Lucky Day 13 • Routines and Our Last Dinner In Quarantine • Tennis Player Ellen Perez’s Quarantine Diary

By Ellen Perez

As I look back and think “Wow how did I get to day 13 without being bored out of my mind” …

But I realize it is because I had good routines in place. Although they weren’t always at a structured time there was non-negotiables that each day contained a set number of things.

One of the most important was that we kept up with some exercise. It’s easy to become demotivated and lazy. But Dasha and I held one another accountable and did some sort of exercise almost every day. I think there was only two days that we did nothing. We were able to mix up our fitness sessions and keep good variety. There was yoga, footwork, strength, conditioning (bike), Pilates and rehab sessions. It was actually good to be put in that situation because I’m not someone who likes Yoga/Pilates but because I almost had nothing better to do, I did some of the sessions.

I have huge fomo (fear of missing out) if I don’t do things others are doing. Along with our fitness sessions we kept up with making bracelets which Dasha now plans to try and sell online through a shop as a bit of side fun. I started drawing and colouring for some wellbeing, we watched movies and tv shows such as Along Came a Spider, The Score, Just Mercy, Emily in Paris, Enola Holmes, Killing Eve and Ratched. It seems like quite the list but for how many days in here and how much free time we had I think we did exceptionally well to not binge watch even more.

I would also facetime my boyfriend in the morning and night and speak once to my parents along with random friends here and there. It was also nice to be so in touch with social media because we were able to spend time talking to fans and answering questions. Today I held a live Instagram and had a good laugh. That really made time fly by. We also both had quite a few interviews to do for radio, podcasts or social media.

Of course, social media can be a dark and dangerous place but for these 14 days it’s really what got us through. We had so many nice messages from people telling us how much they enjoyed our stories and how it brightened their day and what they looked forward too and for us to keep going and stay strong. It almost became what motivated us to keep going. It also became our one tool to keep connected with the world outside of these 4 walls. Because we couldn’t go outside and didn’t have the chance to do what we normally would like to do we could use Instagram, Facebook and Tiktok to keep up to date and feel a sense of normality.

For our last dinner here, we were treated to our final meal request….and of course that was pizza. This whole week Dasha and I were craving pizza and almost gave in to ordering it in, but we resisted. We told ourselves it would be our final hoorah. So, tomorrow is our last day and we can’t wait for some freedom. We will go to Alicia Molik’s house for dinner and the idea of a home cooked meal really excites us.