significant loss of personal space and freedom. 

It feels like every months, if not weeks, we are gaining a little bit more of what was lost, and that feels really great. At this point I can't wait for school to be back to normal, it looks like this will be the reward we get at the end Level of the Super Lockdown Game after defeating the bad Boss monster (whoever that is, and no I don't think it's the virus).

On other fronts, I keep myself busy with lots of creative projects at this point, squeezing a lot of doodling and creative work all through the day (whenever I have the laptop, or a desk), and have been working on the 2021 Printable Calendar, which this year I will release with a few changes in how I release it...more on that before the end of this month.

I also shifted to offering only digital download files in my Etsy shop because there is no telling when we will win back the right to send international post and parcels via IndiaPost.

I said it before, but the best way to keep track of what I'm up to is to follow me on Instagram, this is where I devote most of my social media time these days. 

To be fair, the moment you make the transition from single individual to an individual who's in charge of the wellbeing of a tiny human being, you start wondering when and how you should do certain things: first solids, schooling, screen time, play time...The list goes on and on. 

Then, you reach a point at which the unavoidable question will pop : 

Kids with nowhere to go and no friends to see turned to their parents' phones to keep contact with their own social circles. 

For a while, my own WhatsApp only beeped and bleeped for my daughter. All her friends had requisitioned their parent's handsets and created a million groups to chat. My phone's storage got clogged with 5-600 messages and gifs and audio files that I needed to delete daily. 

As the weeks in isolation passed, many other parents fished out old phones they didn't use anymore out of storage to give their kids, and I feared the days I would have to get her a phone of her own came nearer and nearer.

I finally crossed that bridge last month, fed up to be my daughter's personal assistant, being woken up in the middle of a nap by a video call, and planning my entire day of work around which device I had when. 

Laptop gone all morning for the sake of online classes, and phone out of my control all afternoon long. When you are an artist needing to do creative work and self-promotion on social media, this crazy game of "Musical Device" switcharoo wears really thin after a while.

My own phone was a nearly 3 years old iPhone 6s with storage that was already a bit short without my daughter's usage, so I figured out I could need an upgrade for myself and my professional needs anyway. I decided to get myself a new phone, and did like every other parents : give my old one to my kiddo.

So, I got myself a new phone, if you were wondering, I got myself the iPhone XR (this is an affiliate link by the way) and gave away my old phone and all the cute cases that go with it to my over the moon daughter. 

When you give your child their first phone, a lot of concerns pop. The biggest one being keeping them safe on the internet and with social media, as well as monitoring their screen time.

I can't speak for Android, we are an Apple household, and Apple has a family circle feature that links all the users belonging to the same family together. It also prevents minors from creating their own Apple ID without permission. The family's "organizer" has to create it from their own device before activating it on their kid's phone. 

Along with that, the organizer can set screen time limits on individual apps and a separate master screen time on the phone itself. Our daughter's one is unusable after 9pm and until 7am, and several apps have a time restriction as well. 

Then, any parent/guardian in the family circle is notified when the child try to download a new app. Because we pretty much have the full Apple ecosystem, the notifications pop up no matter which device I use, this prevents kids from downloading questionable content behind their parent's back.

We also set up some ground rules regarding the phone : 

- Not allowed to use in the bedroom

- No showing it off to people in the playground

- If taken to the playground, it must remain on her person the whole time

- Not allowed to keep it on silent, when out, the phone must be heard and answered every time we call. 

- Doing chores before using the phone to chat or play

- Not changing the password on the screen lock and accepting both hubby and I have a right to see what is going on in her chat session if we suspect something is wrong. 

- No social media account creation (we can reject the download of those apps anyway)

We made sure she understand why those rules exist, and that having a phone is a big responsibility, not living up to said responsibility could get the phone confiscated for a while.

So far so good, she is acting ver responsible with said phone and even borrowed my power bank before heading to a friend's place the other day because she wasn't sure if the battery would last long enough while she was out. 

For us, the lockdown and lack of real life social interaction is what motivated our decision to get her a phone of her own. I have a feeling that if this year didn't push us out of normalcy, I would have gone at least an extra year without getting to that decision.